Fresh titles
December 1, 2003 | 12:00am
Attended the grand launch some weeks back, at the Manila Polo Club, of Life on the Cusp, edited by Rita Ledesma and Mert J. Loinaz, published by Anvil.
Many friends were among the contributors, and it was a happy sight to see them grouped together for firing squad poses, before mingling with the guests who were just as elated over the social occasion as the discounted offering of yet another fine collection of essays on mature circumspection.
The anthology brings to mind, or may be said to be a follow-up to, a set of previous Anvil titles led by Coming to Terms, which came out in 1994, I think, featuring essays by women mid-lifers. Three years later I became part of the "male edition" titled Primed for Life. If I’m not mistaken, that came out complementary to, or was it the other way around, Women on Fire, which was a follow-up on the first female-writers collection.
If memory serves me right, too, editor Lorna Kalaw Tirol had a hand in all three books, just as she’s involved as copy editor for Life on the Cusp. This time it gathers together both men and women, although the latter far outnumber the spiritually weaker gender, at 16 to 6. And the common denominator is the experience of post-midlife, or at least what may be sourced to that flashpoint toward the golden years when one is blessed with an epiphany of sorts.
As co-editor Ledesma recounts rather vividly in the Prologue, recalling her retreats in India: "…I sink deeper and deeper inside until I reach a point of supreme stillness where everything that I am comes together. And it is in this very stillness that I am most alive.
"This still point may be likened to the cusp between two astrological signs when one pauses, not quite ready to move into the next. It is a moment of promise. It is a pivotal key that I have discerned in times of crisis… A resting place that opens to a fresh approach, to a new dimension of living, this moment may be missed. Or it may lead to transformation, resolution, celebration…"
The collection is divvied up into three sections. The first – subtitled "gathering the reins of our lives…" – features essays by Mariel N. Francisco, Augusto F. Villalon, Bambi Lammoglia Harper, Maria Cristina D. Olbes, Anabel V. Alejandrino, Phyllis Zaballero, Felice Prudente Sta. Maria, Joy G. Virata, and Jim Paredes.
The second section is billed as "…we master the course…" and includes essays by Sylvia L. Mayuga, Erlinda Enriquez Panlilio, Grace Marie Katigbak, Josefina T. Lichauco, Alfredo Roces, Maria Isabel Ongpin and Lourdes Reyes Montinola.
The third section – subtitled "to discover the infinite within." —- offers essays by Randy David, Asuncion David Maramba, Barbara C. Gonzalez, Pinky Valdes, Bernardo Ma. Perez, OSB, and Jaime Zobel de Ayala.
The collegial authorship is then as exalted as the prose the reader is served up, with lucidity of insight and eloquence of memory cum vision-mission evident as the common highlights.
Ledesma writes further:
"We were intrigued by the discovery that many people, fifty years and older, had a profound enthusiasm for life and a lively optimism about the future. No longer were they prisoners of convention. Having achieved their personal goals and conquered their demons, they reveled in the freedom to live out their dreams…"
"Beyond the retelling of events, we hoped to capture the dynamics of men and women in varying stages of change and resolution. In other words, how each one approached life on the cusp was to be a personal choice. The book often reads like an inner journey…"
Indeed it does, which makes it distinct from the three previous, "younger" anthologies. Here the contributors range from their 50s to late 60s, maybe even early 70s.
Premier visual artist Pandy Aviado, himself ever on the cusp of brilliance, greatness, and commercial success, not necessarily in that order, fittingly executed the cover and inside collages, while Corazon S. Alvina did the cover design. Together they’ve come up with an elegant volume that’s just as handy, whether hardbound or in softcover, lying on a coffee table as on one’s bedside table.
The worth of literary anthologies such as this is that the reader can take it in bite-sized portions. I have yet to read all the pieces, but already I appreciate learning about Randy David’s passion for erudition, bird watching and motorcycles. Equally grateful am I to read Alfredo "Ding" R Roces’ account of how the heavy Marcosian hand practically forcefully blue-penciled him to seek better opportunities with his family Down Under.
Roces also comes up with this gem of a quote from our national hero, Jose Rizal, from a letter dated May 2, 1869, addressed to Fernando Canon in Paris who had just had a son born ex patria:
"In the great turmoil of the world, let every atom seek the best nucleus; let it elevate itself when and where it can! … All honest men of the world are fellow countrymen… If the Philippines loses one son, let humanity at least be the gainer."
As Roces points out, the prescient exultation from Rizal may well sound the thematic rationale for immigration, nay, diaspora.
Then there are Jim Paredes’ recounting of his discovery of self vis-à-vis evolving spirals of creativity, Josie Lichauco’s positive transference of undiluted passion, Lourdes Montinola’s narrative on the greening as well as architectural and educational enhancement of Far Eastern University which she inherited, from her own father but via her husband, and similarly, Erlinda Panlilio’s private, now public, tale of a career shift from compliant heredera to creative writer and painter.
