Category: literati

A memorable decade: Writers before the war

A book burning incident occurred sometime in the early 40s when younger writers led by Alejandro Abadilla and Teodoro Agoncillo cast into a bonfire the works of the so-called traditional and balagtasan writers. This was unfortunately reminiscent of the book burnings in the fascist world where books of Communist or Jewish writers like Thomas Mann were consigned to the flames. 

By Elmer Ordonez

The thirties may well be my favorite decade. Born at the start of the Depression, I began to be fully aware of the world around me when the family moved to a house in Paco in 1933 prior to my schooling in 1935. I remember my mother telling me in a calesa in Bustillos about the presence of “Sakdalistas” in the Sampaloc plaza. In 1936 I began to follow on radio and the Tribune the outbreak of the “guerra civil” in Spain. There were also heard marching songs of the Falangistas. At San Marcelino Church I saw young mestizos in uniform in formation and giving the fascist salute. I would read later in Renato Constantino’s histories about the parades of “Franquistas” in Manila joined in by students and faculty of elite Catholic schools. By late 30s I was primed for the outbreak of the war in Europe and local preparations for the Pacific war like the building of air raid shelters (models shown in UP Padre Faura, and the practice blackouts (mentioned in NVM Gonzalez’s The Winds of April).

Maybe: Incidentally, The Satire of Fedrico Mangahas, ed. by Ruby Kelly Mangahas and James Allen’s The Radical Left on the Eve of the War rekindled my long-standing interest about a historic decade.

Another book Komunista (Ateneo University Press, 2011) by Jim Richardson has provided more context to the period – particularly the involvement of writers and intellectuals in what was essentially a working class enterprise.

Writers who figured in the first half of the 30s were founders and early members of the UP Writers Club (1927)—Fred Mangahas, Jose Garcia Villa, Gabriel Tuason whom I have always believed tried to humor their foreign advisers with the avowed purpose of the club which is “to elevate the English language to the highest pedestal.” Shortly after, Fred Mangahas began his satirical columns in the Tribune. Salvador P. Lopez, Jose Lansang, and Arturo B. Rotor followed the steps of Mangahas and Villa in establishing themselves in the literary community. Villa left in 1929 for New Mexico to make a name as a poet in the United States but at the same time influenced Filipino writers by sending his annual “honor” and “dishonor” rolls of stories and poems to the Manila press.

In 1936 James Allen arrived in Manila he made a note about the young writers whom he found problematical. He cited one who wrote a story satirizing the intellectuals who visited Central Luzon for a solidarity meeting with the workers and peasants. Interestingly Manuel Arguilla’s “The Socialists” has always been considered part of the proletarian writing during the Commonwealth. Allen’s reading of the story may well be different. Arguilla went on to write more stories “Epilogue to Revolt” and “Caps and Lower Case” for a volume titled How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife and other stories which won the first prize (in short fiction) in the Commonwealth Literary Contest.

The “young” writers at the second half of the decade would constitute the Veronicans led by Francisco Arcellana some of whom pursued the “art for art’s sake” doctrine of Villa as against the “literature with social content” of the Philippine Writers League whose prime movers were Villa’s colleagues Mangahas, Lopez, Lansang and Rotor.

A parallel but not similar conflict was seen in the Tagalog writers community. A book burning incident occurred sometime in the early 40s when younger writers led by Alejandro Abadilla and Teodoro Agoncillo cast into a bonfire the works of the so-called traditional and balagtasan writers. This was unfortunately reminiscent of the book burnings in the fascist world where books of Communist or Jewish writers like Thomas Mann were consigned to the flames.

The debate over textual and contextual criticism, balagtasismo and modernism, formalism and historical criticism has persisted to this day in the academe. The more popular but banal issue is called “literature (art) and propaganda.”

On campus, the young writers that would have interested James Allen were Renato Constantino, Angel Baking, Sammy Rodriguez, Juan Quesada and other young intellectuals, mostly from UP, calling themselves the Phylons. Alfredo V. Lagmay and Felixberto Sta. Maria later moved on to become scholars in academe. Allen left the country in 1938 but I wonder if he had occasion to meet them, perhaps in the Ivory Tower café in Malate, run by leftist writer Ma. Gracia de Concepcion, or at the People’s Book Center in Escolta.

