I wonder what the pioneer essayist Montaigne would have said about this. I took this as a valiant defense of the essay, couched in a politely parsed literary diplomatese:
Breaking Barriers: The Essay and the Non-Fiction Narrative
By Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo
A Brief Introduction
The essay has always been a kind of outsider. When it records personal impressions, reminiscences, or reflections in a light, whimsical, humorous tone, it is grudgingly accepted as a kind of stepsister. When it deals with serious subjects in a sober, analytical, formal tone, it is declared to be philosophy, history; sociology or political science, and banished altogether.
True, the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and the Manila Critics Circle National Book Awards now include the essay as an official category; and courses in the writing of the essay are part of the Creative Writing curriculum in the University of the Philippines. But one proof that it is still not regarded as equal in importance to poetry, fiction or the drama is that the national creative writing workshops—held in Baguio, the Visayas and Davao (by the University of the Philippines), in Dumaguete (by the Creative Writing Foundation), and in Iligan (by Mindanao State University)—are not open to essay writers.1 Another proof is its neglect by literary critics.2
The idea seems to be that the essay is easy to write. After all, politicians, priests, and pedants of every stripe produce countless lectures, speeches, sermons, papers, theses and dissertations which could all be called “formal essays.” And practically everyone who thinks he or she can write—from the newspaper columnist, pounding out his weekly 400 words, to the college freshman struggling through his English composition assignments—produces what is referred to variously as the “informal” or “personal” or “familiar” essay.
Because of this notion—that anyone can write an essay—many in fact do. The result is material of such voluminous quantity and such uneven quality that it only reinforces the prejudice against the essay as a literary form.
Writers who are mainly essayists contribute to this confusion by being apologetic about their writing. Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, for instance, commenting on her often being called “an expert in the field- of the essay,” wrote:
"I am afraid that distinction was earned only by my having been such a bad short story
writer. My short stories were so bad that my friends would say, Of course they’re bad.
They’re not short stories, they’re essays. When one is not much good as a fish, one
becomes a frog."
"In desperation, I put together some stuff that had appeared in newspapers and magazines
under my by-line into a kind of nonbook called Woman Enough and called it a collection
of essays. But somebody has now written that a few of the pieces in that item are not
essays but short stories." (Nakpil 1973:4)
Moreover, there is no clear definition of what an essay is. To quote Nakpil once again:
"Essays, then, are what no other form of writing seems willing to be. A bad short story, a
letter that lets one off from an undesirable engagement or money debt, fiction that can
never be published as fiction because it has too much truth in it, a libelous tract,
propaganda material, an extended joke, a parody or satire, a private quarrel or a public
flirtation any and all of these can be called an essay and the subject of prose writing." (P. 5)
In fact, it is as difficult to write a good essay as it is to write a good short story or poem or 1-act play. And despite the tendency of “creative writers” to be snobbish toward the essay, some gifted fictionists, poets and playwrights make rather bad essayists. Whereas many journalists, who are generally disinclined to make claims regarding the literary value of their writings, produce fine essays.
But when does a feature article become an essay, hence, “literature”? How about an interview story? or a column? or a movie review? Is “literariness” a matter of subject or style or approach or tone? For that matter, when does a story or narrative become an essay? And given the paradigms of poststructuralist criticism, should we be worrying about these distinctions at all? Are not all these materials simply “texts”?
Since it is necessary, in a book of this sort, to decide upon what particular “texts” are to be covered by the label, I shall begin by specifying that for purely practical reasons, this short overview will not concern itself with that type of “formal essay” which may be called an intellectual treatise and includes philosophical disquisitions, academic lectures, political speeches, and a whole slew of other texts not generally regarded as “imaginative literature” or “creative writing,” and therefore not generally included in literature textbooks. But it should be noted that there is, in the Philippines, a rich tradition of the essay as political treatise; and today’s newspaper columnists like Adrian Cristobal, Yen Makabenta, Conrado de Quiros, and others like them, have illustrious predecessors in the writers of the Propaganda Movement, who wrote in Spanish and whose vehicle was also a newspaper, the La Solidaridad.
