Our conversation inevitably turned to books and publishing, which Jing should now be able to do something more about beyond writing her own books. As UP Press director, Jing lamented the fact that despite all the resources that local publishers have poured these past two decades into improving Filipino books inside and out, literary titles in particular continue to languish in the warehouse, unsold and unread.
I’ll go into the details of what I suspect to be the reasons for this unfortunate situation in some later piece, but it doesn’t take a genius to guess at the most likely culprits: the fact that our books cost too much (at about P300 a copy, even more expensive than some imported paperbacks), and the possibility that we’re not writing about the things that truly interest our potential readers.
I took the opportunity to offer Jing my shamelessly unsolicited advice: there has to be a way, I said, of cutting book publishing costs and prices drastically – such as by reverting to a uniform, trademark cover and book design and using cheap but serviceable paper. Remember the old Faber & Faber volumes and the old Penguin Books? They all looked alike – only the titles and the names of the authors were different – and they were pretty unexciting on the outside. But they contained much of the best of 20th century literature in English, and they must have been awfully easy and certainly cheaper to produce, with no mark-ups or extra time needed for individual design or for special printing requirements. (Gloria Rodriguez’s Giraffe Books operates on the same principle, as did Bert Florentino’s original Peso Books.)
A corresponding emphasis, however, has to be placed on the quality of the content, and so we shall need to convince the best of both established and new writers to contribute to the series, to boost its legitimacy and give it a kind of reverse chic. I think it would be marvelous if we can offer such books below P100.
And we should encourage the writing of more interesting, here-and-now stories, of the kind that can send tongues wagging in the coffee shops and beauty parlors and be turned into a movie within a month, instead of remaining another mute inglorious classic buried in a bodega, providing bed and board for roaches.
"In order to utilize the slim body of the m505/500, in order to be able to show the protection effect of the maximum with thickness of the leather of the minimum limit, it is designed. Removing from the chest pocket, opening the cover swiftly. When using it ends, closing the cover swiftly, and you reset to the chest pocket. Being such a light, it is the functional case.
"The Palm is known and depends on the Japanese designer who is exhausted, it is the case which you used and seriously considered the selfishness.
"It is passion of the making hand and the PDA case which designates prejudice as shape.
"As for the good commodity if it has long, increases with the extent taste which it has. The especially leather product when caring securely distantly, shows very good taste. If it has, the extent which it has it attaches, such a product you aim sigma. Please removing the soiling with the cleaning kit which has belonged to this corporation product. Because there is also a preservation moisture effect in the cleaning oil, the leather it prevents also cracking and the like softly."
There’s more, but I think you get the point (and many thanks to fellow Palm user Dondi Mapa for leading me to the website!). And, folks – don’t laugh too hard. The next joke may be on us. (Not to mention the bigger joke that’s already on us – here we are with our near-flawless English and our pauper’s economy, and, well, there’s Japan. ‘Nuff said.)
When she was department head years ago at the Ateneo and lecturer Franz Arcellana (yes, the National Artist, now himself confined at the National Kidney Institute) came down with an ailment, Doreen asked me – after traveling just a bit down Katipunan Ave. – to sub for him for a few class meetings. I thought that being asked was honor enough, and gamely took over Franz’s class, which just happened to include at least two people who would later make a huge name for themselves: Clinton Palanca and Rafael "Apa" Ongpin.
Doreen, Franz, and I would meet again years later, when we sat together on the Palanca judges’ committee for the novel. One of the pleasures of being a Palanca judge is dining in any restaurant of your choice, and one of the pleasures of judging with Doreen was that you knew she would choose well and wisely, and Franz and I deferred to her selection: at that time, the relatively new and unknown Blue Bacon and Green Eggs on Lantana St. in Cubao. Long after I had forgotten the literary part of our conversation, I remembered the food, and returned to the place with friends and family.
When the time came to put a team together to write and edit the mammoth, 10-volume Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People (Asia Publishing, 1998), for which I served as executive editor, it didn’t take project director Tere Custodio and I two minutes to agree on Doreen as editorial consultant, given the scope of her expertise and interests. Again, over the 18 months we labored on the job, Doreen guided us to the best restaurants around the corner, taking care to find something suitable for the culinary philistine – the burger-and-fries and chicken-mami guy – I confessed to being; in the event, I got the best burger-and-fries Doreen could point me to, at the Beverly Hills Deli.
When she learned that I collected old fountain pens, she gifted me with silver Dunhill pens that had been used by her late husband Wili, as well as Montblancs of her own.
I met her last about a month ago, at a meeting, once again, of Palanca judges (about which I can say no more for now, except to add that we were judges in different categories). I told her that I had found and downloaded pictures off the Internet of a Sylvia Gamboa, a Bacolod beauty queen, from the 1920s. Doreen looked frail, but chatted gaily about this old relation.
Her unfailing good taste, her charm, and her generosity will be sorely missed, and if the rest of us can have even just half of all the words expended this past week in praise of Doreen Gamboa Fernandez, then ours would have been a life well and worthily lived.