As a grade school student I could only feel the vibrations of intellectual ferment and social unrest (especially after reading “We and They” by Hernando Ocampo in my Grade VI class) which would only make full sense after the war—doing research on the Filipino short story in English from 1935 to 1955 and meeting the writers themselves.

A literary clash between Fred Mangahas and a Spanish- tradition bound Nick Joaquin occurred in the pages of Philippine Review (during the Japanese Occupation) with the article of Mangahas critiquing the essay of Joaquin waxing lyrical about the La Naval celebration in chilly October. Otherwise the class struggles and aesthetic concerns of the writers during the 30s were shrouded by what Jamias called “total intellectual blackout.”

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burn baby burn: the falsity of FB engagement

by radikalchick

since this Rogue piece on the literati and mainstream literary system went online, what has infinitely been interesting is how it has revealed the kind of thinking that we have about literature and culture, including but not limited to: (a) “Why write about this at all? What a waste of time!” (b) “bakit hindi ka na lang magsulat?” (c) writing is a solitary enterprise anyway (d) you just moved from one house to the next (e) there is no talking about literature without literary jargon (f) it’s the same everywhere, deal with it (g) you are not being attacked, your work is being engaged in (h) let’s have a conference on this! (i) you are not free.  continue reading

the house that literature built

thanks, Rogue Magazine, for letting me share this.
something that’s not common knowledge, and needed to be said.

BURN AFTER READING
By Katrina Stuart Santiago

There is much to be said about the probability that the writer who has not done any of the writing workshops, has not come out with a book with any of the commercial and academic publishing houses, has not taught at one of the four major Manila universities in the past five years, has not won any major writing prize in the past three, has not been employed by the academe or the publishing industry either, would be brushed off as a non-writer. Or just a not-one-of-us, the “us” being the writing community—the literati—in third-world Philippines. That “us” necessarily revolving around Manila’s academe and the literary stalwarts—and yes, they exist here and now even if you would rather read Game of Thrones any day.

This “us” of course is no surprise, and lest you imagine that this is another conspiracy theory about how the literary sector sets out to ostracize and disenfranchise people who are unworthy, I assure you that it’s so much worse than that. The years have taught me that right here what operates is an unspoken/ unconscious/ unexplained set of rules that have nothing to do with writing skill or literary merit. Right here, what operates is a togetherness that might be premised on friendships, but half the time is just a fascinating display of parochialism and patronage. Here’s a shameless alaga system versus real mentorship, here’s condoning the mistakes elders make because they’ve got past glory to fall back on, here’s a togetherness that banks on closing ranks against the deemed enemy.

Which would be okay if we were talking about the grand enemy that is globalization bringing in cheaper imported books, or the commercial publishing industry making sure writers don’t make money, or the government failing tremendously at funneling support to the arts in general. But no, the enemy is not the system as it is just a person. You or me, depending on who has dared point a finger at—or who has given them the finger for—what can only be a bubble within which criticism is frowned upon, no one’s held accountable, and everything happens with the giddiness of the most recent book launch/contest/workshop and a false sense of relevance.

Welcome to the Philippine literary world, leave your self at the door.

Because here’s a house with its own set of unspoken rules, ones that you know for certain exist because the moment you enter it there’s a sense of propriety and order in the hushed tones you suddenly use to speak, in the silences you’re expected to keep. And you shouldn’t mind. After all, right here your writing will be deemed legit, no matter how uncertain even you are about its merit. Here, all it takes to survive is to keep your critical thoughts to yourself, and (maybe unknowingly) keep your writing within the box of the expected. Here, the question “Is it new?” doesn’t matter as much as “Who wrote it?” Here, creativity is the least of your worries.

Here, all you must know is this: the foundations of this house are as strong as the literary barkada is, in control as they are of the academe and publishing, workshops and contests, everything that would deem anyone a “writer” on these shores. It’s a private literati party, and you’re made to believe you’re lucky to be invited. Know that it takes very little to keep you out of this house. Very few consciously and knowingly walk out that door.

There is after all a sense of security in community here, and the warmth of hearth and home can only be inviting. And you can learn in this space, make friends here, too, but it doesn’t mean that you’re home safe. Dissenting with popular opinion or aesthetic, doing things differently will not only warrant a reprimand or a snub, it could mean being thrown out the window altogether. Just like that, there will be no friends in sight.

Yes, it sounds brutal. Welcome to the real world of the Philippine literati. And much like reality TV, it’s a world where everything—everything—is personal.