As for the so-called “informal essay,” in my view, it may be about anything in the world, from the pro-choice/pro-life debate to the evanescent beauty of summer blossoms. It may be written in any style—straightforward or oblique, simple or complex, laconic or exuberant, humorous or lyrical. And it may adopt any tone, from dead earnest to whimsical to self-mocking. The only requirement is that the voice of the writer ring clear and true and fine. Which is just another way of saying that the writer should have something significant to say and that he/she should say it well.
As to the matter of the difference between essay and story, that is, between expository and narrative writing, I agree with Edward Hoagland that “the point an essayist is trying to illustrate takes precedence over his ‘story.’” (Hoagland 1993:74)
"The personal essay is meant to be like a household implement, a frying pan hinging from
a punchboard, or a chat at the kitchen table, though it need not remain domestic; it can
become anguished, confessional, iconoclastic, or veer from comfortable wit to mastectomy,
chemotherapy, and visions of death, just as the talk in the parlor does. Essayists are
ambidextrous, not glamorous; switch-hitters going for the single, not the home run.
They’re character actors, not superstars. They plug along in a modest manner (if any writer
can be called modest), piling up masonry incrementally, not trying for the Taj Majal like
the ambitious novelist." (p.78)
From this perspective, Danton Remoto’s book reviews are essays. So are Doreen Fernandezs columns on food. And so are some of Dr. Margarita Holmes’ responses to readers’ queries regarding their sexual hang-ups.
The field today is an incredibly varied place, and it is also located in the pages of newspapers and magazines, as indeed it was in the time of the first Filipino essayists in English during the Commonwealth period.
Pre-War
There seems to be a consensus that the Commonwealth Period was a kind of golden age for the familiar essay.3 Among the prominent practitioners of the art were: Jorge Bocobo, Carlos P. Romulo, Vidal Tan, Mauro Mendez, Cristino, Jamias, I.V Mallari, Juan Collas’, Antonio and Ariston Estrada, Federico, Mangahas, Maria Luna-Lopez, Lydia Villanueva-Arguilla, Maria Kalaw-Katigbak, A.E. Litiatco, Jose A. Lansang, Francisco B. Icasiano, Fernando M. Maramag, Amado Dayrit, Alfredo Gonzalez, Pura Santillan-Castrence, Francisco Arcellana, Estrella D. Alfon, Arturo Rotor, and Josefa Estrada.
Unfortunately, all the collections of pre-war essays in English are out of print. The first of these, Dear Devices, Being a First Volume of Familiar Essays in English, published in 193 3, was a collection of essays by some of the members of that first generation of Filipino essayists in English (Antonio Estrada, A.E. Litiatco, Maria Luna-Lopez, Federico Mangahas, Jose A. Lansang, Ariston Estrada, Maria Kalaw-Katigbak and Francisco B. Icasiano).
The first single-author book of familiar essays was The Call of the Heights by Alfredo Q. Gonzalez (1937), a collection of what may perhaps be called inspirational pieces.” Literature and Society by Salvador P. Lopez, published in 1940, collected some familiar essays that originally appeared in his column, “So It Seems,” in the Herald (along with the piece titled “Literature and Society,” included in this collection because of its importance in articulating an aesthetic which continues to influence some Filipino writers today). This was followed by Horizons from My Nipa Hut (1941) by Francisco B. Icasiano, a selection of his columns in the Sunday Tribune Magazine. And mention should be made here of Sand in the Palm, which, although published in 1976, is a collection of Maria Luna-Lopezs pre-war essays.
In these volumes may already be found practically all the varieties of the essay in English as practised in the Philippines today—social commentary, reverie, reflection, recollection, meditation, humorous sketch, journal entry, letter, travel sketch, profile. The contemporary reader will probably find some of these pieces rather naive, both in the use of the English language and in the worldview they reflect.
