Category Archives: books

Penman No. 473: New Light on (and from) the Philippine Short Story

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Penman for Sunday, April 6, 2025

FEW MAY have noticed, but this year, 2025, marks the centenary of what has been widely acknowledged to be our first classic short story in English, Paz Marquez Benitez’s deathless “Dead Stars.”

As I’ve often observed as both a writer and teacher of Philippine literature, there’s probably no literary form more popular among Filipinos than the short story and its predecessors—myths, legends, folktales, and such stories that draw on the power of narrative to tell and teach us something about human life. 

A lot of this has to do with the fact that people and cultures everywhere have made use of stories to make sense of things—to establish causality in human actions—often as a way of prescribing and also proscribing certain behaviors. Stories were there to learn from, like the biblical parables, Aesop’s fables, and the creation myths. The more exciting and entertaining the stories were, the easier the learning happened. Even the mere recognition of oneself in a story that could have taken place a thousand years ago in a place across the planet makes our lives seem more meaningful.

In the Philippines—as it did in the West, where the modern short story took form—the short story was a staple of prewar weekly magazines like the Sunday Tribune, where a story written by an American author would be matched by a local story during what our early literary scholars like Leopoldo Yabes would call our period of apprenticeship. This was in English, but the short story in Filipino (then Tagalog) and other Philippine languages had developed even earlier, and continued (as it continues) to explore new forms and material.

Why the short story and not the novel? That’s another long discussion to be had, and I’ve addressed it in a lecture titled “Novelists in Progress,” but the short of it is that, well, we Pinoys like things in small doses (think Nick Joaquin’s “heritage of smallness”), and the short story satisfies our craving for a touch of fiction and fantasy in our ordinary lives. We’re not marathoners, but great sprinters; we’re not summiteers or navel-gazers, but masters of the street and alley. 

And so, over the past century, important anthologies of the Philippine short story have been published, tracking the development of the genre and its practitioners, from Yabes’ landmark Philippine Short Stories 1925-1940 (a project continued by Gemino Abad for 1956-2008) to Isagani Cruz’s Best Philippine Short Stories of the Twentieth Century (2000). Outside of English, Mga Agos sa Disyerto edited by Efren Abueg came out in 1964, proclaiming new directions for Tagalog short fiction, and the much-needed Ulirat: Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines was published in 2021, edited by Kristine Ong Muslim.

But the 21st century is now a quarter of the way through, and just in these past two decades or so, a fresh bumper crop of brilliant new stories has built up, awaiting harvest.

Five years ago, an American friend named Gerald “Jerry” Burns—a fellow academic and a scholar of Philippine literature in English, now Emeritus Professor at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire—decided to do just that: review the best of the newest Philippine short stories and produce a selection with which to introduce them to the world. He needed a collaborator, and having worked with Jerry earlier when he was a Fulbright professor at our English department in UP, I agreed to co-edit the volume with him. Because of our backgrounds, our stories would be mainly those written in English (and the excellent Ulirat had already covered much more ground in the other Philippine languages than we ever could) but Jerry wisely insisted that we should have at least some representation of non-English stories in translation in the book, if only to lead the reader to explore more in Ulirat.

The selection process was predictably long and bruising, with all the political, aesthetic, and practical considerations that go into anthologizing, but in the end we came up with 18 stories written by both familiar and fresh names, from within and beyond the Philippines, including the diaspora: Dennis Andrew Aguinaldo, Dean Francis Alfar, Mia Alvar, John Bengan, Ian Rosales Casocot, Richard Giye, Vicente Groyon, Ino Habana, Carljoe Javier, Monica Macansantos, Perry Mangilaya, Doms Pagliawan, Ma. Elena Paulma, John Pucay, Anna Sanchez, Larissa Mae R. Suarez, Lysley A. Tenorio, and Socorro Villanueva. We also found an agreeable and supportive publisher, Milflores Publishing, fortuitously run by Andrea Pasion-Flores, herself a fine fictionist who understood the need for a new anthology like this, especially on the threshold of the Philippines’ participation as Guest of Honor in this year’s Frankfurt Buchmesse.

The book’s title, What Light It Can Hold: The Philippine Short Story in the Twenty-First Century, was suggested to Jerry by an encounter with the piña weavers of Kalibo, Aklan, and a caption he saw that said: “How fragile a single thread of piña is, how delicate, but look how much light it can hold.” He explains that “What Light… is intended to recognize the limited capacity of the Philippine short story in this period to offer any widespread or definitive illumination of the nation’s life and culture. At the same time, a more expansive understanding of that title is possible. For the short story, as will be suggested in the next pages, is a signature Philippine product, too. And these slender narratives, fashioned by their makers with a skill, patience, and devotion comparable to the piña weavers’, bring what light they can hold to vital areas of contemporary Philippine and larger human experience.”

No anthology project will be without its perceived failures and omissions, and Dr. Burns and I remain fully open to criticism in that respect. But we believe the sympathetic reader still stands to profit from both the selections and the introduction, penned largely by Jerry, that makes salient observations on the changes that have taken place in this most favored literary form of ours over the past century. Happy reading! (What Light It Can Hold is available on Lazada and Shopee.)

Penman No. 471: A Promise to Keep

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Penman for Sunday, February 9, 2025

Now and then we come across stories of foreigners who fall under the spell of the Philippines so completely that wherever else they go, the Philippines and its panoply of wonders—its mangoes, its waters, its sunsets, and above all its smiling people—stay with them, urging them to return, in spirit if not in person.

One such visitor was my good friend Julie Hill, who with her late husband Arthur first came to Manila in 1968 on a mission to help improve Philippine education, among other concerns. Almost six decades later, after having traveled the world and settled in America, Julie’s thoughts and affections remain bonded to this country and to its future. In the twilight of her life, she has decided to gift poor but bright young Filipinos with a life-changing opportunity to study at the University of the Philippines, from the forthcoming sale at auction of two paintings by National Artists HR Ocampo and Ang Kiukok.

Born in Alexandria, Egypt to Greek parents, Julie Hill went on to a fulfilling life in the United States and around the world with Arthur, who represented the Ford Foundation in the Philippines. Forced to leave Egypt when Nasser took over, Julie found a scholarship for her master’s degree in chemistry at the University of Minnesota. There she met Arthur, an Australian taking his PhD in Education and Mathematical Statistics. 

