Filipino fiction on the Web

Jorge Luis Borges once wrote about the infinite library: A room a thousand years wide filled with all the great books that have been written. Books we have access to in dreams and in the garden of forking paths. Critics say Borges was foreshadowing the Internet: A cyber-room a gazillion gigabytes wide filled with infinite information. Information we have access to with a few jabs at the keyboard.

But the Web has also become a storehouse of multimedia entertainment. Surfers have access to cinema, sporting spectacles, concerts, even albums before they hit the record stores. Yes, people can listen to the Chris Cornell/Rage Against the Machine or the new Radiohead platter before the long-awaited date of release. And yes, people can also visit the naughtier sites and get a load of Japanese manga stars, as well as Cindy Margolis and the most downloaded melons of all time.

Once in a while, it’s nice to surf the Web and use it as an infinite library housing the works of Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Robbins – or even fiction from our very own writers.

A website called The Best Filipino Short Stories at www.sushidog.com serves exactly that. By visiting the website, surfers have access not just to short stories but also to poems, essays and even artworks from Filipino writers, poets and artists. The site seeks out good material that have appeared in local magazines. It’s not exclusive to Pinoys; foreigners are also encouraged to submit works with Filipinos as characters. This way we can find out how other cultures perceive us.

Sushidog.com also accepts material that cannot find a place in Filipino publications because of the nature of its content. Everything – the good, the bad, the ugly in this sad republic of ours, provided it exudes literary excellence. The emphasis, of course, is to discover new literary talent and, at the same time, to give the respected figures of Philippine literature the forum they so deserve.

The site has classics from Dead Stars by Paz Marquez Benitez to short fiction from young guns of the local literary sphere such as Kara’s Place by Luis Katigbak and Lines by Lakambini Sitoy. There are also poems by Angela Manalang Gloria, as well as artworks from Marissa Gonzales (Indian Sitar with Green Peacock), Hector Santos (Mandevilla) and Copper Sturgeon (The Bath).

As you get lost in the labyrinths of fine literary output in Sushidog.com, as if under a strange spell, maybe you’d admit that, though unconscious of it, Borges was right about the possibility of an infinite library.

And the Web is it.