For instance:
"After it was decided that I was going to enroll in the University, I broached the subject
of journalism. I was disgusted to find out that a journalist is a newspaper man, a hunter of
news, of anything to thrill and excite the public. It belonged to the earth, not to the beautiful
heavens I dreamed of soaring to with the sweet and tender words from my pen." (Kalaw-
Katigbak [1929], “What I Should Like Most to Be,” in Reyes 1977:22.)
Or this:
"Another lesson I learned from Bacong is found in the fact that the river was not merely
determined to flow just anywhere but to reach the great end. Many streams manage to
surmount barriers they meet along the way, but they come out of obstacles after much labor,
only to end in a foul and stagnant marsh or lake. How like so many human lives! How like
so many people who, in the springtime of their youth and in the summer of their early
manhood, showed splendid heroism against frowning odds, determined to overcome those
hostile barriers, only in the autumn of their lives to end in defeat, disgrace and remorse."
(Gonzalez [1937], “The Will of a River,” in Reyes, 228)
On the other hand, he/she will also be much struck by the sophisticated humor of Francisco B. Icasiano’s rutninations on Filipino idiosyncracies and habits, using as a technical device the point of view of Mang Kiko, “the nipa-shack philosopher.” Take, for instance, his account of the baptism of the “unhappy child” who, unconsulted, faced a bleak future with the name of “Juan Eeddy Tampalasan.” During the ceremony, the child
"... Bolted across the baptistery with surprising speed, followed by the priest, the acolytes,
the political-god-father and Aling Juana... was finally caught and subdued at the door of the
east wing of the church, but only after he had successfully proven that he just would not
take Christianity without a struggle." (Icasiano [1941] “At the Baptismal Font,” in Reyes, 302)
The reader will likewise be beguiled by the poetry of Francisco ArcellanA column, “Art and Life,” in the Philippines Herald Mid-week Magazine:
"The thing to do is to admit tenderness if you are tender, to admit hardness if you are hard: to
be no more than the emerald being no more and no less than what it was intended to be."
The thing to do is to be as the emerald then: emerald being emerald. (Arcellana [1940],
“Art and Life,” in Reyes, 302)
And charmed by the ingenuity of Lydia Villanueva-Arguilla’s essay “On a Pencil”:
"I don’t sharpen my pencils too fine either, it seems a lot of waste to scrape away so much
lead (or is it graphite?) when I could maybe work off the rough edges by writing directly
with the dull point. Foolish parsimony. For the too dull point fails to make the letters stand
out cleanly, separately."
"Just so, an author obscures his theme - not paring away interfering words and phrases of
which he is sentimentally fond. It is a miserliness as inhibiting as mine with pencils,
especially colored pencils." (Arguilla [1938], “On a Pencil,” in Reyes, 2 3 1)
Post-War
After the war, Francisco Arcellana continued to write essays, as well as his column “Through a Glass Darkly” in This Week magazine. So did Amador T. Daguio, Estrella D. Alfon, and Pura SantillanCastrence. And Kerima Polotan, Adrian Cristobal, F. Sionil Jose, Rosalinda Orosa, D. Paulo Dizon and NX.M. Gonzalez began publishing essays.
In 1962, Yay Pantilio-Marking collected some of the essays which had originally appeared in her.column “Where a Country Begins,” published in the Weekly Women’s Magazine from 1955 to 1961. Most of these are more like narratives, dealing with her own life, her adventures and misadventures as a newspaperwoman. So even here we have a blurring of the distinction between exposition and narration, a blurring which could be said to be one of the characteristics of the essay today.
Of the new practitioners of the craft of the essay, perhaps the most distinguished was Carmen Guerrero Nakpil. Woman Enough and Other Essays (Vibal, 1963) is a compilation of pieces previously published in different Manila periodicals, including the Manila Chronicle, which ran her column, “My Humble Opinion,” for 12 years. These essays are unequalled in their clean, tight structure, clear-eyed analysis of social foibles, urbane wit, cool irony, and subtly disguised erudition.
