Whadya Know! Inquirer Again Interviews a Famous Fil-Am Writer.

Philadelphia Inquirer talks to Lynda Barry, one of my favorite author/artists.

"We didn't have any books in the house I grew up in," Barry recalls of her hands-off rearing in Seattle. Thanks to a supermarket giveaway, four books made it into the house. Tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. Heidi. The Arabian Nights.

"It was hard to find a place to read. That's why I loved the library," she recalls. To this day, the once "scraggly kid who didn't have a cared-for look" keeps a bookcase "with glass doors full of the oldest books I can find just so I can have that library smell when I need it. That's a smell that makes me feel that anything is possible."

Barry went to high school with Kenny G ("no comment"), college with Groening ("Funk Lord of USA"), and dated This American Life host Ira Glass ("I'll pass").

Typewriter Returns!

The Japanese multinational Brother sold 12,000 electronic typewriters last year in the UK, which is its biggest market in Europe. Electronic typewriters, not computers. BBC is now saying many people are going back to the tired old typewriters. Why?

The writer Will Self is a convert. He went back to using a manual typewriter several years ago. "I think the computer user does their thinking on the screen, and the non-computer user is compelled, because he or she has to retype a whole text, to do a lot more thinking in the head," he said in a recent interview. More

Rio Alma Lecture

National Artist for Literature Virgilio S. Almario, aka Rio Alma, will deliver a lecture about literature and its primary role in the formation of Filipino identity titled “Reklamasyon ng Pambansang Gunita,” (Recuperation of the Filipino National Consciousness) . This will be held on June 7, 2008 at 1:30 pm in Room 201 of the College of Arts and Letters in UP Diliman.
Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika, at Anyo (LIRA) sponsors the lecture as an opening event of its annual poetry workshop. LIRA, an organization of poets in Filipino, was established in 1985 and has produced respected poets like Michael Coroza, Jerry Gracio, Roberto and Rebecca Añonuevo, and Vim Nadera.This lecture is open to the public. For details, contact En Villasis at 09224596365 or visit http://liraonline. org.

Women Bloggers

Wanted: Great Blogs By and For Women in the News Media

The International Women's Media Foundation is looking for a few good blogs by and for women in the news media to feature on its revamped Web site, which will be launched in October. Specifically, we'd like to find people who blog about journalism or keep a blog as part of their job in the news media. We hope this will allow women journalists worldwide to connect with one another electronically by sharing experiences and observations about the news media. Please direct blog suggestions or questions to LWray@iwmf.org. The IWMF publishes the E-Wire to keep the IWMF network informed about news and upcoming events of interest to women journalists worldwide.

Haruki Murakami on Translations

Haruki-san talks to Mainichi about translating American literary giants
Also Powerpuff Girls are now ten years old!

Ay! Marisa delos Santos, the biggest selling Pinay author in the States right now, Talks to the Wrong Inquirer

Marisa (pronounced "Mareesa") de los Santos, with her second novel, Belong to Me (William Morrow, $24.95), about a young Center City couple who move to the Philadelphia suburbs, is now a bona fide New York Times best-selling author. And that's the hardcover list, thank you. Now read the rest of the Philadelphia Inquirer article by the great Carlin Romero.
Her next novel will delve on the Philippines daw. Promise.

Four Books for Aspiring Writers

These are Mental Floss's suggestions.

The Pundaquit Cookoff

I can't write. That clam I ate at the Army-Navy Club did it. And the oyster and prawns. Downed with San Miguel. I slept througout the whole trip but still remembered that dinner. Anyway, the Trouble-Frees will be having a cookoff in Zambales at the end of the month. Iron Chef and Survivor Series combined with the music of the Bolipatas. And the secret ingredient is...

Pichay

Nick Pichay has a new blog. His second entry will kill you. If not, he also sent me this to kill you:

May 1

Roland T and Ed Cabagnot are back. Richer, I hope ha ha ha. Palanca was postponed until May 5. So revise, revise, revise. I am keeping my fingers crossed for three friends to win, again.

Youth and Plants

Why are plants green? The answer is not that easy.
Also, why does it take so long to be young.
NSFM (not safe for morons)
The more the world becomes rational, the more we need enchantment in fiction. Why?

