Penultimo adios

The self-ex-iled play-wright Alberto Florentino writes every once in a while from somewhere in the great United States, mostly on things literary or otherwise, not the least of which is the book he put together for De La Salle University Press, The Essential Arcellana by Francisco Arcellana, the National Artist who passed away in August.

If Bert is reading this online, a not unlikely possibility, then here’s to inform him that the book is finally out, the first few copies hot off the press in time before the Christmas break and to give as presents to family and closest friends.

The cover was a bit of a problem, which had to be redone at least twice until the proper mix was achieved, or so it seemed, except for a detail or two of rather distracting burloloys, but then the author was no longer around to make comment on it.

For the most part the choices are Bert’s, being the editor of this anthology, just as he did in the Peso Book series of the early ’60s and the Storymasters series of the martial law years, that featured his old friend.

A point to ponder is the inclusion of what was originally published as fiction, "Letter to a Friend-in-Exile Living on the Island of Majorca," in the essay section. This could be a mere critical quibble but perhaps intentional on the part of the editor, as if to blur the genres and suggest that the author in fact played with the borderlines and transcended labels.

Though it may read like an essay or, more precisely, a column piece, Letter was written as a short story, and no less than the author himself stated so at the end of the story, saying it was dedicated to his three daughters and his mother.

"Letter…" was correctly included in the fiction section in the Arcellana Sampler published by the UP Press in 1989, a book dedicated to the women in his life including the youngest granddaughter at the time.

Essay or fiction, this genre switch may be the editor’s way of triggering debates on the subject.

In Essential, there are 10 essays and column pieces compared to nine stories,
which ratio could easily be reversed if "Letter…" were in its rightful place. Does this perhaps mean that Florentino saw Franz Arcellana more as a critic and essayist than as fictionist? But the difference is negligible, and with it the so-called margin of error, as the surveys term it.

Ten to nine is a photo-finish anyway you look at it, and may well signify a decisive vote on historic judicial or legislative matters.

The ratio might have been 10 to eight had not the latebreaking story "About the House" been included at the last moment, posthumously as it were, on request from DLSU Press to bulk up the volume a bit.

"About the House", published in the Graphic in the early 1990s which was Arcellana’s first published story after winning the National Artist award, on the other hand, easily reads like an essay, based on actual events in family. The story was used as basis for a documentary on Arcellana a year before he died, a video produced by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and directed by Alfred Yuson.

Presented with a copy of the story during the shoot of the documentary entitled A Life of Fiction, Arcellana could not recall ever having written it. Was it a sign of old age, or the diminishing returns of fiction?

Arcellana in his sickbed saw the raw copies of the stories and essays as gathered by Florentino before being sent to the typesetter, and hastened to add a couple more manuscripts to serve as appendices, one of which is a review by another old friend, Len Casper – who in our childhood years we called Casper the friendly ghost – on the Sampler.

Aside from "About the House," other selections added –with Bert’s permission of course –were a couple of poems following the editor’s introduction and before the start of the selections proper. One is the poem "Before Tertullian, After Him," resurrected in the Free Press after Mrs. Nieves Epistola, herself passed on to the great beyond, provided a found copy to literary editor Paolo Manalo.

When I mentioned this to Bert, he agreed readily via e-mail, saying that even more than "I Touched Her, Yes," it was a poem representative of his friend’s life and times. Another poem is "Salon, Shalom" that appeared in the FEU publication, Transition, in the mid-’90s along with a line portrait of Arcellana by Hilario Francia. Franz by Francia – come to think of it, any subsequent posthumous book by the author should have that portrait as cover.

As for the third piece, "Letter to the Editor," it reads like an ars poetica and I don’t know where that came from, maybe from Bert or from DLSU Press. It shows a lot of the old man’s irreverence and humor and good naturedness.

We tried researching to unearth another story that was published in Today on the occasion of the turn of the millennium, written in his own handwriting in the late ’90s. But all the sleuthing by a research assistant in the Today library could not come up with a copy.

A Happy Rizal Day to you, Bert, the book we’ve been waiting for is finally out, so let’s raise a glass of red wine – the new fruitcake – to your friend, el pader, in this another chapter of a long goodbye or penultimo adios.