Very typical is her santacruzan piece:
"The santacruzan, that seasonal phenomenon which helps justify the month of May in
the Philippines, is probably the only exclusively Filipino feature of Filipino life. There are
nipa huts and carabaos just like ours all over Southeast Asia; the cariñosa, anyone will
tell you, is derived from Spain; the kundiman is a cross between the Spanish cancion
and the American “blues;” and the national costume is rightly called traje de mestiza.
But nowhere else in the world is there anything like the Santacruzan." (Nakpil 1964: 76)
Less well known are the tender nostalgic pieces like “I Remember Ermita” and “A Christmas Memoir” (Nakpil 1964), which, once again, cross the border into narrative.
Another respected woman essayist and teacher, Dolores Stephens Feria, has paid Nakpil this tribute:
"The most distinguished writing being done in the essay in the Philippines today is to be
found in the newspaper column of... Carmen Guerrero Nakpil" (Feria 1961:4)
Some of Nakpil’s later essays are collected in two other books, A Question of Identity (1973), and in The Philippines and the Filipinos (1977).
Pre-Martial Law
The sixties and early seventies were the era of the Philippines Free Press, the Philippine Graphic, the Asia Philippines Leader, and the Sunday supplements of the Manila Times and the Manila Chronicle, a high point in Philippine journalism. These periodicals attracted as staff members and regular contributors some of the best writers of the time: Nick Joaquin (who wrote as Quijano de Manila), fictionists Kerima Polotan, Gregorio C. Brillantes, Wilfredo Nolledo, Gilda Cordero-Fernando, Ninotchka Rosca, Norma Miraflor, Amadis Ma. Guerrero, and Rosario A. Garcellano; poets Jose Lacaba, Marra PL. Lanot, and Edel Garcellano; essayists Petronilo Bn. Daroy, Luis Teodoro, Antonio Hidalgo and Sylvia Mayuga. These writers raised the magazine feature article to the level of literature.
Nick Joaquin’s historical essays were later collected in A Question of Heroes (1977), a handsome coffee table book. And some of his lighter pieces were collected in 8 small volumes published by National Bookstore in 1977-198 1: Reportage on Love, Reportage on Crime, Nora Aunor and Other Profiles, Ronnie Poe and Other Silhouettes, Manila: Sin City? and Other Chronicles, Language of the Streets and Other Essays, etc. Since then, Joaquin has published at least a dozen more non-fiction books, including collections of essays on culture, an almanac, and some biographies. His writings are so well known as to make any quotations of passages from them quite superfluous.
Kerima Polotan’s essays are collected in two volumes: Author’s Choice (1971) and Adventures in a Forgotten Country (1975). These range in subject from contemporary news events, like the 1967 massacre of the Lapiang Malaya in “‘Tatang’ and the Lapiang Malaya,” to reminiscences of her unorthodox wedding in “Anniversary,” to travels in Iran in the company of Imelda Marcos in “Persepolis Without the Trimmings.” Their style varies, from rambling and evocative in “Memories” to clipped and tersed in “Midwife from Pampanga.”
And their tone varies from the poignant nostalgia in “Small Town Filipinos” to the alternating contempt and compassion in “Filipinos in America.” Many of these texts could also be called non-fiction narratives.
Gilda Cordero-Fernando has not thought of making a book out of her column, “Tempest in a Teapot,” which ran for six years, first in the Chronicle, then in the Observer, and finally in Veritas; so these charming, witty pieces are even more difficult to find.
Now
What is the scene like today as far as the informal essay/non-fiction narrative is concerned? There can only be one answer: it has never been so exciting.
After the EDSA Revolution, media enjoyed a true flowering. It was suddenly possible again to write what one wanted and how one wanted. There was also unprecedented activity in the publishing field, initiated by the groundbreaking, if shortlived Kalikasan Press, which began to publish new, relatively unknown writers.
Today, writers have the choice of taking their work to Anvil Publishing, Cacho Hermanos, Bookmark, the pioneering New Day, which is still very much around, the new Giraffe Publishers, or the university presses (U.R, Ateneo and De La Salle), which are now publishing literary titles. The effect of all this activity on non-fiction as well as fiction and poetry is obvious.
