Back to books
Back to teachers’ dirty looks, yes, that, too. It’s June and I look forward to the splendor of a vintage caballero in full bloom behind Gonzaga Hall in the Ateneo campus, eminently viewable from my favorite classroom beside the Fine Arts Department office. That is, should classes not be further deferred or disrupted by a pandemic virus.
Oh, the students I’ll be handling won’t exactly be hefting textbooks, but more of literary titles, since they’ll be taking up Poetry and Fiction, respectively, in two separate course subjects.
The question is if they have had to pay more taxes on those literary books if they come from abroad, as DOF U-Sec Estelita Sales has opined, apparently as the latest misguided verdugo in that agency. Despite a reported rescinding of her opinion by no less than the President, book lovers still have to be assured that our country can now continue to honor the international Florence Agreement that says books shouldn’t be lumped alongside death and taxes.
In any case, thankfully, this week’s offerings of fresh literary titles won’t be subject to that impasse — otherwise alarum-ed as the Great Book Blockade of 2009, thanks to our friend Robin Hemley, a current resident who’s on leave as director of the University of Iowa’s Creative Nonfiction Program.
The books we’ll be trumpeting here are of local issue, but by no means any less important or enlightening.
Tonight at 7:30, Mag:net Cafe Katipunan hosts the launch of Milflores Publishing Inc.’s A-Side/B-Side by Vlad Gonzales and And the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth by Carljoe Javier, both of the genre of humorous Creative Nonfiction.
A-Side/B-Side is a music-themed collection that evokes nostalgia, pays tribute to the joy of music, and dredges up fond memories of loved songs while providing stories of rollicking fun.
And the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth chronicles the misadventures of a Pinoy geek — with essays on being a reality show contestant, spending time with men’s magazine models, teaching at an all-girls’ school, and other funny predicaments and situations.
CarlJoe Javier was a fellow in the National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete and has been writing excellent film and music reviews as well as culture impressions for a national broadsheet and various magazines. He’s also part of the excellent (hilarious lyrics and all) all-poets’ rock band Los Chupacabraz, which will perform at Mag:net right after the launch.
Other bands joining in tonight for the resumption of the Happy Mondays series of readings and performances organized by poet Joel Toledo (another Chupacabra) are Nerdita, T.E.A.T.S, Goliath, and Ivan Theory.
While we’re at it, we might as well mention how Milflores, under the astute supervision of writer Tony Hidalgo, has been racking up great sales with its relatively cheap softcovers that not only give our outstanding young writers opportunities to become full-fledged authors, but to profit from their efforts. Two other recent Milflores releases point in that direction.
Our Lady of Arlegui by Chris Martinez, a comedy that won the 2007 Palanca first prize for the one-act play in Filipino, revolves around a chance encounter between a young Christian film enthusiast and a Muslim seller of pirated DVDs in Arlegui, Quiapo — this while an Optical Media Board raid takes place outside the store.
Hilarious dialogue explores the stereotypes and prejudices that have long hindered understanding between Filipino Christians and Muslims. Edgy banter over mutual biases ultimately leads the protagonists to discover their common humanity.
A playwright, scriptwriter, and film and stage director, Chris Martinez has won several Palanca awards as well as distinctions from the CCP, PETA, and the NCCA. Last year, he bagged the Best Director, Best Screenplay, and the Audience Choice awards for his film 100 at the Cinemalaya Film Festival.
Floundering at 25: A Younglife Crisis, by Michelle B. Meneses, presents a young writer’s personal account of her quarter-life crisis that involves problems at work, losing old friends and adjusting to new ones, confusing sexual experimentation, and the search for a mature faith that can sustain adulthood and its responsibilities.
Written in a probing, reflective style, this heartwarming book reads like a breeze and is somehow endowed with humor despite the apparent gravity of its subject. First-time author Meneses graduated from the Ateneo University with a degree in Management Information Systems, and now serves as a PR and marketing consultant for a fashion retail brand.
These Milflores titles should be available at all National Book Store and PowerBooks branches, the UP Press Bookstore, Solidaridad, and Popular. You may also call 721-6431, e-mail milflores@pldtdsl.net, or access http:\milfloresonline.blogspot.com.
On June 19, Jose Rizal’s birthday, what should our National Artist for Literature Virgilio S. Almario — he of the heroically panoramic gaze and vision — offer his yet mostly benighted countrymen but a book that is epic in its ambition, concept and undertaking, as a paean for place that is all at once encompassing in its love for people and their history, inclusive of myths, legends, pop culture and cults, indeed, the whole shebang of adroit patriotism.