The two fell in love, married, and embarked on a lifelong adventure around the world—to Western Samoa, Thailand, Indonesia, and Afghanistan, where Arthur’s expertise in education and agricultural development was much sought after. Arthur passed away in 2002, but Julie went on to her own career as an international marketing executive for Lucent and later AT&T. Since retiring at their home in Rancho Sta. Fe, California, she has written and published five books of travel and memoirs—all of which I edited after being introduced to her by our mutual friend Jimmy Laya, turning our business connection into a long and dear friendship.

From the first of those books, A Promise to Keep (2003), come many vivid impressions of a country and society transitioning to modernity, troubled but brimming with energy and promise. Arthur got busy working with UP and the International Rice Research Institute, among others, and the Hills became good friends with the rising technocrats of the time—Cesar Virata, Gerry Sicat, and Jimmy Laya. It was Laya—who remains close to Julie—who introduced her to the local art community.

“The art scene was vibrant,” Julie would write. “Manila, a centuries-old entrepot, was rich in art and culture, and we were privileged to visit many private art collections….

“Art galleries flourished. A self-exiled painter stormed into town and set new price ceilings. The audience increased. So did the column inches devoted to art in the newspapers and magazines….

“The Luz Gallery in Makati was run by Arturo Luz, a leading painter, known for his high standards of professionalism. His gallery gained the trust of the public and the artists. The Solidaridad gallery and bookshop was located in Ermita, run by novelist Frankie Sionil Jose. Solidaridad was the middle ground between the established artists exhibiting at Luz and smaller galleries where new talent was championed. You could find superb examples of prints, drawings, miniatures, relief metal sculptures, collage, photographs, and paintings all over Manila.

“We were interested in meeting the artists and visiting their studios, but were reluctant to pay the gallery prices. If we liked the work of a particular artist, why not buy directly from him or her? This was how we searched for and found the home of Hernando Ocampo.”

“Hernando Ocampo was a pure abstract expressionist with a daring originality in his paintings. His work was unmistakably Filipino, ascribing this national character to his unique, tropical colors. A typical Ocampo painting is not unlike a honeycomb, a complex weave of color and tone with each individual cell suggesting a large, more real life form. His work is tropical and warm and suggestive of symmetry. The colors and shapes seem to dance before the eyes. His home in Maypajo was a mecca for friends, admirers, and collectors. He had an open house on Sundays. Good food and hard and soft drinks were ready for guests. Visiting Ocampo, we felt welcomed not only by the artist but also by his family. We commissioned a painting. Sketches were drawn; we followed the progress of our painting with our weekly Sunday visits, and sampled the wonderful pancit, that ubiquitous Filipino noodle dish, that was offered. We photographed the progress of his work. He completed the ‘Song of Summer’, a mastery of color in 17 different shades of red. It would hang proudly in our home in California, and continue to provide intense, pleasurable excitement, another reminder of our times in the Philippines.” (Note: Ocampo’s sketch and color guide for the painting will go with the artwork at auction.)

The Hills left Manila for Indonesia shortly after martial law, but on a return visit in the early 1980s, their old friends at the Ford Foundation presented them with another painting by another Filipino master, Ang Kiukok.Julie recalls seeing several works by accomplished Filipino painters in the foundation office, purchased back when they were far more affordable, and this may have been one of them. Like the Ocampo, it traveled with the Hills around the world all the way to Rancho Sta. Fe, where I have been visiting Julie over the years (our daughter Demi conveniently lives nearby in San Diego).

It was during our most recent visit there that Julie brought up the idea of donating her two paintings for the benefit of poor UP students. A lifelong but quiet supporter of students as far away as Mindanao and a staunch believer in the transformative power of education, Julie also honored me by anonymously (but no more) endowing the Jose Y. Dalisay Jr. Professorial Chair in Creative Writing at UP, over my embarrassed pleas to put it in her name.

This time, she wants the money to go to UP’s poorest—specifically, those exceptionally bright and mainly provincial students who, against all odds, pass the UPCAT but fail to enroll, lacking the means to afford the cost of living on a UP campus. We’ll need to work out the mechanics, but this will go much farther than professorial chairs in changing Filipino lives.

“I had a privileged education in Alexandria and was fortunate to receive a scholarship for my graduate education in America,” Julie says. “During our years in Manila, Arthur and I developed a deep affection for the people of the Philippines, and I am hoping that this donation will contribute to creating a generation of talented and hopeful Filipinos who will serve their country well.”

The Ocampo and Ang Kiukok paintings will be sold at auction by Leon Gallery on February 22. I pray that generous buyers will help Julie keep her promise to the Filipino people.

Qwertyman No. 131: A Relentless Questioner

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Qwertyman for Monday, February 3, 2025

I DON’T know if there’s a Marxist heaven, but if there is, then Dr. Francisco “Dodong” Nemenzo, who passed away recently, must be smiling up there because of the forthcoming launch of his book Notes from the Philippine Underground (UP Press, 2025).

It’s too bad that Dodong won’t be around to see the book and sign copies for his legions of friends and comrades—many of them like my wife Beng, who remember him as a dashing and persuasively articulate professor of Western Thought, despite the Cebuano-accented English he was sometimes laughed at for by the ignorant. He never became my teacher in college, and oddly enough—because I was out of UP Diliman for most of the time he was teaching there—I never really got to know him closely as an activist and ideologue.

I did know him as a boss—he took me in as his Vice President for Public Affairs when he was UP President—and in that capacity I learned to respect and admire him as a man who held firm to his principles while finding practical and effective solutions to UP’s problems. This was especially true of our campaign to revise the outdated UP Charter, which eventually succeeded under President Emerlinda Roman, but which he tenaciously pursued despite the insults of spiteful politicians. 

Throughout his adult life and to the last, Nemenzo remained a professed and unapologetic Marxist—a word that would seem Jurassic in these post-Soviet and Trumpian times, but which he saw and lived in a different light. 

