Creative Nonfiction: An Overview

Does nonfiction exist in the Philippines?

In the Philippines today, the field of nonfiction is incrediblyvaried, and it is located in the Pages of newspapers and magazines,as it was in the time of the first Filipino essayists in English duringthe Commonwealth Period.

The essay in the Philippines enjoyed a kind of "golden age"before world war II. unfortunately, nearly all of the coilections ofprewar essays in English are out of print. Dear Devices (1933), the?irst of these, includes the work of the first generation of essayistsin English, A. E. Litiatco, Maria Luna Lopez, Federico Mangahas,]ose iansa.g, Maria Kalaw Katigbak, Fralcisco lcasiano, etc. Theiirst single-althor book of essays was The CaIl of the Heights (1937)by AifrJdo Gonza\ez. These books were foilowed by collections ofworks which first appeared as newsPaper columns, like Literatureand society (1940) by salvador Lopez and Horizons from My NipnHut {1941) by Francisco lcasiano. Most of the varieties of creativenonfiction, as practiced in the lrhilippines today are already to befound in these early volumes-social commentary, reverie,reflection, recollection, meditation, humorous sketch, journal entry,letter, travel sketch, Profile.

After the war, some prewar writers-Francisco Arceliana,Amador Daguio, Estrella Alfon, Fura santillan castrerrce-continued to produce essays and personal narratives. And Kerimapolotan, Adrian cristobai, F. sionil jose, and NVM Gonzalez beganpublishing essays.

In a fit1tre (arid tittte-knor,vn) voiume caltrectr f,ittle Ileporfs (1986),Juan T. Gatbonton collectecl the trnsigned editorials which tie haclwritten for the Manila Cl'wonicle's Sr-rnday suppierrrent, This Wcr:k,which he eclited l:rom 1954 to tr958. Flis own foreworcl clescribe:;how he ancl his colleagues regarded ti'leir work:

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Most clf us who rarr tlrt: rnagirzint' Ilrt'rr wt'r't.tr rllt11.t.l,rssr r rir lr.srecent graduates or dropouts frtlm journ.tlisnt sclrtxrl. Wt.all atlrrrir.trlThe New Yorker and copied its prose style, with nluch zcitl, if littkrskill. Our idol was, of course, E. B. White, whose elegant essays for"Notes and Comments" led off every New Yorker issue. In "LittlcReports" ... we tried to echo his halloos, which certainly bearrepeating. (P. ix)

The elegance he admired is obvious in the pages of Gatbonton,sown book, an elegance which strikes the contemporary reader asalmost quaint, so remote does it seem from what fills newspaperpages these days.

That elegance is also present in the work of Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil, who is regarded by sorne as the most distinguished of thepostwar essayists. Nakpil's own reaction to this-expressed in theintroduction to A Question of ldentity (lgTZ), fittingly titled ,,pre-Text"-is characteristic.

I am afraid the distinction was earned only by my having beensuch a bad short story writer. My short stories were so bad that myfriends would say, Of course they're bad. They're not short stories,they're essays. \zVhen one is not much good as a fish, one becomes af.og.

In desperation, I put together some stuff that had appeared innewspapers and magazines under my by-line into a kind of nonboolCcalled Woman Enough and called it a collection of essays. Butsomebody has now written that a few of the pieces in that item arenot essays but short stories. (P.4)

The '60s and early '70s were the era of the philippines Free press,the Philippine Graphic and the Asia Philippines Leader, a high pointin Philippine journalism. These periodicals attracted as staffmembers and regular contributors some of the finest writers of thetime, including NickJoaquin, Gregorio Brillantes, Kerima polotan,Wilfredo Nolledo, Gilda Cordero-Fernando, Ninotchka Rosca, LuisTeodoro, Jose Lacaba, Sylvia Mayuga, Petronilo Bn. Daroy, AntonioHidalgo, Rosario Garcellano, etc.

'l'ltr. rrrpsl plrlilir', .rrrtl t't,t't,titrly tlrt' lriottt'r't', Nit'k f o,rtltritt, ll,tslttr.rl llis lt.ttttl itl ('v('ry varit'ty tlf lrtltrl'it'litttl pl'ttst', irttltrrlirrlilrlolir',rlrlry, ltistory, Profile, tlttttrtoir, cvcll olt irllllatrac' Antl lris1,r.,,,ltr.lti,,rr is sO volurninous that the whrlle ()f it has yct to be1 rropt'rly corrtpilecl.'

'l'1,., rnartial lnw period and the muzzling of the Press led to akrrrg hintus. IJut after 1986, publications returned with a vengeance.

