i’m the last person who will look down on what people enjoy reading, nor will i insist that you must read certain books in order for you to be called “literary”. i will insist though that anyone who decides to diss any form of literature, particularly philippine lit, even more so literature in our vernaculars, has better sense than just his or her superficial notions of taste and literature, and in this case, language. (more…)
chanced upon Korina Today, with Samantha Echavez, Carljoe Javier and Dean Francis Alfar, talking about their works included in what seems to be the anthology on tales of enchantment and fantasy, which is really beside the point of this critique.
the point being this: Alfar says that having readers isn’t a matter of length or short attention spans, as with the blog and its accessibility in terms of form, but that it’s a matter of, and i quote, “the story”. he says he doesn’t think it’s true that there’s a problem with readership, and that readers will be lost to new media, because the Filipino reader wants a good story. he then of course, talks about himself, and his experiment with Salamanca, which he says, he had published in parts on his blog for 30 consecutive days, and he got a lot of comments, and he won the palanca and got published by ateneo press. (more…)
“National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera reaffirms Asian identities in the national languages, as Int’l Literature Conference closes”
This was a most fitting end. After two days of plenaries and panel sessions that talked about particular aspects of a very diverse set of cultures within Asia, Filipino National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera tied everything together by highlighting our dependence on, and thus the importance of, translation in his paper entitled “The Necessity of Footnotes: Translating the Culture.”
In light of the various languages in this region we call ours, this couldn’t come at a better time. (more…)