Because most of these texts are still widely available,4 I shall not quote passages from them. I wish merely to mention some examples which will, I think, suggest the range of what the new crop of essayists are doing with the old-fashioned “personal” or “familiar” essay.
Most of the non-fiction being published today consists of collections of essays originally published as newspaper columns. This, despite the fact that most journalists, if asked, would probably agree with Adrian Cristobal.
... I believe that a collection of newspaper columns in book form is sheer vanity: what is
perishable - and newspaper pieces are perishable - should be allowed to perish without
benefit of clergy. (Cristobal 1993:ix)
Pasquinades (1993), a selection from pieces originally published as part of his column in the Daily Globe, contains some of Cristobal’s best personal essays—pithy, witty and erudite without ever becoming pedantic. Conrado de Quiros has collected many essays originally published as part of his Daily Globe columns in several books. Luis Teodoro has compiled some of his columns in National Midweek and The Manila Times into one book. While these consist mainly of political essays, they include the occasional pieces which are marvelous examples of the familiar essay, like “Respite” in Flowers from the Rubble (1990) by de Quiros, and “TV and the Household” in Teodoro’s The Summer of Our Discontent (1990). Confessions of a Q.C. House-Husband and Other Privacies (1991) consists entirely of personal essays by poet/fictionist Alfred A. Yuson, since Yuson, even when he is writing political commentary, always does so with the lightest of touches and his tongue firmly planted in his cheek. The same light touch is displayed by historian Ambeth Ocampo in his column, “Looking Back,” published first in the Globe and then in the Inquirer, and longer articles published in Weekend. Some of these pieces have now collected in several books which might all be subtitled “History Made Easy.” Poet/scholar Gémino H. Abad’s “letter-essays” in State of Play (1990), also surprisingly first published as part of a column called “Exchange,” in The Manila Chronicle on Sunday, are examples of a variant of the familiar essay, what is sometimes called the “literary essay,” not just because they are often about language and literature, but because they are written in a style would best be described as lyrical. A different type of literary essay cum memoir is to be found in N.VM. Gonzalez’s Work on the Mountain (1995) and The Novel of Justice (1996).
Fictionist Amadis Ma. Guerrero has two collections of travel essays Traveler’s Choice: From North to South, (1993), and A Journey Through the Enchanted Isles, (1995). A different type of travel writing—adopting in epistolary form and focusing on details that normally elude the ordinary tourist—forms part of Seduction and Solitude (1995) by poet Danton Remoto. And sculptor Jerusalino V. Araos has published the lavishly illustrated, beautifully produced The Garden of Two Dragons Fucking (1992), which could be called an extended personal essay but actually defies classification.
A compilation of the essays which ran as the column “Barfly” by fictionist/poet/playwright Jose Y. Dalisay Jr. was released by Anvil in 1997, surely among the finest in the genre.
The women essayists are even more adventurous. Elsewhere, I have described their work as “among the best examples of English prose being produced in the country today” (Hidalgo 1994:15). They resist genre classification, being combinations of the autobiographical narrative, the personal reflection, the travel essay, the book review, the hard-nosed reportorial account, and what one writer once described as “the lyrical etude.”5
Consider the following: Sylvia Mayuga’s two collections, Spy in My Own Country: Essays (1991) and Earth, Fire and Air. Essays of a Decade (1992), a delight, as much for the immense variety and complexity of their subjects as for the consistently luminous quality of their language; Rosario A. Garcellano’s Mean Streets (199 1), which depicts “bedlam and grief’ in a language at once so lyrical and ironic, that one feels hope asserting itself over the despair; Barbara C. Gonzalez’s sophisticated, elegantly ironic How Do You Know Your Pearls are Real?, which purports to be a manual for single parenthood, a uniquely postmodern text, in which the medium is truly the message, and the message is “grace under pressure, the stiff upper lip behind the engaging smile, a kind of machismo in reverse” (Hidalgo 1994:149); Doreen Fernandez’s essays on food as culture, collected in Sarap: Essays on Filipino Food (1988) and Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture (1994).