In the epilogue, Loinaz shares munificently: "While earlier generations largely ‘wound down’ at this stage, this generation is not only dynamic still, it is actually pursuing long-postponed or newly discovered interests. While earlier generations tended at this stage to focus on the past and all that they missed about it, this generation’s sights appear trained on the future with great expectancy about what it might hold for them. While earlier generations seemed to resist change, viewing it as a threat, this generation seems to embrace change, using it as a vehicle towards expanding horizons."
The inclusion of unfamiliar, or rather fresh, bylines assures us of a continuity of torch-passing, or the validation that contributors to such anthologies of mature reflection should not be confined to known writers.
Each one of us has something important and distinctive to say, especially as we approach or cross over to what Montinola correctly refers to as the troisieme or third age —- when we manage to savor life with the benefit of our innermost perspectives and an eye toward highly personal gratification, yet one that surely owes itself to the act of pushing the envelope or its corners with regards -— dare I say it? – the soul.
If I may express a beef, it would only be over my exclusion from the list of contributors. Pandy Aviado and I might have righted the gender ratio and, who knows, we may have offered stabs at wisdom sourced to a different kind of spiritualism.
But then the editors may have properly nuanced the suspicion that – my good friend and soulmate Pandy aside – even in my graying years I have yet to stumble into that cusp of chance and redeeming change. Time enough for the sequel, perhaps?
A couple of fresh releases from Giraffe Books are definitely worth picking up for a widened appreciation of Philippine fiction in English. Both are authored by Antonio Enriquez, a Palanca Grand Prize awardee for the Novel, and one of only two Filipino authors (the other being Nick Joaquin) whose works were published in hardcover edition a couple of decades ago by the prestigious University of Queensland Press in Australia.
Enriquez enjoys a hard-won reputation as a distinctive and robust voice from Mindanao. His stories have continued to mine the rich panoply of narratives —- as interwoven threads of a potential saga – which define that unique island of grand multicultural complexity. His characters bespeak the physical, cultural and emotional struggles that often thrust this fascinating arena into the national, nay, even international, consciousness.
The Voice from Sumisip & Four Short Stories features the title novella and the short stories "The Turtle-Egg Hunter," "Gatherer of the People," "Iba the Christian," and "Jainal the Pirate." In these reworkings of previously published stories (The Voice… originally appeared in four parts in Philippines Free Press, as "The Voice From Pisumis," in 1990-91,) Enriquez’s prose resounds with authentic colloquialism and an assured combination of tone and imagination that manifests his intimacy with the setting.
The second book is a long-awaited reprint, in fact the third edition, of what is arguably Enriquez’ best work, The Surveyors of Liguasan Marsh, which won the Palanca in 1982, and has now been retitled as Green Sanctuary. Its local reprint after the original 1981 Australian edition as part of the Asia Pacific Writing series was published by A. Ruby/ARE Book in Cagayan de Oro City in 1991.
The powerful novel is set in what has of late become a favorite haven of bad guys in Mindanao (read: bandits, extremists and terrorists). But the Liguasan Marsh Enriquez writes about once drew the macho company of wandering surveyors and engineers, who interacted with the Christian settlers, Muslim traders and indigenous tribes in the area, while everyone had to undergo the excesses of the martial-rule military.
No less than the fiction master NVM Gonzalez had hailed the novel as a real watershed in Philippine fiction in English; in fact he suggested the fresh title.
Another recent offering from Giraffe Books is Little Freedoms by Marianne Moll, a young writer – only in her late 20s, I believe – whose determination to succeed as a voice of note is reflected in the sundry essays she puts together in this collection, starting with some written as early as 1997.
A previous collection of essays, Awakenings, was also published by Giraffe Books a few years ago. The least that can be said of the follow-up collection is that it can be immensely charming in parts, offering as it does a fresh outlook on such diverse and seemingly mundane topics as pyramid scams, backpacks and bathtubs, jueteng, and literary adulation.
Finally, Literature is Life by Rustica C. Carpio, from the UST Publishing House, is another essay collection, but on a more formal note. This is the fifth UST-published title in the last four years by the recent Maynila cultural awardee. And as far as I know, she teaches at Far Eastern University, although she’s a UST alumna.
It consists of book reviews, literary accolades (such as on Bienvenido N. Santos and National Artist for Literature F. Sionil Jose), commentary on education, theater, film, and media. It also pays tribute to outstanding women in the arts, such as National Artist for Theater Daisy Hontiveros-Avellana and the "Queen of Radio," Dely Magpayo, as well as the superlative educator and new FEU President Lydia Balatbat-Echauz. Other essays dwell on our literary and cultural relations with Libya, China and India.