W6at is the scene lite today? The answer can only be:trt,nrcndously exciting. Not all of the publications and publishingIrouscs that cropped up after EDSA 1 are still around today, butthere are enough to make the scene a lively one'

Most of the creative nonfiction being published today still(.onsists of essays (many of them published as newsPaPer columns)and magazine feature articles. The columns themselves range fromthe seriJus political commentary of Conrad de Quiros and Randy[)avid, to the historical trivia of Ambeth ocampo, to the highlypersonal reflections of the wacky JessicaZafraand the sophisticated^Barbara Gonzalez, to the cultural-commentary-disguised-as-food-column of Clinton Palanca (unfortunately discontinued in mid-2002).Many of these columnists eventually compile thebest of theircolumns into books.

A few interesting examples among the recently published booksof nonfiction deserve *et tio.r. Journalist Lorna Kalaw Tirol hascollected essays on midlife by both professional and non-professional wr-iters into several volumes-coming to Terms (1994),'wo*r,

on Fire (1997) and. Primed for Ltfe (1997); and her interviewsinto two others-Aboae the crowd (2000) and Public Faces, PriaateLiaes (2000). Poet Ricardo de Ungria has put together a lovely littlebook containing poems, fiction excerpts, lyrical impressionisticessays and jouinal entries by writers who spent a season inHawthornden Castle in scotland-Luna caledonia (1992).I myselfhave collected autobiographical writings by several generations ofwomen who have wriiten on different phases of a woman's life:childhood, love and marria ge, war, etc. (Pinay: AutobiographicalNaratiaes by Women Writers, 1928-1'998)'

Jullie Dazahas writtenAn Etiquettefor Mistresses (1993)- BarbaraGonzalezhas written a collection of personal essays masquerading

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as a manual on single parenting-llow Dtt You Knout Ytur pcnrlsAre Real? (1,991), and another collection of essays on her farnilycalled We're History! (1998).

Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil's third collection of essays,interestingly titled Whateoer (2002), is out. And Gilda Cordero-Fernando and lVlariel Francisco have produced Ladies Lunch andOther Ways to Wholeness (1994) and A Spirituat pillow Book (t998),two books that defy classification.

Mention should also be made of the handsome, highly literateGCF books on different aspects of Philippine culture (Cordero-Fernando objects to the label. "coffee table books"). Her rnost recentbook, Pinoy Pop Culture (2001), has the look of a superior magazine.

Another noteworthy trend is the proliferation of what are calledthe "glossies,"' magazines which cater to specific markets withspecial interests, e.g., PuIp, Food, Cook, Mega, Metro, FHM, Men'sZone, etc. Some are affiliated with international chains and carry alot of syndicated material, llke Cosmopolitan, Good IlousekeeTting,Tattler and Peaple Asia.The quality of the writing is uneven in thesemagazines. But some of it is quite good, which should not be asurprise, as it is produced by talented young fictionists and poets.The most recent and perhaps the best, in terms of the quality of thewriting in it, is Flip.rt is also unusual in that it bears the stamp oftlre personality of its editor-publisher, ]essica Zafra, whose ownessays are compiled in a whole series of books. !c

According to the editor-in-chief of Cosmapolitan phitipphrcs, themagazine tried publishing short fiction but gave it up because oflack crf interest.r On the other hand, "first-person accounts,' (>n awide numbrer of subiects-in short, creative nonfiction alr,r,aysgenerate interest.

In his 1996 Ramon Magsaysay l,ecture, "Journalism VersusLiterature,"

"NJick ioaquin ciairned that the distinction between thetr,vo fielcls is no longer valid. Describing his own pioneering work,'The Aquinos of Tarlac, he cleclarecl: "Today I clon't th.ink of that berokas reportage ,rr journalism or histnry or biography. I simply thinkof it as literature." (P. 16-1S)

'l'hc aut0[ri0graPhy arrcl [riogrrrphy will be dcalt with in Iaterchapters of this btxrk.

ls creatiue nonfiction a neu genre?

It used to be called personal journalism or literary journalismor new journalism or parajournalism. These days it is labeled"creative nonfiction," a term apparently coined by Theodore A'Rees Cheney. "Cteative nonfiction," he wrote, in Writing CreatiaeNonfiction (1991) "requires the skill of the storyteller and theresearch ability of the rePorter"

This type of writing, begins with the facts, but does much more'It elaborates on the facts, interprets them, and, more significantly,presents them in an interesting and engaging way. It is a "moreimaginative approach to reporting." (P. 3)

The key word is "personal." The writer of creative nonfictionpresents the world-or that slice of it that he wishes to focus on-through the prism of his own personal$r. Thus he makes contactwith the reader in a different way from that of the traditionaljournalist. The reader becomes involved, as he does in fiction. Hegets to know the personalities, gets caught up in the events'Practitioners of the art believe that they may "even come a littlecloser to the 'truth'." (P. 5)

Tom Wolfe, one of the early practitioners of the art, traces thedevelopment of the genre to the travel writing of the L8th and L9thcenturies.z Hemingway's journalism pieces, collected in By-line:Ernest Hemingway (1968), is highly regarded as a modern model forthis type of nonfiction narrative.