Which is to say that any form of criticism is reason enough for you to be seen as the enemy. Questions that go against the grain of established thought, or which bend in a different ideological direction, are taken against you. It doesn’t matter that you talk about the work and not the people; the work is the person who wrote it, and these writers have built this house. How dare you bite the hand that feeds you. Don’t be surprised when “lacking collegiality” and “disrespecting elders” become epithets used against you. Soon enough, out of the woodwork, the monsters of this house reveal themselves.

They reveal themselves in letters written and sent out declaring you persona non grata, telling the world that you should be reprimanded and/or kicked out of the job you love. Or instances where you are told to your face that you’ve got an ideological chip on your shoulder. It won’t matter how fantastic a teacher you are, because outside your classroom talk can and will bring you down. When you find that no matter how wonderful your writing is, you will be without a publisher for your books. And forget about winning contests.

In what we imagine to be the most creative and intelligent of houses, where we’d like to imagine that conversations about culture and society, writing and responsibility, are taking place, right here is tsismis that can be vile and vicious, the kind that can break you. That is if your heart isn’t broken yet by this revelation: this house would rather the elder who commits intellectual dishonesty, than the young asking the most valid of questions. In here, you are as puny as you are negligible, as you are someone who can be transformed into the obedient, unquestioning, bright-eyed, and bushy-tailed son or daughter.

It is in these instances that it becomes clear that you’re not one of “them” and it takes a while before you realize that there is much freedom in that, in being away—far far away—from the house that literature built.

Because it means that you dare grow up, you dare stand by writing with which not many might agree, but for which you do find readers. Or haters who are willing to talk to you about it, who will tell you what’s wrong, who will dare question you because they appreciate that you do the same for them. Out of that house you will find that creativity is not about how the workshops or creative writing classes taught you to write, nor is it about finding so much comfort in the writing niche that’s gotten you published.

Out here where there are no comforts, there is also much freedom. Out here is where survival of the fittest actually applies, because they are the most creative, because they are continuously evolving, because they are continuously learning. Out here, people read, they write, they talk to each other and come up with ideas that are different, if not new. Out here, the more daring of writers challenge limitations and transgress institutionalized lines. Out here, the Internet, technology, and the changing landscape of cultural production across the world are not scary things; they are the writing on the wall. Out here, you prove there are readers, and they are beyond Manila, beyond the division between English and Filipino, beyond the familiar academic and cultural institutions. Out here, you see this audience and you want to write the books they might like to read. Out here, writing and creativity find their relevance.

Out here, you find that the great house of multiple sensitivities actually lives off the idea that there are no readers on these shores, that there is no money in writing, because this idea is what keeps that house up. The stronger the belief in the lack of readers, the easier it is to justify the little money that writers are paid for their books, the easier to justify the need to keep to oneself, keep to this house, stay in the rooms many others inhabit. The better, too, to imagine that the audience is America—for we should all want to be published there, after all.

This is why the Pinoy reading public doesn’t care about the literati. It’s because the literati doesn’t care about these readers. And that’s you, the Harry Potter, Hunger Games-reading public, you.

Meanwhile that house sure looks like it’s getting smaller and smaller by the day. And as you grapple with your writing, and think of how to self-publish your book, you look out the one window you, yourself built and see that the house up on that hill is on fire, ready to crumble under the weight of its own monsters. But the literati’s in there and they’re keeping it up—writers, plagiarists, sons and daughters, and alagas, all together now.

You got out just in time.

This article can be found in the April 2012 issue of Rogue Magazine, out on newsstands now! Other essays: How Nick Joaquin shocked polite society by Marra PL. Lanot; Junot Diaz on Writer’s Block, Oscar Wao, and Winning the Pulitzer Prize; “We were enemies of the state.” Butch Dalisay, Jo Ann Maglipon, Ricky Lee, and Pete lacaba revisit their darkest chapter.

A country of short story writers

By Elmer Ordonez

Last week, in a tribute to novelist Azucena Grajo Uranza, I said something to the effect that we have very few novelists in a country of short story writers.

How so? This has something to do with our literary history particularly in English. It is commonplace to say that two novels of Jose Rizal sparked the Revolution of 1896. They were the first social realist novels ever written, departing from the earlier harmless novel Ninay of Pedro Paterno and the epistolary novel Urbana at Feliza, providing moral guidance to women. The next epoch-making novel is Banaag at Sikat (1906) by Lope K. Santos with a more explicit socialist message than El Filibusterismo which has a failed anarchist character in Simoun.