As the preface to his book by Prof. Patricio “Jojo Abinales” explains, “Dodong’s engagement with Marxist theory wasn’t an academic exercise. For him, Marxism was a living, breathing framework—a summons to connect theory to the existing conditions of everyday life. He wasn’t content to theorize from a distance; with a scientific mind, he dug into the realities of Philippine society, always interrogating its dominant ideas, structures, and contradictions. His writings speak to this dual commitment: the rigor of his analysis is matched by an acute sensitivity to the concrete lives of real people whose struggles he sought to illuminate. He distrusted all dogma, and sought to validate all received knowledge.

“Francisco ‘Dodong’ Nemenzo’s life and work resist easy categorization. He was a Marxist thinker, a revolutionary activist, an inspiring academic leader, and a mentor to generations of scholars and radicals. But more than any of these roles, he was a relentless questioner of the world as he found it—and a passionate believer in its potential to be different, if not better.”

Indeed the book shows how sharp, even scathing, Dodong could be in his opinions of how his idea of Marxism remains relevant and useful despite how it has been misused by many of its adherents and misunderstood by its opponents. 

He writes: “We must struggle against their misconception of Marxist theory and practice (e.g., equating Marxism with Stalinism and totalitarianism) and point out that humanism is inherent in the Marxist worldview. Going through the basic documents of Filipino social democratic groups, it is obvious that, even as they try to distance themselves from Marxism, their analysis of present conditions and their historical roots is almost entirely based on a Marxist framework.” 

He acknowledges the flaws and failures of Marxist parties caught up in internal conflicts (Dodong himself was once ordered to be executed by the party he belonged to, ostensibly for treason): “Can people be blamed for suspecting that communists are motivated by cynical calculations of what would bring them tactical advantages? Their loud and monotonous protestations ring hollow in the absence of inner-party democracy. The authoritarian and repressive character of the regimes their comrades established wherever they gained the upper hand reinforced this impression. This stigma they must shake off; otherwise they would remain at the periphery in the continuing struggle for democracy.”

He is not without wry humor. Reflecting on the ultimate folly of a revolution being led by a highly secretive, centralized, and “conspiratorial” party, he notes: “This is difficult to implement in the Philippine cultural milieu. A code of silence—what the Russians call konspiratsiya and the Mafiosi call omerta—is impossible among people who take rumor-mongering as a favorite sport. Our irrepressible transparency is a weakness from one point of view but a virtue from another. Our legendary incapacity to keep secrets is probably the best guarantee that no conspiratorial group can stay in power long enough to consolidate a dictatorship.”

Even for those disinclined or even hostile toward the Left, Notes from the Philippine Underground offers many valuable insights from one of that movement’s “OGs,” in today’s youth-speak. Nemenzo may be highly critical but he remains ultimately hopeful that positive and deep social change will happen, if the Left learns from its mistakes and finds new ways to engage society. Listen:

“There have been many pseudo-united fronts put up by the vanguard party. They consist of party-led mass organizations that simply echo the party line. None ever grew into a genuine united front, although they did attract a few prominent individuals who had no organizational base whatsoever. Other organized groups are often suspicious of the party and wary of being reduced into instruments for policies they do not accept.

“But I know of only three attempts at seriously establishing a real united front in this country: in the immediate postwar period, in the late 1960s, and very recently. They all collapsed because of sectarian methods of work. Sectarianism is the blight of all united front efforts everywhere….

“The Philippine movement has never been able to solve this dilemma. At the very moment when united front structures are set up, rivalries emerged. And intoxicated by short-term successes in expanding their mass organizations, the sectarians eventually prevailed.”

Pluralism, he suggests, is key: “Pluralism is a bourgeois liberal doctrine that ought to be preserved and enriched in the socialist revolution. It is not incompatible with socialism. The tension that arises through political competition would serve as a constant reminder that the party must earn the allegiance of the masses. Of course, no state would tolerate an opposition party that resorts to violent methods and solicits support from foreign powers. But this should never be an excuse for suppressing any opposition.”

Surely there will be blowback from those holding different views; expect the usual howl from UP bashers and red-taggers. But when that happens, even from the grave—or Marxist heaven—Dodong Nemenzo will have sparked the kind of discussion we direly need to find our way forward as a nation.

Penman No. 470: A Collector’s Christmas

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Penman for Sunday, January 5, 2025

MY WIFE Beng and I in San Diego, California for our first Christmas in the US in ten years, visiting our daughter Demi and her husband Jerry. San Diego’s one of those perennially pleasant places where the weather seems to be perfect almost all year round. You don’t come here for a white Christmas—although there’s snow up in the mountains not too far from town. It’s still sunny and warm enough in late December for people to be going around in T-shirts and shorts in the daytime, but for us Pinoys who love to freeze, sweaters and jackets are de rigueur.

We’ve been coming here for twenty years now, and while San Diego is chockfull of attractions—this is, after all, where Comic-Con happens every July (been there, done that twice) and where the waterfront boasts a flotilla of historic ships from a life-size Spanish galleon to the USS Midway—I have to admit that the collector in me loves San Diego for its antique malls, flea markets, and thrift shops, of which scores can be found in the city and its suburbs. I’ve found many a prize piece in these places—such as a working gold-plated 1930s Hamilton “Curvex” watch in a basket marked “Any item $5”—which, for me, beats walking into a boutique and plunking down your credit card to pay full price.

I guess I’m a cheapskate at heart, which is why everywhere Beng and I have gone around the world, flea markets and thrift shops—aside from museums—are at the top of our to-do list. The thrill is even less in the purchase itself than in finding something old, beautiful, potentially valuable—and at a bargain. 

Collectors everywhere know the feeling—that tingle in your bones and at your fingertips when you step into a shop and scan the territory, and notice something in the hazy distance that seems to look like your obscure object of desire. As a collector of vintage fountain pens, I naturally gravitate toward small tubular shapes in black, silver, or gold—which was how, last March, I spotted and bagged a gold “safety” French-made pen from the early 1900s, sitting all by its lonesome at a table at the Porte de Vanves flea market in Paris, a 40-euro find for something easily worth five times as much. 

Everyone has his or her strategy, but mine has always been to do a quick march down and around the street or aisle, just to see what’s out there and to catch obvious standouts, before taking a more leisurely and more probing walk back, peering into corners and at the details of particular pieces. It pays to come early—flea markets open as early as 5 am—and we’ve been lucky to bag early-bird bargains at cock’s crow in a barn in Ohio and the flea market at Covent Garden in London.

