Philippine Literature Today: A View from Afar by H.O. Santos
ET me begin by telling you about my background and what I did to learn about Philippine literature. This will give you an idea of how my impressions may have come about.
I started writing fiction about four years ago. Prior to that, I had read very few short stories, and only a handful of them were Philippine stories. I read novels because they were easier to obtain. In any library or bookstore you will find only one book of short stories for every hundred or so novels. And because I have lived the major part of my life outside the Philippines, I wasn’t familiar with Philippine writing—they’re not easy to find where I live. It didn’t help that my school curriculum didn’t include Philippine literature—we only studied American and English literature.
However, I have since made up for that by having read a couple of hundred Philippine short stories in the last two years. That was in addition to the 120 contemporary non-Philippine short stories I’ve been reading on the average every year since 1998. Writer friends advised me I needed to read at least two a week if I wanted to write short stories. They said reading novels provides little help to anyone who wants to write short stories.
At the same time I started reading Philippine short stories, I combed the Internet for news and information about what was going on in the Philippine literary world. I read Philippine magazines and tear sheets mailed to me by friends. I exchanged emails with writers to get their views and at least a second-hand look at politics in the Philippine literary establishment.
You can see that my views are those of an outsider and the only thing that can color them may be my prior exposure to non-Philippine short stories before I started reading Philippine stories.
HOW does the Philippine literary establishment look from afar? It appears to be a small, tight-knit community—too small for a nation of 70 million people. In this community, comments critical of another’s work seem
I started writing fiction about four years ago. Prior to that, I had read very few short stories, and only a handful of them were Philippine stories. I read novels because they were easier to obtain. In any library or bookstore you will find only one book of short stories for every hundred or so novels. And because I have lived the major part of my life outside the Philippines, I wasn’t familiar with Philippine writing—they’re not easy to find where I live. It didn’t help that my school curriculum didn’t include Philippine literature—we only studied American and English literature.
However, I have since made up for that by having read a couple of hundred Philippine short stories in the last two years. That was in addition to the 120 contemporary non-Philippine short stories I’ve been reading on the average every year since 1998. Writer friends advised me I needed to read at least two a week if I wanted to write short stories. They said reading novels provides little help to anyone who wants to write short stories.
At the same time I started reading Philippine short stories, I combed the Internet for news and information about what was going on in the Philippine literary world. I read Philippine magazines and tear sheets mailed to me by friends. I exchanged emails with writers to get their views and at least a second-hand look at politics in the Philippine literary establishment.
You can see that my views are those of an outsider and the only thing that can color them may be my prior exposure to non-Philippine short stories before I started reading Philippine stories.
HOW does the Philippine literary establishment look from afar? It appears to be a small, tight-knit community—too small for a nation of 70 million people. In this community, comments critical of another’s work seem