Barthelme in Bontoc

Reading companions in Bontoc were a Poets&Writers magazine and "Not-Knowing", book on the nonfiction works of Donald Barthelme. Left D.B. in a hotel and thought I lost it forever. But, Lo and behold!, had it returned to me against all odds. It's a sign.

"Play is one of the great possibilities of art; it is also ... the
Eros-principle whose repression means total calamity. The humorless
practitioners of le noveau roman produce such calamities regularly, as do our
native worshippers of the sovereign Fact. It is the result of a lack of
seriousness."--From an essay, "After Joyce"

Butch in Baguio

Butch Dalisay, who caused some of us to twiddle our thumbs and wiggle our asses when he described our batch as "trouble-free," already wrote about us in his column.
Nick Pichay, who prides in calling himself The Troublemaker, has actually mellowed down. And so are the rest of us. We just consoled ourselves (after being called "troublefree") to being matured enough for histrionics. As Tara Sering said, we would just do trouble with our writings.
Speaking of the charming Tara, she and Luis Katigbak were cited by Butch in the above column. Yay! Way to go!

Jhumpa on Writing

"Writing is so humbling, there’s no confidence involved. It helps to have some experience, a greater degree of familiarity with the process of writing. I think each time you start a story or novel or whatever, you are absolutely at the bottom of the ladder all over again. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done before." Jhumpa Lahiri

Sid

I got a text from dear Babeth early this morning:

Fr a CCP Official - Sid Hildawa will be cremated this morning then wake will be at the Dis Bosco Chapels. He passed away last nyt due to pneumonia

So I said something about April Fools
Her next txt was:

Sid's last entry in his journal yesterday night said: "I tried to cross the river but the current was so strong."

Resumes That Work

Here are 36 resumes that are effective and pleasing to the eye without being too OA
If you noticed, there are white spaces galore, none use Times New Roman, they are simple, there are cotnrasts and the names are big. They used bullets and the contact infos are all one one spot.
And of course, you must watch this amazing video: The return of the "We Are the World" powerhouse singers in Tokyo

Another Blog Why Newspapers are Dying

But this one is quite in there. No more "It's the fault of Internet" but it's the fault of the owners. Hey Listen:

The creation of monopoly markets and, through consolidation, cartels of newspaper ownership. Economic history shows us that monopolies and cartels always commit suicide. Divorced from the imperatives of real competition, monopolies easily slip into a self-centered world of bureaucratic conformity and a desire to protect the status quo. They became slow and rigid, in other words, road kill for competitors.

Jim Zwick: Twain's Main Man and Pinoy Ally

Jim Zwick, 51, an American Studies scholar whose specialties included Mark Twain, political history, and the educational usages of the internet died Thursday (January 24, 2008) at his home outside of Syracuse, New York. Zwick was the author of numerous noted books and
articles on Twain, anti-imperialism and other topics. Major
publications included the books Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire, Inuit
Entertainers in the United States, and Confronting Imperialism: Essays
on Mark Twain and the Anti-Imperialist League. He was a frequent
contributor to a wide range of journals and anthologies. Zwick began
creating websites in 1994. He created and ran the Mark Twain site at
About.com, later consolidating his many writings into the widely cited
Boondocksnet.com, which was included in the reading list of Mark Twain courses at universities worldwide. In 2000, he ran the author's posthumous online campaign for the Presidency, MSNB's top-ranked campaign website. With his unique perspective, he provided consultation and commentary for documentary films including Ken Burns' Mark Twain. Living in Hong Kong during the 1970's, his language skills allowed him to travel extensively in the Peoples' Republic of China in 1979, long before the current openness. He later traveled in the Philippines, and was long active with the Friends of the Filipino People. Zwick also served on the Executive Committee of the Mark Twain Circle. Zwick received his BA at Earlham College in 1981 and his MA in Comparative Politics and World History at Syracuse University where he continued to do post-graduate work and teach for some time. He attended Wethersfield High School and the Shanti School in Hartford. Zwick is survived by his father and step-mother Frank and Lynn Zwick of Myrtle Beach, SC, his sister Joan Zwick of Tolland, brothers David
of Old Saybrook, Douglas of Los Angeles, and their families. He is predeceased by his mother Joan Jenkins Zwick, and sister, Susan Laurie Zwick. Memorial contributions may be made to Human Rights Watch, 350 5th Avenue, 34th Floor, New York, NY 10118 (www.hrw.org/donations).