Unfortunately, flea markets of this sort have yet to become a regular feature of Filipino life, unless we count the Bangkal used-goods market in Makati and the plethora of Japan-surplus stores that have sprung up around the country. 

Fortunately, there’s a global flea market that’s accessible to nearly everyone and which doesn’t even require you to fly overseas and deal with visas, airfares, and airports. That market is eBay, which I like to call the great equalizer, since anyone with an Internet connection and a bank account can tap into the millions of items that eBay has online at any given second.

To my great wonderment and not a little horror, I realized as I was writing this that I’ve been on eBay for 27 years now, having signed up with the website just three months after it changed its name to eBay from Auction Web in September 1997. My first buy was a 1950s Pelikan 140 fountain pen from Germany, and since then I’ve made almost 2,000 purchases covering all my collecting passions, from pens, typewriters, and Apple computers to antiquarian books, paintings, and clothes. (Clothes? Yes! If you’re a rather large man like me who has difficulty finding his size in local stores, you’ll have lots more choices on eBay for less as long as you’re sure of your shirt, blazer, pants, shoe, and hat sizes.) 

Shipping each item to Manila directly from the US or the UK (another eBay paradise) will be too costly, so what I and other experienced collectors do is to open an account with a forwarder like ShippingCart or Johnny Air Cargo, which gives you a local address, wait until the items pile up, and then ship them in a box to Manila. (Check with each shipper’s website for their specific insurance and customs policies.) I generally get my goods within two weeks of shipping them out.

I began by mentioning that we were in San Diego because this ties in with another twist to the Pinoy collector’s and shopper’s strategy: if you know you’re going to be in the US and will be staying with a relative or friend, you can have your eBay or Amazon items shipped to that address over, say, the preceding month, and bring everything home with you in the second suitcase you’re entitled to, saving a ton on air freight costs. 

This time around, to give you an idea of what my Christmas loot has been, I’ll be filling up a suitcase (or more likely my carry-on) with some small things of little commercial value but of great interest to hopeless hoarders like me. They’ll include:

– A copy of The Gentleman’s Magazine from April 1825, in which an article predicts that “It appears that Spain is likely to lose her possessions in the Eastern, as well as the Western world” because of rebellions and crimes in the Philippines as well as at home, including “ravages committed (in Catalonia) by wolves within the last twelve or fifteen months…. The last was a young girl who, on the 18th instant, was almost entirely devoured by the wolves” (which, according to the monks, were “animated by the souls of defunct Constitutionalists”);

– A first American edition of Paul Proust de la Gironiere’s Twenty Years in the Philippine Islands, published in New York in 1854;

– A lovely Art Nouveau rocker ink blotter from around 1915, once used to mop up excess ink from fountain pens; and

– A Parker Duofold Senior fountain pen in pearl and black from around 1929, once owned by a “Francis J. Keefe” whose identity will be another mystery to explore.

If Christmas was this bountiful, I can only imagine what the New Year will be like.

Penman No. 469: Seniors and Their Stories

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Penman for Sunday, December 8, 2024

I HAD the privilege of attending the private launch of a book in Makati recently, a book titled Bridges of Memory produced by a group of seniors who had each contributed their poems, stories, and essays to the collection. None of them was a professional writer; I gathered that they came from distinguished backgrounds in banking, law, public service, and other pursuits. 

Prior to publishing the book, they had been mentored by an accomplished and experienced writer, the San Francisco-based poet Oscar Peñaranda, who just happened to be an old friend of mine. Oscar was in the US when the launch took place, so he sent a congratulatory video. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that this was already the “Sunshine” group’s (so named because they meet at the Sunshine Place for seniors in Makati) second such book.

As you might expect, the book contains the authors’ musings on life, love, and loss, the funny with the sad, the joyful with the tragic. The styles and the quality of the writing predictably varied, but the enthusiasm was palpably even, with all the contributors present eager to share their work.

At that very same moment, way across town, another mass book launch was being held at a major university, where one of the featured books was a long and distinguished biography that had partly been edited by me. I had also been invited to that event, but chose to attend the Makati one despite the Christmas traffic, because I had the feeling that it would somehow be a more enjoyable occasion, at least for me, as it would put me in touch with writers of a gentler disposition.

Having been caught in a whirlwind of literary activities over the past two months—from the Frankfurt Book Fair to the Palanca Awards to the PEN Congress—you’d think that I’d shy away from a small book launch, but aside from the fact that some of the authords were friends, I wanted to show my support for this kind of more personal writing and publishing that we too often take for granted as self-indulgence.

I’d seen books like this before, the output of writing groups, barkadas, high-school chums, and fellow alumni. They’re often triggered by an impending milestone, like a 50th anniversary or a grand reunion and homecoming.

The professional crowd might think of such volumes as vanity projects published by people who could never put out their own books. But then that’s the whole point: one person’s vanity is another person’s self-empowerment, and such private publishing reclaims the right to self-expression from the academic and commercial gatekeepers. The works they contain may not win any literary prizes, but they are as honest and heartfelt as writing can get, and satisfy the most basic urge that impels all good writers: to use words to give shape to one’s thought and feeling, and to share those words with others so they might think and feel the same way. They’re written neither for fame nor fortune, but to leave some precious memories behind for a very specific audience—although some pieces may be of such merit as to be more widely appreciated.

I’ve always said, even in my own creative writing classes at the university, that I believe that every person has at least one good story in him or her—and that it’s my job as a teacher to bring that story out. And people know this, too—many of them are dying to tell their story, but don’t know where and how, and who will listen. That’s particularly true for digitally-challenged seniors, who don’t have access to blogging, and who use Facebook for little more than “Happy Birthday!”

I’m particularly taken by the fact that these books are produced by seniors, who are increasingly being left out of a social world ruled by schemes and products for young people. Even within families—let’s admit it—very few grandchildren now have the time nor the patience to listen to their elders’ stories, much less to ply them with questions; they’d rather scroll through their social media than ask what a typical summer vacation was like half a century ago, or what people did before there were cellphones, computers, and satellite TV.

