No small miracle

I WISH there were more Jesuits like Father Gus Saenz.

First, he has a bookshelf I wouldn’t mind spending endless detention hours with: Asterix comics, glossy art books, and “DNA in the Courtroom” (although to be honest, I prefer “CSI” reruns: more Hollywood than science).

He has democratic, even “reprobate” taste in music: Gregorian chants and rock music, which he plays very loud while cutting up bodies.

When fellow priest and protégé Jeremy Lucero complains about R. E. M. blasting into their ears during an autopsy, Father Gus defends the rock band whose greatest hit is “Losing My Religion”: “Don’t knock it. It’s the closest either of us will ever get to sex.”

F. H. Batacan’s creation of a character with a complex inner and outer life is a good enough reason to rush to the nearest bookstore for “Smaller and Smaller Circles” before the copies disappear altogether.

The plain truth is that in this country, books written by Filipinos rarely share the gilded reprinting destinies of foreign bestsellers like the Harry Potter series and “Fifty Shades of Grey”.

According to Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo in her University of the Philippines (UP) Press book, “Over a Cup of Ginger Tea: Conversations on the Literary Narratives of Filipino Women,” the first printing of English-language books written by Filipinos usually runs only to 1,000 copies.

It’s no small miracle that “Smaller and Smaller Circles” was reprinted four times since it was first published as a novella by the UP Press in 2002. The slim book became an underground favorite. Total number of copies reprinted by 2006: 6,000.

By then, the novella gathered the critics’ nods: the Grand Prize for the Novel in English at the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 1999; the Philippine National Book Award from the Manila Critics’ Circle in 2002; and the Madrigal Gonzalez Best First Book Award in 2003.

 The copy I recently bought from a local bookstore is from the 2015 printing by independent New York publisher Soho Crime of “Smaller and Smaller Circles,” the novel.

For three years, its author rewrote and expanded the novella from the original 155 pages into the novel’s 357 pages.

The author is Maria Felisa H. Batacan, who worked for 10 years with the Philippine intelligence community, before going into broadcast journalism and crime and mystery fiction writing. She was a fellow at the 1996 Silliman University National Writers Workshop.

Marketing a book through its cover, blurbs neatly summarize the F. H. Batacan behind “Smaller and Smaller Circles”. But blurbs cannot justly capture what makes this novel about a serial killer in 1997 resound to this day. (To be continued)


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)


* First published in SunStar Cebu’s March 12, 2017 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Fire sale

CAN a room have a spirit?

Waiting to consult my professor in his office, I looked around: the framed ancient magazine covers, towers of books that leaned from all corners of the room, the smudged pane of the window he would later open so his cigarette smoke could drift out while the ancient air-conditioning unit wheezed along.

I learned more about poetics in that single visit than from the readings I made the night before. One semester in graduate class, I brought a thesis proposal on media self-regulation to a class handled by a recognized master of Filipino literature in English.

The professor emeritus was too kind to turn me away from the class I took as an elective. I could feel, though, that the jargon and concerns of journalism stood out—grimy and plain as newsprint—in a class where young writers discussed creative works in progress: poetry, novels, a suite of plays.

The differences disappeared when I waited in the professor’s office. Little more than a cubicle with a door, the room bore more than an imprint of the person that occupied it for decades. I do not know if he had worked on drafts of his poems in that room or edited his landmark anthologies at that desk.

If the room bore more than traces of a reading and writing life, it must have been because of the stories overheard by this room. My professor had a habit of reaching out for a nearby volume, reading from it to illustrate his point, and then—the Muses smiled—passing on to me the journals of poetry.

On the morning of Apr. 1, I heard about the dawn fire that gutted the Bulwagang Rizal (Rizal Hall) at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman campus. The inferno destroyed the offices and faculty rooms of two colleges.

A day later, fire also razed two college buildings and the chapel in the Manila campus of the University of the East (UE).

No casualties were reported in the two incidents. Classrooms can be constructed; equipment, replaced.

In contrast, the psychic loss was felt to be “incalculable” by UP Diliman teachers, unable to save manuscripts, notes, books and other collections.

Four publishing houses recently launched the “Sagip-Guro (Save a teacher) Campaign” to benefit the 267 members of the UP Diliman faculty affected by the Bulwagang Rizal fire.

This consortium of Philippine presses encourages individuals and companies to purchase and donate books to the teachers of their choice.

According to the UP Diliman Information Office, the UP Press and the De La Salle University Press will give a 75-percent discount to all titles from Apr. 6 to Nov. 29.

For titles published in 2009 and the previous years, the Anvil Publishing Inc. will give an 80-percent discount; titles from 2010 to the present are discounted by 20 percent.

UP Diliman and UE faculty affected by the campus fires are entitled to a free book published by the Ateneo de Manila Press. All of their titles are also discounted by 50 percent from Apr. 18 to Apr. 29.

In this land of termites, mildew and fire of unknown origins, impermanence shadows knowledge.

Yet, in the life of the mind, only one thing ensures that nothing is lost and something is created: passing on knowledge to the next generation of students who may mentor another generation.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)


*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s April 10, 2016 issue of the “Matamata,” Sunday editorial-page column