Why did creatiae nonfiction deaelop?

Perhaps more interesting than the question of when it gotstarted is why it got started, and why it has become so populartoday. Trying to explain the phenomenon in the west (in the U.S',more specifically), Cheney notes that, first, it addresses a new kindof reading public in the west-a reasonably well-educated public.

lNIlt()l)tl( ll(tN

8 Creatfue Nonfiction: A Manual for Filipino Writers

He quotes Ronald Weber:

... A large and growing public that feels it really should take aninterest and is looking for guidance as to what is, currently "TheReal Thing"... a liberally educated public that had been through therequired surveys of literature yetwas caught up in a contemporaryfascination with the new and the topical.3

And second, it addresses a public interested in nonfiction, notonly because it is truer than fiction, but because it is often strangerthan fiction. Reality itself has become so extravagant and weird,that conventional fiction cannot do it justice.

It would seem, therefore, that what in the so-called Third Worldhas led writers to marvelous realism, has in the west led them tocreative nonfiction.

ls creatiae nonfiction nol,D a distinct field of study (Iike fiction or poetry)?One of the more interesting developments in the U.S. and the

U.K. is academe's validation of the genre as a field of study. KingsCollege in the University of London not only offers general courseslike "Literary Biography and Autobiographyi'but also a courselike "Writing Lives: Literary Biography and Autobioglaphy inTheory, History and Practice," which it describes us "anotlier trans-historical pathway, concentrating on all aspects of literary life-writing." In fact, it is now possible for graduate students to workon what they call a "Writing Lives Pathway," which gives studentsthe option of doing either a critical study or "an exercise inbiography writing."4

Some of their faculty members are also now developing coursesin other forms of "literary life-writing," like the diary,letters, etc.

In October 2000, the Texas A&M University hosted aninterdisciplinary conference on "Autobiography, the Scholar andthe Essay," to investigate such issues as: "How does a'scholar'andcritic write the atrtobiographical essay that expkrres his/her irientitywhilt' l-rt'inB nrrlrt' lltirrt 'rrrcrt'ly' corrft'ssiorral?" ,rntl "l low tlo wt'ttr'llrlli,rlc llrt"t'orrlr,ssiorr,rl',rspr.r'ls ol orrr own lilr':;lory irr otrr'

INTRODUCTION

academic lives and identities?" and "Is there a place for the personalessay in the academy?"s

Interest in nonfiction is growing in our universities as well.The University of the Philippines, the first institution in the countryto offer degrees in Creative Writing, on both the undergraduateand graduate levels, began by offering workshop courses on theessay, and has now established Creative Nonfiction as an area ofspecialization for Creative Writing majors.

Nick Joaquin has commented on this new interest in hisforeword to a collection of essays by Marra Lanot, Diid Vu andOther Essays (1999):

A great change in reading tastes is happening in our times: thedecline in popularity of fiction and a growing preference fornonfiction. The switch is from the novel and the short story to themagazine article and news column ... The essay that used to be theliterary Cinderella is now a sta4 rated more even financially thanshort story or poem ... The modem essay ranges from reportorial tointimatelypersonal ... (P. vii)

& FoR DrscussroNTwo reasons are given above to explain the popularity of creative

nonfiction in the west, particularly in the U.S. Would the same reasonsapply to the Philippines? lf not, what might be the reason for thepopularity of the genre in our country?

What is creatiae nonfiction?

Ten years after Cheney published his book, the term has becomethe accepted way of describing what is becoming perhaps the mostimportant, and certainly the most popular genre in the literaryworld today. Those who insist on a definition might use this one:creative nonfiction is nonfiction prose which utilizes thett'chniqucs and stratcgies of fiction.

lrr '/'/rr' Arl ol ('rrttlittt' Notrf'icliott (1997), l.t.t' ( irrtkirrd writes:

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used to refer to a prose picce that is morc pcrs()nll thitn objt't'livt.or verifiable than an "article," but he stressec-l tlrat thc two irrc vt'rysimilar, and that he himself used them interchangeably.

We might add that the term " articLe" usually refers to a "featurc"in a magazine or newspaper or e-zine. It thus tends to address aspecific type of reader (the particular market of the periodical orwebsite) in which it appears. This represents a certain set ofconstraints. Of course essays, when they are also written forpublication in magazines or journals, must sometimesaccommodate themselves to other types of constraints. We shallreturn to this point later.

