One book we could never quite finish, and not for want of trying, is Wilfrido Nolledo’s But for the Lovers, and we’re still reading it forever and ever. Main character’s name is Hidalgo d’ Anuncio, quite a jealous-type coño if ever there was one from the long lost age of vaudeville. He has friends and then some, like a misplaced Quixote looking for his cups, and there is even a minor or passing character in cameo role named Benjamin Bornales, somewhat like art imitating fiction.
For reasons unexplained, But for the Lovers was never published or reprinted by Nolledo’s alma mater, UST, but that doesn’t matter notwithstanding the reduced accessibility. It remains a modern Pinoy classic, in the league of Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels and NVM Gonzalez’s A Season of Grace.
It’s hard to top something like But for the Lovers even among today’s crop of daring and experimental young writers, mainly because with Nolledo it is as if language were reborn on the elusive, mercury-like page.
Fans of the man might better avail of the short story collection Cadena de Amor, published by UST Press, and witness the development of Philippine literature in English during the ’60s to the ’70 and beyond. Well, people didn’t call him dazzling Ding for nothing.
I know for a fact that he was, is a favorite of the Tomasian of the subsequent generation, i.e. Recah Trinidad et al, who easily quoted passages from Nolledo during drinking binges at the old Rizal Memorial Café in the ’70s during Expressweek days, with the rain pouring down relentlessly on the leaking roof of the stadium across the street and we could hear the howl of the crowd during a big game between, say, Crispa and Toyota or even Filmanbank versus Mariwasa.
Then one night Ding and Nick dropped by Father’s house in UP Village and made the taxi wait, or maybe they sent the taxi away, while the dog Igor licked their shoes underneath the table, I do not know how many times I’ve written about this but it still sounds funny after all these years, how Nick would tell the dog that he doesn’t need compassion but passion.
They finally got his name right, Nick’s by the way, on his tombstone at the Libingan now spelling Joaquin and not Juaquin, it was a compassionate Pentel pen that connected the space between the two vertical lines of U to form an improvised O, and so give justice to a national artist who only wanted some passion like a stranger in the night before all the clowns and saints were sent marching in.
One book we feel mighty proud being a part of is Huling Ptyk, Da Art of Nonoy Marcelo (Anvil), a humdinger of a collector’s item, dare we say it both in terms of content and design. The inimitable trio of Pandy Aviado, Sylvia Mayuga and Nonoy’s son Dario Marcelo are the power behind this whirlwind project, that captures a veritable sub and counterculture in the work of one man, Ngongo, genius and Lothario, yet consistently a generous soul all around.
We had a great kick out of seeing the mug of Fidel Rillo repeated throughout the book in the course of excerpts in a running interview with Nonoy Marcelo, which gives it a comic documentary appeal, certainly not a mockumentary. You could almost hear the interviewee speaking from beyond the grave with a beer and menthol cigarette close by.
The little we know of Nonoy we glimpsed personally at the Chronicle offices in the late ’80s, though we never did get to tag along with the gang in one of their a-go-go expeditions, with Bogie going "Suuee!" and slapping high fives with the rest of the barkada, and Dengkey even marrying the muse of his heart, leaving Bogie lost and lonely among the strobe lights.
Some toughies fed up with the neighboring table’s good-natured camaraderie even wanted to crack open Bog’s skull, basagin daw nila ang bungo, but cooler heads intervened and everyone was happy in the end and finished their beer and went on shouting "Suuuue!" until the early morning sun.
The little I know of Nonoy was gleaned while writing some editorials in Taglish for PTYK the newspaper comics, and pushing his car trying to get it to start, and conversing haphazardly with him at the Evening Paper offices or over the phone when little did we know that he was already slowly wasting away, like a rolling stone with the moss catching up with him.