And there is more. Fictionist Cecilia Manguerra Brainard tackles the expatriate experience from the woman’s point of view in Philippine Woman in America (1991). Domini Torrevillas-Suarez, and Rina Jimenez-David train the sharp reporter’s eye on the quotidian in Sounds of Silence, Sounds of Fury (1989) and Woman at Large (1994) respectively. Sylvia Mendez Ventura surveys her many worlds with great urbanity and charm in Ragtime in Kamuning: Sari-Sari Essays (1992). Gemma Cruz reminisces in Sentimiento (1995). Julie Daza proposes an Etiquette for Mistresses (199 3). Leni Sta. Romana-Cruz surveys the Sundays of Our Lives (1995). Red Pencil, Blue Pencil: Essays and Encounters (1991) is an imposing collection of Dolores Stephens Feria’s political and literary essays but it also includes some delightful travelogues. And my own contribution to the field takes the form of personal narratives cum travel essays, which have been collected into 6 books.
One of the most interesting of the new women essayists is Jessica Zafra, whose interests, idiom, and wacky humor have turned her into a kind of cult figure for that portion of the population that likes to call itself “Generation X.” Her Twisted (1995) and Twisted II: Spawn of Twisted (1996), collections of essays from her column in Today, and Womanagerie and Other Tales from the Front (1995), a compilation of her earlier columns in Woman Today, depict a world shaped as much by her early convent school education and the classics which she absorbed in her English literature classes at the U.P., as by MTV, rock music, comicbooks, fast foods, Hollywood, local showbiz, the gay culture, cyberspace, etc.
Another development worth mentioning is the recent publication of anthologies of essays by women writers. The forerunner here was Filipina 2 (1985), put together by a group of women journalists who had organized themselves into Women Writers in Media Now (WOMEN) to assert the difference between themselves and the “newshens” of the previous generation. A product both of the political activism that immediately preceded martial law, and the resistance movement during the dictatorship, the book was edited by Mila Astorga Garcia, Marra PL. Lanot and Lilia Quindoza Santiago, and included pieces (by, among others, Arlene Babst, Letty Jimenez Magsanoc, Ma. Ceres Doyo, etc.), which more properly belong in a discussion of the formal essay.
In 1992, Babeth Lolarga and Anna Lea Sarabia edited Telling Lives: Essays by Filipino Women, which very quickly went out of print (and since then has been re-issued). The book contains: a short reassessment of the feminist movement in the Philippines by Dolores Stephens Feria (“Gender Whirlwind from the East”); a rambling reverie about being daughter, mother and grandmother by Gilda Cordero-Femando (Motherhood Statements”); Carmen Guerrero Nakpil’s short essay on four Filipinas as representative of four aspects of the Filipino woman’s character (“The Filipino Woman: Cory and Leonor, Gabriela and Imelda”); Paula Carolina Malay’s simple, touching narrative of her mother’s life (“Recuerdos: Shadows of My Generation”); her own daughter, Paula Malay’s account of her coming of age as a writer and freedom fighter (“The Invisible Ceiling”), Rosario A. Garcellano’s narrative about watching her stepmother die (“Besieged”); my own profile of my mother; Ester Dipasupil’s harsh but humorous indictment of a convent school education (“Liberation and Crochet Work”); Emmie Velarde’s understated but poignant account of the end of her marriage (“Room with no View”), and Elvira Mata’s short vignettes about women and their failed relationships with men (“Xeroxed Palms and Other Tales of the Heart’). It is a significant anthology, as it opens a door into a woman’s private world, a world which until very recently Filipino women kept carefully shielded, allowing strangers in only after it had been carefully disguised as fiction.
One effect of the publication of this slim volume is that it appears to have started a trend—a type of writing by women for which one label might be “confessional writing.” In 1994, Criselda Yabes published A Journey of Scars, a candid account of her efforts to get over a lost lover. And then, there was Coming to Terms (1994) edited by Loma Kalaw-Tirol, a collection of astonishingly frank essays on mid-lifing by fifteen women, among them Dr. Margarita Holmes, Imelda Nicolas, Tessie Tomas, and Neni Santa-Romana Cruz.