When the Column About the Poems that Came Back to Haunt You Also Came Back to Haunt You

While looking for the author of a poem which we wanted included in "Mondo Marcos," I came upon my poetry column in Sun Star five years ago. This was written in Nov 26, 2002:

When your poems come back to haunt you
By Frank Cimatu

LAST Friday, I got a copy of my old poems. These were made more than 10 years ago. Many of these poems I have not seen since sending them to Palanca. I was still using those huge, really floppy disks then and using Wordstar 5. They were killed by primitive viruses and molds. Anyway, my poems looked primitive now with those ribbon printers. Some of the poems I didn't know I submitted.

And the typos! I was surprised these poems won the Palanca. For one, my Filipino poems were titled Desaparacido/Desparadico. It should be "Desaparadico" but in my haste, I forgot the crucial "a." Then looking at them last Friday, I realized it should be "Desaparadiso." How I want to creep into the Palanca office and edit my poems.

Because I have the worst filing system in Baguio, I have no copies of many of these poems and the sight of them is similar to a passage I recalled about an archeologist opening a tomb unopened for centuries. When he opened the lid, the body was intact and right before the archeologist's eyes, the body collapsed upon contact with air, leaving a tempest of dust. It was so Spielberg.

When I saw my early poems, I was so filled with pride seeing those twist of lines and rhymes. And then the air filled these poems as you recall those attempts of revisions filling at least five spiral notebooks. And then you see the grammatical errors, waylaid commas and semicolons, and a line (in one instance, a crucial stanza) that you forgot to put in. How can I be so stupid! How can the judges not see these? Then your poems collapsed in front of you.

In the case of the archeologist, he was left with dust and also, the fine battle uniform and the jewels. At least I have my old poems, that I have to edit and rework until they look fine again. Or until the next long-time-no-see.

I remember Jun Cruz Reyes, the Raymond Carver of Philippine literature, saying that he has some things that some of our great writers would die to retrieve from him. He has their works which they submitted to the UP National Writer's Workshop. Now don't get me wrong! The UP workshop is the most prestigious rite-of-passage in the country and getting there is no easy task. Talent, or even the occasional brilliant flash-in-the-pan is not enough.

Sometimes, I think the panelists bring in some fellows who has some potential but is still not of workshop caliber. Or some of the usual suspects. You know your Sun Tzu - you kill a rooster to scare the monkeys. Bring in a fellow who is really terrible and slaughter him or her in front of the other people. Watch them cringe and swear literature off their bodies for the rest of their lives.

I attended the UP workshop in 1988 (yes, The Great Batch of 1988) and believe me, it was a bloodshed, not like the patronizing ones I observed later.

Philippine literature is looking for those rare ones who rise from the trenches and eventually become the greatest of their generation.

Let us not be ashamed of our juvenilias. Except for a few exceptions, and I assure you it's not the brand of baby milk that made the difference, all of us were terrible ones. Some of us are enfant terribles, others remained terrible and infantile while the rest rose from the ranks.

It's not easy to be a writer. You need your formulas: Three Ps (persistence, patience, peskiness), Three Rs (read, revise and revise again) and others.

You need your muses (Don't marry them. The unrequited ones are more ideal) and your succubi and incubi.. You need to love and fall in love and when you fall, fall down hard. (I remember writing a review on the Eraserheads' Cutterpillow and telling them to find more heartbreaks for your own good. Last year, I got an email from another rocker saying he clipped that review and highlighted that particular advice. Told you I am better than Joe D'Mango).

Release your poems and let them live by themselves. When they come back to you like what some of them did last Friday, you feel like the prodigal father who had to serve a feast for them. That's why I have to pay the bill even if I didn't order what you ate and drank (Tes, Etot, Day, Mary, Vince and Evie), it's because my poems had come home (Thanks, Grace).

Arnel Salgado's Favorite Phrase

purple prose (PUR-puhl proz) noun

An overly ornate piece of writing.

[Two synonyms of the term are 'purple passage' and 'purple patch'. The idea comes
from Latin pannus purpureus (purple patch), a phrase used by the poet Horace in
his Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry) to suggest a patch of royal fabric on an
ordinary cloth, a brilliant piece of writing in an overall dull work.
Purple was the color of choice by the royalty as the purple dye was the most rare
and hence most expensive.]