The horsey set

My fellow fictionist and partner-in-crime Charlson Ong and I found ourselves standing in the driveway of the Manila Polo Club last week, waiting for a ride and looking decidedly more pedestrian than the bevy of sharp-nosed socialites milling around us. We had ventured into unfamiliar territory upon the gracious invitation of Senator Loren Legarda, who hosted the delegates to the Asia-Pacific Conference on Indigenous and Contemporary Poetry – and shameless hangers-on like us – to dinner. Feeling a sudden need to validate our improbable closeness to the horsey set, we made small talk, and I muttered, "Yeah, I remember the last time when the leg of my kabayo collapsed as I was ironing my polo."

Charlson, by the way, left for the US last Saturday to attend the International Writers Program in Iowa, along with poet Marj Evasco. I don’t think he’ll get to visit too many polo clubs where he’s going, which is a pity, considering how well my pal gets along with impeccably coiffed matrons, a posse of whom once paid good money at a benefit auction for the privilege of being squired around Chinatown by the author of Woman of Am-Kaw. "Turns out I knew more about Chinatown than he did," one of them muttered afterward – flashing, at the same time, that imperturbably sweet smile we can only take to be the hallmark of good breeding and noblesse oblige.

* * *

Speaking of writing in America, I’ve been much impressed by, and appreciative of, the efforts of H.O. (Hector) Santos, a US-based writer, to promote Philippine short stories on the Internet. Santos maintains a website (http://www.sushidog.com/bpss/main.htm) where he reproduces both old and new stories by Filipinos, wherever they may be. I know he reads this column, because he’s sent me some very insightful comments about the state of Philippine fiction. I can’t always agree with what H.O. has to say, but I’d have to admit, happily, that he does us all a signal service by raising points and issues that our familiarity with the craft and its personalities can sometimes obscure.

The most recent issue of H.O.’s online "The Best Philippine Short Stories" opens with the not-unreasonable assumption that the unofficial results of this year’s Palanca Awards for Literature would be making the rounds of Manila’s bars and cafeterias by now (the awards, as always, will be given on Sept. 1). The Palancas, of course, are the country’s premier – indeed its only – literary awards covering the full range of genres in English and Filipino, plus the short story in a third Philippine language. H.O. wonders aloud about the porous secrecy that attends both the submissions process and the announcement of the winners, given how small and chummy Philippine literary society is. Here’s what he says (and I hope H.O. won’t mind if I quote whole swatches of his essay in this column):

"The Palanca Foundation attempts to keep authors’ identities hidden from the judges. How this is possible in a tiny literary community such as the Philippines stretches my imagination. But that’s not all. While the author’s real name and pen name are put in a sealed envelope for whatever reason they think it contributes to secrecy, the required affidavit which contains one’s real name and the title of his entry is not sealed and is there for everyone to see.

Maybe some day the board of trustees will do away with this ineffective ritual. Putting real names out in the open will remove a judge’s tempting shield that he didn’t know who wrote the story he was badmouthing, or that the piece he was telling the others came down from heaven was written by his friend. Removing ‘secrecy’ will contribute to more transparency in judging.

"Eventually, I hope the Palanca can evolve from a contest to a real award system. By this, I mean writers shouldn’t have to submit an entry. A permanent editorial board should be looking at all literary work published in the Philippines and select, say, 20 finalists from which the board of judges will make their final selection. This is the way the Pulitzer, Nobel, and Magsaysay work. The NVM Gonzalez Award is getting close to this – if they can only do away with the requirement for the writer to send an application to enter the competition, they would be like the big ones."

Now here’s my take on Santos’s suggestions, which do have their strengths and merits:

As someone who’s been on both the joining and judging, and on the winning and losing, ends, I’m not so sure that transparency is going to make all that much of a positive difference in the quality of the judging. To the contrary, I’d maintain that, for the most part, the secrecy works, and the secrecy helps.

You’d be surprised, but the fact is that most – maybe 90 percent – of the time, the judges simply don’t know whose work it is they’re looking at. And we’re talking here about an average of 120 stories and poetry collections submitted yearly, at least in the English division, which I’m more familiar with.

There’s a very simple if unfortunate reason for this, and one that H.O. just may have overlooked: there’s hardly any literary publishing going on in these islands on a weekly or monthly basis. Only one mass-market magazine continues to do so regularly, in this country of 80 million people. As a result, very few stories and poems (relative to the number of writers we have, and to the general population) see print, and even so, a minuscule few of those are truly standouts – the kind you read once and can’t forget.

Sure, you might recognize a story or a poem in the pile as someone’s work. But if you’re resigning yourself to the notion that Filipinos can’t keep a secret if their lives depended on it, and that a Filipino writer soon knows and is known by all the other Pinoy writers on the planet, then you’ll understand why even the semblance or the pretense of secrecy is socially imperative: it allows you to say "No" to your closest chums, and to detach yourself, for a crucial moment, from any sense of obligation and from the claims and expectations of established reputations. (Besides, I find the pseudonyms that people choose amusing – I should, and just might, write a separate piece on them one of these days.)

This year’s Palanca scuttlebutt, for example, has it that one of the big losers in a major category was a "Hall of Famer" (a five-times-or-more first-prize winner). Just presuming for argument’s sake that this did happen, do you seriously think that person would have lost, with all names out in the open? Or if that person did win on his or her own merit, do you think many would believe that it was the work and not the name that clinched the victory? As it is, the anonymity will now be that person’s cloak and balm. (And no, the judges don’t get to look at the affidavits that accompany the entries – not before, not after. The winner’s names get known prematurely only because the judges ask after – and only after – the judging, and the Palanca people are too nice to deny their curiosity; either that, or the winners can’t hide their glee in the two weeks between the time they get their notifications and the actual Awards Night.)

The same sad dearth of regular literary journals or venues militates against H.O.’s proposal to convert the Palancas into a more elevated, no-submissions, externally juried award system. That sounds good – but only if you have a significant number and range of publications to send your work to, and which the judges can read and choose from. This is one of those realities that reminds us, if rather rudely, how different the Philippines is from the US or the UK.

I’d be the first to argue that good stories, poems, and plays have no business remaining in the closet, and that their authors shouldn’t be content to remain mute, inglorious, and unpublished Miltons all their lives. Literature should be shared and read. But that will happen only if someone takes the trouble and the financial risk to publish the stuff. America is flush with literary journals and magazines that serve as a kind of sieve to catch and filter the best of current writing. We’re not.

This is why literary contests like the Palancas provide an alternative means for new and young writers to get noticed – and for their work to get published (and, in the case of plays and screenplays, to get produced). During the darkest years of martial law, when hardly anyone was publishing creative work – especially work with politically incendiary content – the Palancas helped to keep Philippine literature alive, just by being there. The winning works got published later.

If and when we’ve developed enough of a reading public and a literary market, then perhaps H.O. Santos’s proposals for raising the bar in the Palancas will make more sense. Until then, doing that just might result, ironically, in privileging the same old names whose overextended dominance of the local literary scene people like H.O. want to break.

My warmest congratulations, meanwhile, to this year’s Palanca winners. You know who you are – and soon we will, too!

* * *

Send e-mail to Butch Dalisay at penmanila@yahoo.com..