In the 1880s Rizal, with funds from friends, sent his manuscripts directly to printers in Europe while Santos had his novel Banaag at Sikat serialized in his Muling Pagsilang which was the mouthpiece of the workers movement. The magazines that came later like Liwayway, Bannawag and Bisaya continued the practice of serializing longer works of fictionists like Amado Hernandez with his anti-imperialist Mga Ibong Mandaragit. The novel in Spanish died with Rizal but saw a brief resuscitation in the surviving writers in Spanish like Antonio Abad whose El Campeon won in the Commonwealth Lirterary Contest. Novels in Tagalog, Ilocano, and Bisayan continued coming out in serial form.

The first novel in English is said to be Zoilo Galang’s A Child of Sorrow, a product of the author’s stay in America. Maximo Kalaw, a UP professor and dean, came out with The Filipino Rebel, a roman a clef whose characters are based on real personages in the political scene. A few other novels in English came out before the war like Jaime Laya’s His Native Soil and N.V.M Gonzalez’s The Winds of April which won the Commonwealth prize in 1941.

Leopoldo Yabes marked the coming of age of the Filipino short story in English with Paz Marquez’s “Dead Stars” in 1926. At about this time the UP Writers Club was founded by Jose Garcia Villa, Federico Mangahas, and Gabriel Tuazon. Its publication Literary Apprentice began publishing stories from campus writers and others who were also contributing to A.V.Hartendorp’s Philippine Magazine and the Philippines Free Press, edited by another American. F. Theo Rogers. Villa who had left for the United States after winning the P1000 prize for the short story “Mir-i-nisa” in the Free Press , continued to keep track of the burgeoning literary scene by coming out with an annual Roll of Honor of stories during the thirties which saw prodigious output of stories and even poetry in English in campus and national magazines.

Teachers like Paz Marquez-Benitez and Paz Latorena taught the short story form to UP and UST students, respectively. Short story anthologies from US publishers served as textbooks in English courses.

Writers mainly from the UP like Salvador P. Lopez, Federico Managahas, Jose Lansang, and Teodoro Agoncillo formed the Philippine Writers League which had a proletarian bent, influenced by Marxist writers all over the world during the Depression years. The New Critics initially composed of conservative Southern writers espoused formalism to oppose the Marxist approach in literature. But their influence did not reach Filipino writers until after the war. The Philippine Writers League convinced President Quezon to pursue a social justice program and to fund the Commonwealth Literary Contest, 1940-41. Younger writers like Francisco Arcellana, NVM Gonzalez, Hernando Ocampo, Delfin Fresnoza, Manuel Arguilla and others had their own group The Veronicans who put out little magazines Expression and Story Manuscripts. Ocampo, Fresnoza and Arguilla were inclined to write about workers and peasants while Franz Arcellana argued with S.P. Lopez and Arturo B.Rotor’s call for literature with social content. Franz sided with Jose Garcia Villa about literature for art’s sake in a debate in journals like the Herald Midweek Magazine.

This debate ended during the Japanese Occupation when some writers collaborated with the Japanese for putting out Philippine Review and Pillars where for less than two years (1943-44) they came out with a number of stories, essays, and poems. It was a bleak period all around.

After the war Bienvenido Santos came back from exile during the war with many stories like “Scent of Apples.” He also wrote four novels in his lifetime. NVM Gonzalez got a Rockefeller award that enabled him to write and attend writers workshops in Iowa, Breadloaf and Stanford, and was the first to introduce the workshop idea in UP Diliman, formally in class and in other venues during the 50s. The national UP Writers Workshop was first held in 1965 in Baguio. The Tiempos returned in the early 60s and began the Silliman writers workshop.

Since then, the writers workshop (replicated in other schools) with emphasis on the craft of fiction and formalist tenets has produced bumper crops of short story writers and poets who were all aiming for cash prizes in the several literary awards like the Free Press and Palanca. As Free Press editor Angelo Lacuesta said, the 90s produced “the workshop generation.”

Many are writing novels. As fictionist Rony Diaz noted as judge, he had to read 350 novel entries for the Philippine centennial literary contest in 1998. (To be continued)