Heh, heh. But I’m serious. The only levity that took place was when I received a copy of Rio Alma’s latest accomplishment, together with a companion book that discusses it, and I just had to text him the query as to how those large ti leaves seem to have sprouted from his brow. Make that noggin.
A smiling Rio is featured on the cover of Ang Hudhud ni Rio Alma, edited by Romulo P. Baquiran Jr., published by the NCCA — with the Cordillera rice terraces looming foggily in the background. He replied that he couldn’t allow fellow N.A. Bencab sole dominion over the North (of our worship), ha ha.
This offshoot publication contains critical essays by our most eminent writers in Filipino: Baquiran himself, Roberto T. Añonuevo, Michael M. Coroza, Niels Jordan Breis, and Victor Emmanuel Carmelo D. Nadera, Jr. That last, make it Vim for short, only fitting for the vim and vitality with which this gang of usual suspects delivers deep-tissue critiques anent Rio’s pan-Philippine anthology of poetry, narratives and commentary.
As Baquiran notes in his intro, “Nagsimula ang epikong ito bilang isang pangarap noong 1998... (ni) Almario na sumulat ng isang aklat na magtatanghal sa kadakilaan ng pag-ibig sa tinubuang lupa. Inisip niyang muling lakbayin ang iba’t-ibang pook sa Filipinas ... upang tamasin ang buhay sa mga iyon, muling tagpuin ang taumbayan, kausapin, at basahin ang kanilang kapalaran, at lasapin ang anumang pagbabagong nagaganap sa kasalukuyan.”
The critiques on the subject anthology and Rio Alma’s life and career as poet, critic and mentor take various forms: as commentary on the historical concept of the hero, as modern semiotics, cosmopolitan rhetoric, Lacanian and postcolonial psychology, and as biographical rooting of tradition and influence.
The anthology these essays discuss and/or take off from is HULING HUDHUD ng Sanlibong Pagbabalik at Paglimot para sa Filipinas kong Mahal: Isang makabagong epiko ni Rio Alma, published by C&E Publishing Inc.
In landscape format, the 184-page, full-color volume is made handsome and endearing in several ways: physically by designer Fidel M. Rillo, himself a poet (of private renown since he thus far refuses to place his own produce between covers), who engages Alma’s text in fond collaboration, thus helping issue a liquid tapestry of words and visuals that rolls like sparkling waves towards the shores of our continuing appreciation; and of course textually, by the author himself, whose “take” on the epic is no ordinary brown-bagging experience, but rather a full-blown buffet of reflections on an archipelagic menu that keeps us sated.
Alma dredges up folklore and history, personal experience and friendships, insights and memory — on what makes the camaraderie among our islands, as well our collective unconscious, appear conflated in their challenge, yet charismatic in their ultimate convergence.
Aphorisms are laid down; quotations from all and sundry pave the way for reminiscence and exploration. In 14 sections dubbed as encounters (probably as way-stations of the cross we still bear) plus an introductory invite to the journey and a concluding “Paghihintay sa Resureksyon,” Rio Alma proffers quite a spread of meditations on Banawe, Palawan, Cebu, Davao, Bohol, Batanes, Bicol et al. In haibun fashion, he intersperses poetry and prose, the latter as narratives of the physical journey, akin to Basho’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North. And his poetic style displays an equally full range, which for lack of space I cannot offer adequate representation here.
Suffice it to share one extreme of diction, when with motley characters identifiable via their expletives and objects of pique or reverence around a drinking table, the poet carouses. You may delight in this excerpt from the poem “Pagampang sa Ihaw-ihaw”:
“Sa ikaapat na tagay: ‘Wala namang nangyayaring asenso rito.’/ ‘Puro tong, kotong, koratong.’ ‘Buti pa sa lotto, me panalo.’// ‘Buti pa ang pera, me tao, pero ang tao walang pera.’/ ‘Baka Last Supper na ’to, pare ko.’ ‘Putang’nang bayan ito.’// ...
“Sa ikapitong tagay: ‘Pas na’ko.’ ‘Ako rin. Me lakad bukas.’/ ‘Mas masarap ang goto sa Timog. Maganda pa’ng weytres.’// ‘Teo, pare ko, gising na. Uuwi na tayo, pare, pare ko.’/ ‘Okey lang. Ano ba’ng akala mo! Putang’na, lasing ako?’”
The books will be launched this Friday starting at 4 p.m. at the C&E Information Resource Center on 1616 Quezon Avenue, Quezon City (right beside Hi-Top Supermarket) — a site that should serve that evening as the epicenter of our genuflection.