Finally, there is Ladies’ Lunch and Other Ways to Wholeness, a tour de force by Gilda Cordero-Fernando and Mariel Francisco (1995). This unusual book, a pastiche of memoir, essay, sketch, journal entries, letters, recipes, advice, song fragments, passages from both fiction and non-fiction, drawings, sketches, and old photos, might be described as a joint autobiography of the authors, or again, a postmodern biography of middle-class Filipina, touching on practically every aspect of her life, from childhood to old age.
Another kind of anthology is the lovely little volume edited by poet/artist Ricardo M. de Ungria, Luna Caledonia: Five Filipino Writers in Hawtbornden Castle (1992). It contains poems, fiction excerpts, and the lyrical, impressionistic essays-cum-journal-entries of poets and fictionists Rofel Brion, Eric Gamalinda, Alfred A. Yuson, Marjorie Evasco, and de Ungria himself
And then there is the beautiful little book published by the Ateneo Heights. The Art of Writing (1995) includes essays on their craft by, among others, N.VM. Gonzalez, Marjorie M. Evasco, Doreen Fernandez, Danton Remoto, and Jose Y Dalisay Jr.
I have, thus far, limited myself to writers whose essays have been collected in books. Now, a word about some writers who have entered or re-entered the field of essay-writing through the newspapers, thus ensuring its continued vigor and variety in the century to come. I refer to fictionists Erwin E. Castillo, Eric Gamalinda and Charlson Ong, who wrote columns for the shortlived Evening Paper; to the very young poet Ruel de Vera, who writes for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and to three of de Vera’s very talented contemporaries, fictionists Katrina P. Tuvera and Clinton Palanca, poet J. Neil C. Garcia, and poet/fictionist Angelo Lacuesta, whose columns, also in the Evening Paper were sometimes lyrical, often funny, and always intelligent.
It now remains for Nick Joaquin to collect the end-of-the-year essays that he used to publish in the Philippines Free Press as Quijano de Manila, delightful pieces that summed up all the events of the previous year, including vagaries of the weather, fashion, art, etc.; for Greg Brillantes to publish his series of travel essays on Latin America, first printed in Midweek magazine; for Gilda Cordero-Fernando to compile some of the essays that appeared as part of her column “Tempest in a Teapot” in the Chronicle, the Observer, and Veritas; and for Letty Jimenez Magsanoc to publish her own essays.
An effort has been made to ensure that the selections that form part of this book are fairly representative. Nonetheless, choices of this sort are necessarily personal, and inevitably reflect the editor’s taste. No claim is being made for these pieces as the “best” examples of the genre, or even necessarily the best examples of each writer’s work. But they are certainly among the finest informal essays/ non-fiction narratives to date, and they are very different one from the other. Thus they amply demonstrate the richness of the genre in the Philippines today.
NOTES
1 Last year, 1997, the U.P. National Writers Workshop in Baguio accepted works categorized as “Mixed Genre.”
2 The landmark text, Brown Heritage (Manuod 1967), which purported to be as exhaustive a study of Philippine literature as had ever been attempted, gave the essay only the most cursory attention.
3 See especially Yabes (1949), Reyes (1977), and Pura Santillan-Castrence (1967:559): “The essay was, curiously enough, less neglected during the period under survey than it is now. The short story fits more than the essays, it seems, the psychology of the present times. The essay is for gracious living and quiet, deliberate thinking, the short story is for the quick-moving, tense kind of human existence that we go through today.”
4 The fire which razed the warehouse of Anvil Publishing in January, 1996 has temporarily turned most of its titles into rare books. Anvil has promised to reprint them.
5 Filipino Woman Writing: Home and Exile in the Autobiographical Narratives of Ten Writers by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo (Ateneo, 1994) studies some of these texts, i.e. the non-fiction narratives of Maria Luna-Lopez, Paula Carolina Malay, Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, Kerima Polotan, Gilda Cordero-Fernando, Cecilia Manguera Brainard, Sylvia Mayuga, and Rosario A. Garcellano.
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