Many friends were among the contributors, and it was a happy sight to see them grouped together for firing squad poses, before mingling with the guests who were just as elated over the social occasion as the discounted offering of yet another fine collection of essays on mature circumspection.
The anthology brings to mind, or may be said to be a follow-up to, a set of previous Anvil titles led by Coming to Terms, which came out in 1994, I think, featuring essays by women mid-lifers. Three years later I became part of the "male edition" titled Primed for Life. If I’m not mistaken, that came out complementary to, or was it the other way around, Women on Fire, which was a follow-up on the first female-writers collection.
If memory serves me right, too, editor Lorna Kalaw Tirol had a hand in all three books, just as she’s involved as copy editor for Life on the Cusp. This time it gathers together both men and women, although the latter far outnumber the spiritually weaker gender, at 16 to 6. And the common denominator is the experience of post-midlife, or at least what may be sourced to that flashpoint toward the golden years when one is blessed with an epiphany of sorts.
As co-editor Ledesma recounts rather vividly in the Prologue, recalling her retreats in India: "…I sink deeper and deeper inside until I reach a point of supreme stillness where everything that I am comes together. And it is in this very stillness that I am most alive.
"This still point may be likened to the cusp between two astrological signs when one pauses, not quite ready to move into the next. It is a moment of promise. It is a pivotal key that I have discerned in times of crisis… A resting place that opens to a fresh approach, to a new dimension of living, this moment may be missed. Or it may lead to transformation, resolution, celebration…"
The collection is divvied up into three sections. The first – subtitled "gathering the reins of our lives…" – features essays by Mariel N. Francisco, Augusto F. Villalon, Bambi Lammoglia Harper, Maria Cristina D. Olbes, Anabel V. Alejandrino, Phyllis Zaballero, Felice Prudente Sta. Maria, Joy G. Virata, and Jim Paredes.
The second section is billed as "…we master the course…" and includes essays by Sylvia L. Mayuga, Erlinda Enriquez Panlilio, Grace Marie Katigbak, Josefina T. Lichauco, Alfredo Roces, Maria Isabel Ongpin and Lourdes Reyes Montinola.
The third section – subtitled "to discover the infinite within." —- offers essays by Randy David, Asuncion David Maramba, Barbara C. Gonzalez, Pinky Valdes, Bernardo Ma. Perez, OSB, and Jaime Zobel de Ayala.
The collegial authorship is then as exalted as the prose the reader is served up, with lucidity of insight and eloquence of memory cum vision-mission evident as the common highlights.
Ledesma writes further:
"We were intrigued by the discovery that many people, fifty years and older, had a profound enthusiasm for life and a lively optimism about the future. No longer were they prisoners of convention. Having achieved their personal goals and conquered their demons, they reveled in the freedom to live out their dreams…"
"Beyond the retelling of events, we hoped to capture the dynamics of men and women in varying stages of change and resolution. In other words, how each one approached life on the cusp was to be a personal choice. The book often reads like an inner journey…"
Indeed it does, which makes it distinct from the three previous, "younger" anthologies. Here the contributors range from their 50s to late 60s, maybe even early 70s.
Premier visual artist Pandy Aviado, himself ever on the cusp of brilliance, greatness, and commercial success, not necessarily in that order, fittingly executed the cover and inside collages, while Corazon S. Alvina did the cover design. Together they’ve come up with an elegant volume that’s just as handy, whether hardbound or in softcover, lying on a coffee table as on one’s bedside table.
The worth of literary anthologies such as this is that the reader can take it in bite-sized portions. I have yet to read all the pieces, but already I appreciate learning about Randy David’s passion for erudition, bird watching and motorcycles. Equally grateful am I to read Alfredo "Ding" R Roces’ account of how the heavy Marcosian hand practically forcefully blue-penciled him to seek better opportunities with his family Down Under.
Roces also comes up with this gem of a quote from our national hero, Jose Rizal, from a letter dated May 2, 1869, addressed to Fernando Canon in Paris who had just had a son born ex patria:
"In the great turmoil of the world, let every atom seek the best nucleus; let it elevate itself when and where it can! … All honest men of the world are fellow countrymen… If the Philippines loses one son, let humanity at least be the gainer."
As Roces points out, the prescient exultation from Rizal may well sound the thematic rationale for immigration, nay, diaspora.
Then there are Jim Paredes’ recounting of his discovery of self vis-à-vis evolving spirals of creativity, Josie Lichauco’s positive transference of undiluted passion, Lourdes Montinola’s narrative on the greening as well as architectural and educational enhancement of Far Eastern University which she inherited, from her own father but via her husband, and similarly, Erlinda Panlilio’s private, now public, tale of a career shift from compliant heredera to creative writer and painter.