Years ago, fearing we would lose her soon because of her illness, I’d asked my mother to write down her memoirs in notebooks which I still keep. As it happened, she recovered magnificently, miraculously, and is approaching 97, still strong and alert, albeit a little slow. She walks every day, plays games on her iPad, and navigates Netflix on her own. When she’s staying with us (we siblings share her company), Beng and I pepper her with questions about her childhood in their village in Romblon, where she rode a horse and scooped fish out of the plentiful sea. The youngest of a dozen children, she was the apple of her father’s eye, and the only girl he sent to Manila for high school and college at UP. They had a rice mill, and snakes roosted in the large straw bins that kept the unhusked rice. But the snakes were to be feared much less than the beautiful encantos that came down from Kalatong on fiestas and lured their victims to join them with offerings of black rice. How could you not like and want to retell stories like that?

Our seniors are a treasury of stories to be told. They just need to be asked, encouraged to write, and published.

(For your copy of Bridges of Memory, email marketing@sunshineplaceph.com.)

Qwertyman No. 123: A Forgotten Hero

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Qwertyman for Monday, December 9, 2024

A HANDSOME book—as handsome as its subject—was launched last week by the Ateneo University Press, a biography of another unsung Filipino hero who would have faded into oblivion had it not been for the efforts of an American expat in the Philippines with a deep sense of history. 

The hero was Col. Narciso L. Manzano, the highest-ranking Filipino in the US Army during the Second World War, and the man who rescued his memory is Craig Scharlin, a former English teacher, gallery owner, and biographer who served for some time as Manzano’s personal secretary fifty years ago. I had met and known Craig earlier as the author, with his wife Lilia Villanueva, of the biography of Filipino-American labor leader Philip Vera Cruz; when he asked me to help him put together what eventually became The Manzano Memoirs: The Life and Military Career of Colonel Narciso L. Manzano, I agreed, especially after hearing his story of the life of this remarkable man. 

Craig had learned that the MacArthur Library in Virginia had a 260-page handwritten autobiographical manuscript that had been written by Col. Manzano in 1948, to which were later added another memoir written in 1983 for his grandchildren; his son Jaime had also written a family history. Craig acquired copies of all these and the necessary permissions to publish them; I helped stitch the manuscripts together into a more coherent whole and edit the text.

Though born in Manila in 1899, Manzano grew up in Atimonan, Quezon before leaving at age ten for Spain where his family hailed from. He was a mestizo through and through: Filipino by birth and allegiance, Spanish by blood, and American by military service and later citizenship. After returning to Manila and studying Engineering at UST, he signed up to join the US Army, hoping to fight in the First World War, which ended too soon for him. He went to the US for further military training, and served back home as a Philippine Scout, and then as a colonel in the US Army Corps of Engineers under Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

It had been one of Manzano’s pre-war missions to map out the Bataan peninsula carefully in preparation for War Plan Orange 3, which MacArthur eventually discarded. It was in this zone that Manzano would first earn praise for his bravery. As Craig’s introduction tells it, “It was Manzano, along with his American co-commander, Lt. Col. Skerry, who led their engineers in setting the explosives to blow the bridge at Calumpit, the last and most vital bridge in Central Luzon…. When Gen. Wainwright decided the bridge had to be destroyed to halt the rapidly advancing Japanese invading forces, the Army engineers assigned this task led by Manzano were on the wrong side of the bridge, the Japanese side. Manzano requested that Skerry wait to blow it until he and his men could get across… but Wainwright had no choice: the bridge had to be blown as the Japanese were advancing too fast in order to save the entire American and Filipino forces and allow them time to retreat to Bataan…. Somehow Manzano, along with another of his American officers was able to evade the Japanese on their own and made their way with all their men to Bataan.”

Working in intelligence in Bataan, he was later captured and imprisoned in Camp O’Donnell; upon release, he was quickly assigned to develop an intelligence network in Luzon, at which he proved exceptionally capable. His wife Charo was arrested and imprisoned by the Japanese. But he pressed on, and when his network was exposed, he moved to Mindanao from where he hoped to be taken by submarine to Australia so he could properly advise MacArthur, who was getting poor intelligence. MacArthur’s lackeys scotched that plan, forcing Manzano to improvise as a guerrilla until MacArthur returned. He later moved to the US with his family, where he died in 1986, proud of his life’s work despite being embittered by the betrayals he had to suffer, and disappointed at being passed over for the generalship he had expected.

That’s not even half of the story; brimming with the candor of a man with nothing to lose, Manzano’s memoirs are full of vignettes and reflections about people at war, and Manzano can be painfully scathing in his estimations of those he felt had betrayed his country. He whittles down MacArthur and his aides for what he saw to be their foolish and costly unwillingness to listen to lifesaving intelligence (an opinion shared by historians such as Hampton Sides, who wrote that “MacArthur’s judgement, clouded by his gargantuan ego, was sometimes deeply, dangerously flawed. The men who fought under him, and the civilians who happened to get in his way, often paid a terrible price.”) Manzano was highly critical of MacArthur’s abandonment of War Plan Orange 3, and even said that he would have testified in support of Japanese Gen. Masaharu Homma had he been asked.

He not only believed President Jose P. Laurel to be a collaborator, but plotted the failed operation to assassinate him on the golf course at Wack Wack. For this alone, the book should be well worth reading; I among others have a contrary view of Laurel, but Manzano was there and we were not. Manzano has spicy opinions of other wartime and postwar personalities whom we have named streets after—again, quite an eye-opener. He reserved some of his choicest words for Ferdinand Marcos, whom he called “a poser, a phony, a fake, a war profiteer.”

In his introduction to the book, Craig Scharlin recalls his first meeting with Col. Manzano in San Francisco in 1975: The movie “Scent of a Woman” with Al Pacino had not yet come out. However, the character Pacino played in that movie, Frank, was a retired lieutenant colonel in the United States Army. As portrayed by Pacino, the character had Old-World charm, dressed impeccably, and even in his older age had ramrod-straight posture, showed strength of character and conviction, and the demeanor of an officer who had commanded other men and led them into battle. But he also carried scars of resentment and a certain sadness, a lament of unfulfilled destinies, of real battles won and others lost. And of course it was all Al Pacino—short, dark, brooding, yet still incredibly charismatic.

“That was the man I met in 1975 in a well-appointed penthouse apartment on Nob Hill in San Francisco. The only difference was that this wasn’t Al Pacino nor a fictional movie character, but the real deal—a retired US Army colonel named Narciso L. Manzano.”