A profile is an in-depth articie or essay that concentrates onone person or place. (P. 7)

Literary iournalism or new iournalism is writing in a personalway about the facts in a news event.

Personal narratives, or "life storiesr" as they are now called,may be divided into: autobiographical narratives (e.g., memoirs,travel narratives, journals, etc.); and biographical narratives (e.g.,character sketches, interview stories, etc.)

Elsewhere, I have written:

But when does a feature article become an essay, hence,"literafure"? How about an interview story? or a column? or a moviereview? Is "literariness" a matter of subject or style or approach ortone? For that matter, when does a storgor narrative become anessay? And given the paradigms of poststructuralist criticism,should we be worrying about these distinctions at all? Are not allthese materials simply "texts"? (Hidalgo 2002,p.354.)

As Nick Joaquin put it, referring to his own creative nonfiction:"Today,I don't think of that book as reportage or journalism or

history or biography, I simply think of it as literature." (See p. 5.)The types of creative nonfiction will be discussed more

thoroughly in Part I of this book.

Wlttt! ntt lln' :;lrtltgit't; t'l t','t'ttlit'r tntttlittiott I'l'l l|.rlr.rrt.g,its 0f crcativc nOltfiction arc very tnuclr like thc

rlrnlcglt.r 0l i'icti0n. (lrrtkincl stresses that thtl trasic objective ofr rr.nlrvr.rrorrlit-liolr is ttl teach (he refers to it as "the mission of thep,r.rrrr"'), lrtrt tlre point is to do it in such a manner "that the mostr,.nrrrl,rr,t rt'irtlt'r will be interested in learning more ' "" (P'2)

'lir rrst: a tgrm brlrrowed from traditional joumalism, the pointlrr lo ltatrclle the subject-whatever it might be-as a "humanIrrlt'rt'st" story. What this means is simply that a good piece ofr,t.r..rtive nonfiction has a personal voice, a clearly defined pointo[ vicw, which will reveil itself in the tone, and be presentedlhrough scene, summary and description, as it is in fiction. Allirs striltegies are designed to reach out to the readers and drawtlrt.r. iniagain, as in fiction-without losing track of the facts.

'l'he following paragraph, for example, provides muchirrformation even while sounding a personal note:

Tianggeis short fot "aratt) ng tiangge" or market day' the wordcoming iiom the Chinese and meaning market or marketplace'Durin! the Spanish period farmers used to bring in their produce1'ueget"ables, fruits, chickens, pigs, eggs, panocha'.kakanin' andseulor,al local delicacies like pinipigor the Ilocanos' inuruban andtupig) toan area close to the church ot municipio. In victoria, Tarlac,wiere I grew up , tinngge was held every Saturday in the town plaza 'Farmers in their cars came to town as a family on Friday night orvery early Saturday morning. Other towns had differenl tianggedays,sot'hatitinerantvendorswerebusythewhole-week'movingfrom r.rne town to the next. These markets sold, as well, goods whichwerenotproducedbyfarmers,likeready-to-wearclothes,aluminumcontainers and sliPPers.

InthelgT0s,thepresenttownmarketbuildingwasconstructedon the site of the old market. It is now a roofed structure dividedinto stalls that are rented out by the municipal government' Thetiangge in the town plaza has disappeared, but Saturday is stillmaik"et day, and the firmers still bring their produc e to the palengke,and out-oi-town vendors still come to Victoria on that day'

- Doreen Fernandez, "Tiangge, Talipapa, Palengke"' Satap:

Essays on PhilippineFood (Mr' & Ms' Publication 1988'p'132)

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We will discuss thc strategics of crcativ(f n()nli('li()n itr llr(, n(.xlpart of this book. but we can mention what tlrey irrc r.row:

. aPProacho point-of-view. tone. voiceo structure. a strong beginning. rhetoricaltechniqueso character. concrete and evocative details. sceneo a convincing endingone way of looking at what happens in a work of creative

nonfiction is this: it is a personal account of a quest. The point isthe discovery, the triumph of the quest. It is this discovery, thisinsight, which the reader looks for when he agrees to participatein the adventure. Presenting it as a quest-an e*iitit g exploration-and not just as a bare listing of events or facis or steps ordevelopments or trends-this is the challenge faced by the writerof creative nonfiction.

6 AcnvrryRead the essay below by Karen Ktnawicz, and evaluate it in terms

of whether it contains the right balance of information and imagination,facts and personal impression.

te

Shaking the City:Twenty-Seven Months of Club Dredd, Lower Timog

by Karen Kunawicz

Red Rocks

It was in 1990. Two guys I knew from the late night carpool rideasked me if I wanted to go to this little joint along Timog called Red

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