Jack The Scribbler

Alran Bengzon, author, Ramon Magsaysay Awardee, among others.

Two beers and peanuts — that was the bet.
However, something else was at stake.
It included my self-respect and net worth, both of which have remained at abyssmally low levels for reasons far too complicated to explain, like the President’s thinning hair.
If I agreed, I was pretty sure that whatever was left of my pride and whatever remained of my pesos would be shortly wiped out.
But then again, it was a friendly bet.
Whatever the result was, whoever wins or loses, it was always a reason for celebration; a time for friends to get together again.
Red Constantino, author and Chief Prankster of the Kamuning Republic, wagered that I would be unable to fulfill my vow of refusing to buy any book until the year ends. [See: Red Constantino]
That’s what he said when he wrote comments to a previous blog entry. [See: graphic below, blog entry]
Karl B. Kaufman, friend, ex-co-worker, and a heavy metal fan, also expressed his sentiments, jocular as expected. [See: Karl Kaufman]

In any case, I may already owe Red a beer or two and a platter of roasted highland legumes.
Why?
I may soon buy another book. The one I’m reading now has a major misprint.
On Monday night, while absorbed in Alran Bengzon’s A Matter of Honor — which was about the negotiations covering the US Military Bases in the Philippines — I discovered that I read one passage twice. [See: Alran Bengzon]
The page after the page I was on — 154 — was not 155. It was 91. And the pages 155 to 170 were nowhere to be found.
I “received” the book from the author himself, who, when he was Health Secretary of the late President Corazon Aquino, was appointed as vice-chair of the panel that negotiated with the Americans regarding the US military bases in the Philipines.
In the late nineties, a few years after his book was published, I was able to sit down and interview Bengzon when I was still a reporter for BusinessWorld.
To help me write my feature story, Bengzon was kind enough to lend me the book on the condition that it would be returned.
Like the Rapture, that never happened. (Again, my sincerest apologies, Secretary Bengzon.)
Instead, more than a decade later, while reading his book again, cover to cover this time, I encountered the major printing error, which in turn, has prompted me to admit that yes, Red Constantino is right on the money.
I plan to buy another copy of Bengzon’s book, if only to read the 16-page gap, all before the year ends.
After all, A Matter of Honor is worth every word, prompting Filipinos to think about how they think about their country.

“We must teach ourselves, as individuals and as a nation, to permit no separation between ends and means, between who we are and what we do, between serving the truth and getting ahead. Then and only then can we finally build the nation of which we all dream — a nation that will be peaceful and proud, prosperous and free.

The book is also about how Filipinos kicked the US bases out in 1991 despite internal challenges, both political and economic, that the government was facing at that time: incorrigibly corrupt officials, a restive military, record amounts of foreign debt, escalating oil prices, depleted dollar reserves, a devastating earthquake, a paralyzing volcanic eruption, donor fatigue, among others.
All these and more are weaved in A Matter of Honor, an excellent historical narrative written by Bengzon with assistance from Raul Rodrigo. (And to think that I’m just on page 154.)
Having said that, a new and hopefully error-free copy of the same book might be hard to come by.
I was told by a National Book Store staffer that their only remaining copy is at the Mall of Asia branch.
Question now is: Will I make that two-hour trip to Pasay from Quezon City just to buy the book?
That depends.
I might just ask NBS to bring it to a branch close by.
Or I can have someone in the area, some good soul, to buy it for me. I’ll pay him back, of course.
Who knows? I’ll probably throw in a beer and a platter of peanuts for good measure.

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From the Credits Dept. Picture of Alran Bengzon from the Ateneo Graduate School of Business website which can be visited from this page just by clicking on the photo.

HOWEVER cleverly written, newspaper columns have never been given a decent break.  Treated as the poor cousin of the essay, opinion columns and other similarly-configured pieces of writing have been disallowed membership into the literary club.  Which perhaps explains why in the early nineties, Adrian Cristobal decided against asking fellow columnist and current Makati representative Teodoro M. Locsin Jr. from writing the foreword of Pasquinades, a collection of Cristobal’s pieces printed in the weekend supplement of the defunct Daily Globe, of which Locsin was publisher.  “…I believe that a collection of newspaper columns in book form is sheer vanity: what is perishable—and newspaper pieces are perishable—should be allowed to perish without benefit of clergy,” Cristobal said in his book’s introduction. “[B]eing a ruthlessly honest writer, [TeddyBoy] might go at it too well for my comfort, and I happen to perversely value his friendship more than his honesty.”  Although Locsin was able to defend himself in a speech he delivered at the book’s launch which was later published in the Philippines’ Free Press, their witty exchange emphasized the amorphous position occupied by well-written, non-straightforward news pieces published in dailies, weeklies, and some glossies.  Are such pieces simply just passing fancies, perishable goods to be consumed today and discarded tomorrow? Is there a clear demarcation between the non-fiction piece written under a tight deadline as opposed to the one that was produced leisurely?  An easy enough answer is provided by American critic Cristina Nehring in a May 2003 Harper’s Magazine essay.  “[T]here is only good writing and bad writing, strong thinking and weak thinking,” she said, in a piece entitled, Our Essays, Ourselves: In Defense of the Big Idea.  Going by the Nehring protocol, the collections and anthologies of a number of Filipino writers are not going to lose their luster anytime soon. Besides the work of Cristobal and others, among these anthologies include Renato Redentor Constantino’s The Poverty of Memory: Essays on History and Empire.  With four sections discussing an impressive array of topics—an American anti-imperialist group protesting US annexation of the Philippines to a profile of Iran’s pro-poor prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh—Constantino’s collection is more than just a samples of good writing and in-depth research. It is proof that combining talent, tenacity, and noble intentions can do more than just beat deadlines: it can stimulate ideas, widen perspectives, and help propose alternatives to the current local millieu, which has only helped to deepen oppression, encourage mediocrity, and tolerate ignorance.  In “The vitamins of Erma Geolamin,” Constantino relates the life and times of a domestic helper who has spent 14 years in Hong Kong only to find out later that the money she sent home was squandered by her husband who has been living with another woman.  “Another familiar story…It’s like the relationship between overseas Filipino workers and the Philippine government,” Constantino says, referring to the larger, menacing yet often-overlooked form of squandering: the Philippine government’s automatic provision of using precious dollars earned by the likes of Geolamin to pay for fraudulent, graft-tainted debt, exemplified by the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP). These automatic debt payments, Constantino adds, is “a monumental barbarity that re-exports the dollars remitted by overseas Filipino workers.”  While also celebrating the achievements of these unsung Filipinos, Constantino nevertheless offers a few rules for those intending to secure a brighter future for everyone.  “Rescuing tomorrow from those who wish to appropriate it carries some requisites,” he says in the introduction. “History must penetrate memory. Memory must permeate history. Act deliberately but with dispatch. Understand. Listen. Reach out. Act with others. Rescue tomorrow together. Hope abounds. “The future’s already here,” said the writer William Gibson. “It’s just not widely distributed yet.” Thankfully, in less than 300 pages, Poverty of Memory succeeds in its attempt to enrich and enliven Filipinos’ collective consciousness.

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This shortened version of a longer unpublished review will finally see print in the March 2 issue of Personal Fortune, the monthly magazine of Business Mirror, a Philippine broadsheet