Meet the rest of the man in the book, which you can order here: https://unipress.ateneo.edu/product/manzano-memoirs-life-and-military-career-colonel-narcisco-l-manzano.

Qwertyman No. 122: On Writing as a Profession

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Qwertyman for Monday, December 2, 2024

FOLLOWING THROUGH on last week’s piece about the challenges faced by creative writers trying to make a living in this country, let me share some further thoughts on that topic that I wove into my Rizal Lecture last week at the annual congress of Philippine PEN. My talk was titled “The Living Is in the Writing: Notes on the Profession of  Writing in the Philippines.”

Our writers of old made a profession of writing, often by working as journalists, speechwriters, and PR people at the same time that they wrote poems, stories, novels, and essays on the side. Some also taught, and of course some writing comes with that territory, but with teaching you get paid for your classroom hours than for your word count. (To which I should also add, so much of the writing that our literature professors do today is understandable only to themselves.)

Our best and most prolific writers lived by the word and died by it. The two who probably best exemplified this kind of commitment to writing—and nothing but writing—were Nick Joaquin and his good friend Frankie Sionil Jose. Both were journalists and fictionists (in Joaquin’s case, a poet and playwright as well). We can say the same for Carmen Guerrero Nakpil and Kerima Polotan, as well as for Gregorio Brillantes, Jose Lacaba, Ricky Lee, Alfred Yuson, Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo, and Charlson Ong, among others. 

These were all writers whom you never heard to claim, as has been recent practice, that “I am a poet!” or “I am a fictionist!” They were all just writers, for whom the practice of words was one natural and seamless continuum, and a profession they mastered just as well as we expect doctors, engineers, mechanics, and lawyers to do. This was also when journalists could be poets who could also be politicians and even reformers, revolutionaries, and heroes.

This was paralleled in other arts such as painting, where artists such as Juan Luna, Fernando Amorsolo, and Botong Francisco routinely accepted commissions to support themselves and any other personal undertakings. (Of course, this was well within the old Western tradition of writers and artists having wealthy patrons to help keep them alive and productive.)

But then came a time when, for some reason, creative and professional writing began to diverge, as creative writing withdrew from the popular sphere and became lodged in academia, where it largely remains today. Professional writing, or writing for, money, came to be seen as the work of hacks, devoid of art and honor. Even George Orwell urged writers to take on non-literary jobs such as banking and insurance—which incidentally T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens did, respectively—rather than what he called “semi-creative jobs” like teaching and journalism, which he felt was beneath them. (Orwell himself worked as a dishwasher in Paris, where he wryly observed that “nothing unusual for a waiter to wash his face in the water in which clean crockery was rinsing. But the customers saw nothing of this.”)

An attitude of condescension soon emerged among poets and fictionists who looked down on journalists as a lesser breed—something I have always warned my students against, having been a journalist who had to turn in a story, any story, by 2 pm every day on pain of losing my job. Never knock journalists. Let’s not forget that when it comes to facing real dangers brought on by one’s written word, poets and fictionists have it easy. The last Filipino novelist who was shot for what he wrote was Jose Rizal; the only writers dying today are our journalists and broadcasters in the hinterlands offending the local poobahs. Governors and generals read newspapers, not novels; they are impervious to metaphor.

Professional writers, on the other hand, saw creative writers as artsy dilettantes enchanted by fancy words and phrases that no one else understood and very few people paid for. Creative writers took it as a given that they were wedded to a life of monastic penury, unless they had another skill or job like teaching, doctoring or lawyering, or marrying into wealth. It even became a badge of honor of sorts to languish in financial distress while reaping all manner of writing honors, in the misguided notion that starving artists produced the finest and most honest work. 

The fact is, both are two sides of the same coin, which is the currency of public persuasion through words and language. One is an artist, the master of design; the other is the artisan or craftsman, the master of execution. Both can reside in the same person, unless you’re foolish enough to disdain one or the other. You can produce great art, if you have the talent, the discipline, and the hubris for it; but you can also live off your artistic skills, if you have the talent, the discipline, and the humility for it. 

(That said, I have to report that in my forty years of teaching creative writing, some of the students who find it hardest to switch to fiction are journalists, who just can’t let go of the gritty and often linear reality they’ve been accustomed to; poets come next, those who feel preciousness in every word and turn of phrase, so much that they can’t move from one page to the next without agonizing, or, going the other way, without drowning us in verbiage.)

This was why, more than twenty years ago, I designed and began teaching an undergraduate course at the University of the Philippines called “CW198—Professional Writing.” Mainly intended for Creative Writing and English majors who had very little idea of their career options after college aside from teaching, the course syllabus includes everything from business letters, news, interviews, and features to brochures, scripts, speeches, editing, publishing, and professional ethics. The first thing I tell them on Day One is this: “There is writing that you do for yourself, and writing that you do for others. Don’t ever get the two mixed up.”

Penman No. 468: A Game of Prompts

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Penman for Sunday, November 17, 2024

I WAS in Dumaguete recently for a seminar organized by the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines to encourage local authors and publishers to break out into the international market, following through on our participation at the Frankfurt Book Fair. I was asked to talk about “The Future of Literature,” but I chose to turn that around and talk instead about the literature of the future.

Taking off from the challenges and opportunities posed by artificial intelligence, I put forth a series of “provocations” that writers and publishers could think about. Let me share part of what I said:

My first provocation: the literature of the future, or some part of it, will be a game of prompts: not just or not mainly to copy existing writers, but to produce results that will be a hybrid of the author’s creativity in prompt-making and AI’s selectivity, drawing from its enormous stock of possible responses. This will be writing as a form of play, of co-authorship between man and machine.

Following through from this is Provocation No. 2: Expect the growth of the literature of hybridity—of more crossovers from one genre or form to another, from one language to another, from one sensibility to another. This is by no means new and has been happening for some time now, but there will be an even greater and more deliberate blurring of traditional boundaries, more experimentation.

To some extent, that will be because—and here’s Provocation No. 3, and to use this generation’s favorite trigger-word—there will be less gatekeeping. Or, if not less, then more resistance to or disregard of it. There will be more independent publishing and self-publishing to counter the influence of traditional publishing houses. But this free-for-all will also likely lead to a general decline of standards, as writers forgo the services of editors and the critical evaluations of quality- and market-minded publishers.

