On literature’s frontier

Sometime last month, my blog (“Pinoy Penman” at www.pen manila.net) hit two milestones within a few days of each other: its second anniversary, and its 100,000th hit. I began blogging on Nov. 25, 2005 for two reasons: (1) it seemed like an interesting thing to do; and (2) I wanted an easily accessible, online repository of everything I was writing, as much for my own reference as well as that of others.

I know that a lot of skeptics out there still see blogging as a digital form of shameless self-promotion, and maybe it is; as a personal and unsolicited newsletter, the blog certainly requires a bit of cheeky exhibitionism, in the very least some expectation that you’re going to be read by perfect strangers. But then again, isn’t all writing? Doesn’t blogging simply short-circuit (not to mention cheapen, by a mile) the print-publishing process, taking no more than a few minutes and a few keystrokes to serve up your latest oeuvre to theoretical thousands?

There’s a downside, of course, to consider: the absence of editing (and thus another pair of critical eyes), or perhaps just the absence of self-awareness and plain good sense. More than a few bloggers use their blog as a trash bin and a barf bag, ready to receive its daily load of rants and sundry discontents; others wield it like a battle axe, emboldened by the Internet’s cloak of anonymity. I’ll admit to having done a little bit of both, but I prefer to see my blog as an old-fashioned portfolio, a satchel full of papers and notes jotted on the fly.

Over these past couple of years I’ve managed to meet and make new friends over the blog (like Bro. Ronron Lorilla in Naga, Dr. Remy Lacsamana over in Florida, and Pat Schork in Pennsylvania) as well as, inevitably, attract a few persistent gadflies, stalkers, and trolls (they know who they are). The pluses definitely outweigh the minuses, and I don’t regret for one minute having opened my digital doors to the world at large.

By some stroke of serendipity, I was invited to speak two Sundays ago at the Golden Anniversary Conference of the Philippine PEN, and I couldn’t resist opening my brief remarks with something I suddenly remembered: that I had begun my blog with a piece on the very first national PEN conference in 1958. And thus did past and present come together — maybe even the future, because our session was devoted to “Literature Without Frontiers,” opened by a piece on blogging by the Dumaguete-based writer Ian R. Casocot.

I shared Ian’s enthusiasm for blogging as a means and a medium of literary expression — I think the best of the form and of its use is yet to come — but I’m not as sold as I should be on the idea of “Literature Without Frontiers” (it’s a phrase from the PEN Charter) as a present or even imminent reality. It’s one of those notions that sound very smart and timely, that are supposed to give us a warm and fuzzy feeling—almost as if we held hands and sang “It’s a Small World” — but I deeply suspect that it just isn’t true: it hasn’t happened yet, and might not happen soon.

I realize that we live in this age of globalization, where boundaries are supposed to have vanished and the Internet has made everything accessible to everyone.  But real boundaries and frontiers remain. Even the Internet, with all its promise of democracy and liberation, is in fact the province of a relative few—of predominantly young, educated, affluent users.

The Internet as we Filipinos have been using it remains largely a playground for young people, and the kind of literature it will engender will be a young person’s literature — full of immediacy, intimacy, but also a certain narrowness of focus.

As someone who’s been writing for a living for the greater part of his life, I’ve never really looked at writing with a moist, romantic eye, and am acutely aware of its materiality as a profession and an industry. In this respect I have to say that Philippine literature is still bounded by many frontiers — in terms of language, publishing, translation. From the writing and publishing angle of things, we still write for very clearly defined and rather small audiences who look and sound a lot like ourselves.

But then again the Internet also offers new possibilities for more obscure and disadvantaged voices to emerge — bypassing the need to print and sell expensive books to people who prefer or privilege tradition. The encoded word may never take the place of the printed one, but it stands on its own frontier, looking out into a great and exciting space beyond.

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Congratulations are in order for some young Filipino authors who made a name for themselves on the global stage this year. I got a message from Philippine Genre Stories publisher Kenneth Yu to share the happy news that a number of PGS contributors and regulars got published in various magazines abroad and online.

As I was telling some of my colleagues at the meeting of the National Committee for Literary Arts in Cebu last week, someone should be working on promoting Philippine literature abroad as much as we promote our literatures among ourselves. The fact is, the foreign reader won’t know or even care whether a Filipino work was written by a Tagalog, an Ilonggo, or an Ilocano — it will all be Philippine literature to him or her. (That’s why I think we should put more effort and money into translation, because that’s the only way we can equalize access to international attention, presuming we’re interested in it — and please don’t tell me we’re not.)

According to Kenneth — who himself published a story recently in a US-based e-zine — the following young writers broke new ground for us abroad: Kate Aton-Osias, Nikki Alfar, Kristin Mandigma, Crystal Koo, and Chiles Samaniego. A number of other PGS friends and contributors also did well at the second Philippine Graphic Fiction Awards sponsored by author Neil Gaiman and Fully Booked, reports Kenneth.

Great work, folks — that’s the way to do it: don’t wait for anyone to hold your hand; just write the best way you know how, send the story out, and write the next one.

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Like many Manileños this season, I had to shuttle between three Christmas parties and events last Saturday evening, but one of them — smack in the middle of the PhilMUG and Newsbreak parties — gave me special cause for pleasure: the launching of the first book of a former student of mine, Migs Villanueva, at the EDSA Shangri-La Mall. It’s always a source of joy and pride for a teacher to see his or her students come into their own as authors, and for Migs — a painter, videographer, and mother of four when she’s not writing prizewinning stories (the Palanca and NVM Gonzalez Awards now crowd her resume) — this first book has been a long time coming.

It isn’t a book of her fiction, yet, but a sumptuous overview of the works of the illustrious Saturday Group of Artists, now entering its fourth decade under the leadership of the master Mauro “Malang” Santos (who, if there’s any justice in this universe, should be on next year’s roster of National Artists, despite his own expressed disdain for the award).

The Saturday Group Art Book brings together both the best of Villanueva’s talents and the best of the SGA — with stalwarts Cris Cruz, Lydia Velasco, and Fernando Sena backstopped by bright younger talents such as Caloy Gabuco, Omi Reyes, Buds Convocar, Anna de Leon, Roel Obemio, and Migs herself, who also crafted the text and designed the handsome-looking book.

It’s too bad that the author wasn’t around for the launch — she was in Hong Kong, I think, on more urgent family business — but good books like this one are savored and get better long after the launch, and I look forward to another milestone from Migs in the form of her long-due book of stories — a second “first,” if you will, for this many-faceted artist. Congrats to you, too!

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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at http://www.penmanila.net.