In the epilogue, Loinaz shares munificently: "While earlier generations largely ‘wound down’ at this stage, this generation is not only dynamic still, it is actually pursuing long-postponed or newly discovered interests. While earlier generations tended at this stage to focus on the past and all that they missed about it, this generation’s sights appear trained on the future with great expectancy about what it might hold for them. While earlier generations seemed to resist change, viewing it as a threat, this generation seems to embrace change, using it as a vehicle towards expanding horizons."
The inclusion of unfamiliar, or rather fresh, bylines assures us of a continuity of torch-passing, or the validation that contributors to such anthologies of mature reflection should not be confined to known writers.
Each one of us has something important and distinctive to say, especially as we approach or cross over to what Montinola correctly refers to as the troisieme or third age —- when we manage to savor life with the benefit of our innermost perspectives and an eye toward highly personal gratification, yet one that surely owes itself to the act of pushing the envelope or its corners with regards -— dare I say it? – the soul.
If I may express a beef, it would only be over my exclusion from the list of contributors. Pandy Aviado and I might have righted the gender ratio and, who knows, we may have offered stabs at wisdom sourced to a different kind of spiritualism.
But then the editors may have properly nuanced the suspicion that – my good friend and soulmate Pandy aside – even in my graying years I have yet to stumble into that cusp of chance and redeeming change. Time enough for the sequel, perhaps?
A couple of fresh releases from Giraffe Books are definitely worth picking up for a widened appreciation of Philippine fiction in English. Both are authored by Antonio Enriquez, a Palanca Grand Prize awardee for the Novel, and one of only two Filipino authors (the other being Nick Joaquin) whose works were published in hardcover edition a couple of decades ago by the prestigious University of Queensland Press in Australia.
Enriquez enjoys a hard-won reputation as a distinctive and robust voice from Mindanao. His stories have continued to mine the rich panoply of narratives —- as interwoven threads of a potential saga – which define that unique island of grand multicultural complexity. His characters bespeak the physical, cultural and emotional struggles that often thrust this fascinating arena into the national, nay, even international, consciousness.
The Voice from Sumisip & Four Short Stories features the title novella and the short stories "The Turtle-Egg Hunter," "Gatherer of the People," "Iba the Christian," and "Jainal the Pirate." In these reworkings of previously published stories (The Voice… originally appeared in four parts in Philippines Free Press, as "The Voice From Pisumis," in 1990-91,) Enriquez’s prose resounds with authentic colloquialism and an assured combination of tone and imagination that manifests his intimacy with the setting.
The second book is a long-awaited reprint, in fact the third edition, of what is arguably Enriquez’ best work, The Surveyors of Liguasan Marsh, which won the Palanca in 1982, and has now been retitled as Green Sanctuary. Its local reprint after the original 1981 Australian edition as part of the Asia Pacific Writing series was published by A. Ruby/ARE Book in Cagayan de Oro City in 1991.
The powerful novel is set in what has of late become a favorite haven of bad guys in Mindanao (read: bandits, extremists and terrorists). But the Liguasan Marsh Enriquez writes about once drew the macho company of wandering surveyors and engineers, who interacted with the Christian settlers, Muslim traders and indigenous tribes in the area, while everyone had to undergo the excesses of the martial-rule military.
No less than the fiction master NVM Gonzalez had hailed the novel as a real watershed in Philippine fiction in English; in fact he suggested the fresh title.
Another recent offering from Giraffe Books is Little Freedoms by Marianne Moll, a young writer – only in her late 20s, I believe – whose determination to succeed as a voice of note is reflected in the sundry essays she puts together in this collection, starting with some written as early as 1997.
A previous collection of essays, Awakenings, was also published by Giraffe Books a few years ago. The least that can be said of the follow-up collection is that it can be immensely charming in parts, offering as it does a fresh outlook on such diverse and seemingly mundane topics as pyramid scams, backpacks and bathtubs, jueteng, and literary adulation.
Finally, Literature is Life by Rustica C. Carpio, from the UST Publishing House, is another essay collection, but on a more formal note. This is the fifth UST-published title in the last four years by the recent Maynila cultural awardee. And as far as I know, she teaches at Far Eastern University, although she’s a UST alumna.
It consists of book reviews, literary accolades (such as on Bienvenido N. Santos and National Artist for Literature F. Sionil Jose), commentary on education, theater, film, and media. It also pays tribute to outstanding women in the arts, such as National Artist for Theater Daisy Hontiveros-Avellana and the "Queen of Radio," Dely Magpayo, as well as the superlative educator and new FEU President Lydia Balatbat-Echauz. Other essays dwell on our literary and cultural relations with Libya, China and India.
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