Provocation No. 4: The big novel will survive, simply because of the power of inertia, and because there will always be a need for something as capacious to contain and possibly comprehend the ever-growing complexity of human life. Our exposure to the international market at the Frankfurt Book Fair will also provide more impetus to the production of novels, something at which we Filipinos have not been particularly good at, historically speaking. 

On the other hand—Provocation No. 5—there will be a general shortening and simplification of form, as writing seeks to approximate the meme, or Tiktok. I don’t know exactly how this will happen, or what form it will take, but when I look at the frankly scary popularity of Lang Leav, I worry that people will see that kind of poetry as the new standard. Of course Emily Dickinson was just as short if not even shorter 150 years ago; she would have made a fine poet for our time.

Given what the world is going through, and the even bleaker future humanity faces, I propose—Provocation No. 6—that the literature of the future will be one of survival, of coping, of enduring. I have recently been advocating the need to produce a literature of hope, but that will be a difficult ask for young writers just trying to keep their heads above the water, and more understandably concerned with this life than with anything that may follow. Science fiction and fantasy will always go over the visible horizon, anticipating a distant future albeit in often dystopian terms, but for most, it will be the literature of next week.

And in that increasingly diminishing and threatening universe—Provocation No. 7—when our precious selves are all we have left to cling to, the literature of “I am,” the first-person narrative, and the politics of identity will prevail. When we no longer trust the government, business, education, our parents, the Church, and even God, and on the verge of losing control of our own petty lives, we will desperately fight to be recognized, acknowledged, and maybe even loved. We will leave nations and societies to the editorialists and social scientists; in fiction and poetry, we will seek solace and sense.

Let me just say a few words about the Frankfurt Book Fair, the 2024 edition of which I and some of us here attended last month. As you know, the Philippines will be Guest of Honor next year, which will do much to project the visibility of Philippine literature overseas. Even this year, many gains were already achieved by our writers and publishers, with dozens of deals signed for the translation and publication of our books in foreign markets.

Post-Frankfurt, Filipino writers will think of writing for the world—not necessarily in English although that’s always an option, but through translation, which will be the great equalizer. The huge surge in translation coming out of Frankfurt—not just from Filipino to English but from our other Philippine languages, including English, to other global languages—will forever change our literary culture, which has traditionally and quite unfairly favored our writers in English when it comes to recognition beyond our shores.

Also, and this may be a controversial point, I’ve long had this suspicion—and maybe Frankfurt proves it—that the rest of the world doesn’t really care about (because it doesn’t know about nor understand) the differences between Tagalog, Iluko, Bikol, and Cebuano etc. literature. When we reach foreign readers in translation, we’re all Filipino—and only Filipino—just as African or Indian literature  appear to us as cultural blocs rather than deeply variegated constructs. This has its positives and negatives, but I tend to lean on the positives, which are a reminder that our literature helps define a cohesive national experience and identity above the regional and ethnic markers otherwise so precious to us.

In one of my sessions in Frankfurt, I was asked a question, to which I replied: “I will always be more optimistic about literature than politics.” Given what has just happened in America, and what that will mean for the rest of the world, I have to believe this even more than ever.

Qwertyman No. 121: Fame, Fortune, and the Filipino Writer

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Qwertyman for Monday, November 25, 2024

CREATIVE WRITERS don’t earn much in this country, unless they lend their talents to someone else, for far less literary reasons than writing a novel or a collection of poems. A senator might need to deliver an important speech to an international audience; a taipan might be marking a milestone like a 75th birthday, and fancy having his biography written; a conglomerate might want to have its history written and published, to trumpet its accomplishments and contributions to society. 

For all these, many novelists, poets, and essayists will drop their pens and exchange their metaphors for the plainer but more remunerative prose of public relations. I know I have; I’m one of these people for whom writing isn’t just an art but a profession, a means of livelihood, a trade I’m grateful to be able to ply instead of hauling gravel or fixing carburetors. 

I’ve been writing for a living since I dropped out of college and became a newspaper reporter at eighteen, and I’ve been at it ever since, even throughout my whole other life as an academic (yes, I went back to school and got all the right degrees just so I could teach). At seventy, I’m still working on three or four simultaneous book projects for clients, with my own third novel in the back burner. (I’ve already drawn the line at seventy; after these, no more, so I can focus on my own work, and live modestly off my professor’s pension.)

I daresay, however, that most Filipino writers don’t operate like this, either because they can’t (you have to park your ego at the door and be extremely adaptable) or they won’t (for some, writing for money is selling your soul, although you can always say no to jobs and clients you don’t like, as I have). So creative writers have to keep day jobs like teaching or lawyering or newswriting and editing, and tap away at their magnum opuses on the side.

Why do they even bother? It’s not as if they’re hoping to write novels that will become bestsellers, make them millions, and get sold to Hollywood or Netflix. Ours is also a culture and society not known for buying and reading books, unlike, say, the Japanese whose faces you’ll find buried between pages on the Tokyo subway. In a country of around 115 million people, a new book will still typically be published in a first (and likely only) print run of 1,000 copies, which will probably take a year to sell out, if ever (Filipino relatives and friends also expect to be given free signed copies, which they won’t even read).

So again, what are we writing for? Perhaps thanks to Jose Rizal (who, let’s not forget, was shot for what he wrote), to be a writer still carries with it an aura of honor and fame, the suggestion of some extraordinary talent, a special way with words. We may not pay or read our writers, but w e admire them, maybe because they seem to know something most people don’t, like saying “I love you” in enchanting ways, or drafting convincing letters and papers, or even just fancy words like “somnolent” and “adumbrate.” There’s some glory to be won in writing—maybe even a little cash, if you know how to market yourself.

Last Friday, at the PICC, many of the country’s best writers got together to bask in that shared glory. In one of the highlights of the literary year, 54 authors were feted at the 72nd edition of the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. Begun in 1950 and faithfully and generously endowed by the Palanca family, the Palancas are the country’s longest-running and most prestigious literary competition, and for the past seven decades (almost uninterrupted except for the pandemic) have heralded the emergence of our finest writers—in English, Filipino, and more recently our other major Philippine languages.

