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By N.V.M. Gonzalez
ALTHOUGH writers prefer, in most
cases, to be read rather than seen,teachers of literature have been
required to invent some way of motivating the interest of their
pupils by sending squads of them to some remote suburban address or
some throbbing mill of an office in downtown Manila for the purpose
of collaring a writer. The poor dog doesn’t bite, but his
immediate reaction is one of hostility. This comes, we suspect, from
his being suddenly made much of; his is an activity which succeeds
when least overseered, and half of the time this success consists
largely in his not giving up the try.
The dead are naturally spared
this visit; it is only the living who can now complain, and it works
hardest on the once-active member of the guild – he is never
convinced that he can retire nor can he sound convincing to others
when he says he has retired, there being no pension or similar
benefits to be derived from quitting the typewriter. For him who
sits diligently at his desk, it’s a pleasing nuisance—someone
has taken notice, but why in this way? Casting about for an
explanation, he sees a reward in the thought that he gets a close
view, for a full half-hour at least, of the young generation.
It does not do to make denials:
“When did you start writing?” the kids ask. “A long time
ago,” the writer replies, but even as the kids dutifully write
this information in their notebooks, he doubts whether that is a
fact worthy of record. One knows that it was only yesterday that one
really started, that it was only yesterday that self-confidence
came, only yesterday when that big knotty problem one has been
working for months was somehow resolved. The more distant past has
been a hornet’s nest of dreams, frustrations, and adversity of the
more taxing kind, nightmares and worse of all, debts. There has been
no time for writing at all. He knew that becoming a writer is a
matter of self-appointment, a designation that can only be presented
to and approved by the commission of performance. And one hasn’t
been allowed that chance. Or, if yesterday had consisted of adequate
schooling, a comfortable home, perhaps even a good writing table
with a chrome-plated reading lamp to match, not to mention a library
overlooking a garden that has been photographed for the press,
one’s command of words has grown dubious, one’s spelling even
has become erratic, to say nothing of the fact that the big idea has
slipped away, and that against all this one’s only ally is
hope—whose loyalty, of course, is far from consistent.
“Do you believe in
inspiration?” The young people do not know what inspiration is.
Someone has told them it’s some pretty face, perhaps with dimples
n both cheeks. The rustle of stiffly starched skirts? Some
memory-haunting melody? If the writer happens to be a married
person, the question asked is no less awkward, and one begins to
wonder what one’s in-laws would be like, had one been truly joined
in wedlock to inspiration. It does not help to explain to the young
that inspiration is quite simply an idea, the merest flash of
insight; that it disappears before one can do anything with it, let
alone “live” with it for any length of time; that here, one
would do well to recall the famous injunction that “in dreams
begin responsibilities”; that inspiration does not really inspire
us much as it breeds wok and that its essential function is to
circumvent Parkinson’s Law. Hence, it commits one’s energies and
exhausts one’s powers.
Indeed, the young ask all sorts
of questions. They might sound impertinent in their very simplicity
(“How many children do you have?”) and are touching in their
innocence (“Do you have any hobbies?”). From somewhere has come
the idea that liquor and poetry are first cousins, and the young are
shocked to learn that one abhors Coca Cola. But behind it all, we
guess, is a deep-seated fear that they, too, sooner or later, will
have to strike out for themselves. What are their changes of making
a beginning, and that done, of continuing and surviving?
Fortunately, there’s a lot with
which to reassure the young. The literacy rate is in creasing;
opportunities for study are on the whole readily found. Books are
easier to publish these days (they are of course easy to forget),
but they have to be told that there’s so much noise around, it’s
difficult to get a writer’s voice heard above the tumult. They
have to learn early in the game to avoid raising one’s voice;
it’s the soft-spoken whose words are heard best. In any case,
there’s enough kindness for every one still, only one has to make
sure that the kindness is not drunk raw but it is at least warmed
up. If not indeed, boiled in the kettle of discipline. And this is a
process for which there is no substitute, a chore from which there
is no escape.
And so, year in and year out,
they come – these young visitors from high school literature
classes. There is a faint possibility that the interview they have
just managed will only draw doubts from their teacher; hence, they
arm themselves with a box camera and request their subject to pose.
Lacking a camera, they ask their subject to autograph a book, or a
page of notebook paper. There is this frantic need for
authentication – naturally, because nothing could be more ironic
than a fiction about a fiction.
It is easy to be cynical about
all this, to say that there must be some other way of committing our
people’s curiosity and interest in writing and those who practice
the trade. But we often forget that a writer’s life is a form of
priesthood that is unique for its lack of a standard liturgy. Each
one, striking out for himself, must evolve his own, fashioning
altars as he goes along so that there is neat enough place for our
gifts of insight and understanding. 
(Writer Narita
Manuel-Gonzalez, widow of the late National Artist for Literature
graciously sent us this essay originally published in March 1966.-
Lit Ed)
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