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By Adrian Cristobal
WRITERS, with some solemn exceptions, love to
indulge in irony in their talk and writings, their object is to
shock, confuse, and, with the discerning, to amuse. But it can be a
dangerous business at times to one’s reputation.
I remember, for example, a passage in one of
National Artist Franz’s essays. I supposedly said—I must
have—that literature is a commodity which has a market value like
anything else. Then Franz recalled that I had become rich and
influential because of my writing abilities, a condition that I
attribute to being the best-paid “ghost” of the time. Between
Franz and me, the passage in question resonates with irony but the
casual reader might put this down as opportunism and (in a word that
was once popular) literary prostitution, like working in an ad
agency or writing movie potboilers, both of which I did at one time
or another. This is so because the serious writer must, by legendary
prescription, starve in a garret: any sign of health or well-being
is proof of treachery to one’s art. The fact is my comment was
directed to the advocates of “plain words” who kept reminding
many of us struggling scribes that we are not “communicating.”
That remark about literature and commerce was
just one of my dubious gems in a time of youth, defiance, struggle
and obscurity. I also said, as Florentino Dauz repeated in one of
his columns, that the enemy of the “genius” was not society but
the wife. Unrecorded was an exchange between me and a young female
poet who told me that she wrote poetry in order “to soar.” I
asked her why she didn’t take a plane instead. That must have
stamped me the great philistine of all time. (I recall in this
connection Teddyboy’s fatal remark about culture—“I don’t
care about culture,” or words to that effect—which I put down as
an ironical remark about culturists, of which there are many, but
which others, culturators themselves, mistakenly compared to
Himmler’s, “Every time I hear the word culture, I go for my
gun.” Writers don’t make reverent remarks about culture, it’s
“culture-lovers” who do.)
Chitang Guerrero (Nakpil), the grand dame of
letters, used to warn me about my outrageous remarks as absolutely
detrimental to my reputation. But only recently she said that
didn’t care whether her columns were read for as long as they were
handsomely paid. Now, Sammy Johnson already said the same
thing—only a blockhead would not write for money—but
eavesdroppers will just assume that I have infected Chitang with my
cynical approach to life, love and culture, which is probably
over-rating my powers and underestimating Chitang’s influence on
people.
Chitang says, like Dorothy Parker, that she
hates writing. I say from time to time that I love writing since it
is one of the few legalized con jobs: the others being politics,
academizing, modern painting, technocrating and its mother, business
enterprise. Where unfortunate people smuggle guns and get convicted,
one smuggle one’s ignorance and prejudices without fear of
punishment. The trick about writing is to have a groupie, a coterie,
that is, congenial souls, so that you will say the same thing of
them even if they are not. This is what keeps literary schools
going—symbolist, modernist, postmodernist and deconstructionist,
to name a well-known few.
Because of writer’s propensity for making
outrageous remarks out of boredom, drunkenness, starvation or
satedness, they are regarded by the laity with suspicion. The common
excuse is that it’s not easy to tell whether they are serious or
just fooling around. This is particularly the case in the circles of
power. The one thing about them is that they can’t stay bought,
for their ideas and opinions change with time or according to their
moods. Many a powerful person, demanding unadulterated adulation, is
downright suspicious of nuances. Most readers, on the other hand,
impatient with the same, simply decide whether a writer’s work is
on balance (whatever that means) favorable or unfavorable to the
subject.
Is it human perhaps to detest ambiguity, without
which literary art would simply be as boring as an office sign.
I have since learned that a writer in a position
of responsibility must suppress in himself those demonic and playful
urges which give his work, even his life, a distinctive stamp of
authenticity. But his words as a man of position or mere celebrity
will not be given the same close attention by the populace as they
sometimes do his fiction, drama and poetry. As he will be speaking
of the real world to the real word, he must think twice before he
intones “our mission is to remember,” lest people think he’s
beginning to lose his memory.
Writers who achieved political prominence came
to understand this and live with it. The late Claro M. Recto, for
example, made public pronouncements, taking care that every time he
did so, there was no question about their profundity and mordant
wit. Others are less fortunate, but I will not name them. But the
pulpit, the lectern, and the platform make great demands on writers
unless they are speaking of strictly literary matters. (I remember
the sixties too well when I made the mistake of repeating a common
observation that Filipinos maintain mistresses to a group of
clubwomen. I really got hell for that one—a matron said that she
was glad her husband was no longer in the Cabinet if that was the
ethic of the administration—and nothing I said by way of
explanation, that I was just being ironic, ever redeemed my prurient
reputation.)
I concluded as early as that time that one
couldn’t both be a writer and “a man of position and
responsibility” at the same time unless he could suppress
virtuosity in favor of virtue. It could be done with some success.
But never with complete success. Unless one dies as a writer, the
imp of the perverse is ever in his being wherever he finds himself.
It is his id, and how powerful id is...
From Pasquinades, ed. By Celin S. Cristobal,
Anvil, 1993. The author passed away recently.
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