According to the foundation that oversees the awards, this year’s competition drew in 1,823 entries in 22 categories, with 60 winning works produced by 54 writers. New winners outnumbered previous ones by 31 to 23, a good sign of new talent emerging—and not just new but young. Five winners were 20 and below, the youngest being only 14 years old (and the oldest 78). That’s quite a range, which tells us that the future of Philippine literature is safe and strong.

I myself won my first Palanca when I was 21, and of course I thought I was God’s gift to literature—until I lost for the next four years straight. I probably learned more from those losses than from my lucky win, and as I grew older the writing became more important than the winning, but the incentives—a little of both fame and fortune—that the Palancas provided never diminished in their attractiveness, especially during the martial law years when there was very little publishing going on.

You certainly don’t have to join the Palancas or win one to gain a literary reputation, and the value of such awards can easily get overblown, such as when egos get the better of writers starved for attention. Ultimately prizes don’t count nearly as much as publication, and all those honors will be meaningless until and unless one’s books are read, understood, argued about, and maybe even cherished. (With the Philippines poised to become Guest of Honor at next year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, we can expect the global readership for Filipino works to increase, and international publication will be a new goal for our writers to aspire for.)

Not everyone who writes for a living can win a Palanca, but not everyone who wins a Palanca can make a living out of writing, either. I’m blessed and thankful to have been able to do both, but at this point in my life I’ve come to realize that even more than seeking fame or fortune, a writer’s greatest mission is to tell and spread the truth, in that moving and memorable form only art can deliver.

Qwertyman N0. 117: Our Best Books Forward

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Qwertyman for Monday, October 28, 2024

NOW ON its 76th year, the Frankfurter Buchmesse (FBM)—better known outside Germany as the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s oldest and largest such event—ended successfully last October 20 with a significant representation from the Philippines, which sent scores of authors, publishers, and book industry officials to the fair. All that was in preparation for FBM 2025, when the Philippines will be Guest of Honor (GOH), the country whose literature will be the focus of the fair’s attention.

You can think of the Frankfurt Book Fair as the Olympics of the global book industry, with over 200,000 participants (book industry persons and the public) representing over 100 countries. However, there are no prizes for Best Novel, Best Nonfiction Book, Best Children’s Book, and so on. Everyone is effectively in competition with everyone else, but the real rewards are in the professional and personal connections made between and among authors, publishers, agents, editors, and translators at the fair, connections that materialize into deals for translation and publication rights. Although exhibited books can be sold at the close of the fair, the FBM isn’t meant to sell books, but rights to books, for which it has become the world’s oldest and largest marketplace. This means that, through the right contacts, Filipino books can be translated into and sold in French, Turkish, Spanish, and Urdu editions, etc. and vice versa. 

Becoming GOH is a signal distinction—but it doesn’t come free. Nations vie and pay for the honor, which this year went to Italy and in 2026 will go to the Czech Republic. I’m sure that there have been and will be more criticisms of our participation in Frankfurt, chiefly of the costs of our foreign exposure vs. the local promotion of our literature, but it’s not a zero-sum game. We need both kinds of investments. We have impressive literary production from all over the country—much of it unknown even to ourselves—but we also need to share the best of it with the world, to raise their understanding of the Filipino above the stereotypes they know (Imelda’s shoes, Manny Pacquiao, DHs, cruise ship crewmen, etc.—not all of them bad, for sure, especially our OFWs, but in need of context).

If FBM 2024 was any indication, FBM 2025 will be an even more resounding success for the Philippines. All literary genres were represented this year in terms of books and panel discussions, and valuable connections were made with European publishers, translators, and agents. Philippine literature will never be the same after this. (This year’s upshot for me is that my novel Soledad’s Sister will be coming out soon in Spanish, after its versions in Italian, French, and German.)

Having followed trends in international publishing for some time, I’m particularly impressed by the way the FBM has helped to promote our new writing by young authors in literary categories that have traditionally received less attention compared to what I’ve called “the big white whale” of publishing, the novel. Approach most publishers and agents at the FBM, and what they’ll ask you is, “Where’s your novel?” For primarily commercial reasons, the novel remains the most saleable and traded commodity at book fairs. (I know many who will wince at my reference to books as commodities, but let’s be absolutely clear about this: the bottom line of book publishing and book fairs is business, not “Kumbaya”-type international peace and understanding.) 

Sadly, however, Filipinos have historically not been a novel-writing, novel-buying, and novel-reading people. In this respect, Rizal’s Noli and Fili are aberrations, familiar to us only and thankfully because of the law requiring their study. That said, our writers are masters of the short literary forms—poetry and the short story in particular. I’ve often remarked that we Pinoys are world-class sprinters, not marathoners; our world-view is not Olympian, but pedestrian, formed close-quarters at street level. 

This year, I’m told that over 70 deals were made between Filipino authors and foreign agents and publishers for the translation and publication of works that went well beyond the traditional novel, including children’s stories (another of our strongest suits) and genre and graphic fiction. These authors were young, and some had their works translated from languages other than English. If anything, this surge in translations, long overdue, is one strategic benefit that our FBM participation has enabled, and our GOH status next year should boost it even further.

According to FBM Director Juergen Boos, “I am very excited about the Philippines’ Guest of Honor presentation in 2025. The motto ‘The imagination peoples the air’ resonates with the universality of storytelling. Even though the Philippines is the world’s thirteenth largest nation with more than 109 million citizens, I believe for many of us in Europe, Philippine literature is currently still rather unknown territory. As the country steps into its role as Guest of Honor, we will learn a lot about the importance of storytelling and today’s cultural scene for Philippine civil society. With an incredible 183 different languages spoken on its 7,641 islands, the country’s diverse influences are one of the aspects I am looking forward to seeing in Frankfurt in 2025.”

I did say that there are no prizes awarded at the FBM, but I have to correct that to acknowledge the Diagram Group Prize for the Oddest Title at the FBM, given since 1978 and now voted upon by the public, and won by such books as Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice, The Joy of Chickens, How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art, and If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start with Your Legs. This is not a prize to which Filipino writers have so far aspired, but who knows? Pinoy wackiness (alongside wisdom) knows no bounds.

Many thanks to the National Book Development Board, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, the German literary organization LitProm, culture champion Sen. Loren Legarda, and our other sponsors and supporters for this great opportunity to put our best books forward on the global stage. Mabuhay!