In between story edits and coffee breaks, we’ve managed to get Emily to say a few things. Listen to a woman who has spent her life telling all sorts of stories.

ON FICTION . . .

I’ve often wondered if there is really such a thing as fiction. Think about it for a few minutes: surely you’ve encountered so many real life stories that are so strange, you know they’d make good fiction.

How dry and cerebral and boring to be stuck only in the world that we encounter with our senses.


ON FAVORITE STORIES AND STORYTELLERS . . .

I don’t have one yata . . . (a favorite short story of all time), I don’t mind telling you, though, that the first story that pops into my mind is Faulkner’s "A Rose for Emily", which mind you, isn’t necessarily one of my favorites, but the title is stuck there in my mind for obvious reasons.

The other story that comes to mind is that Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe. Again, I won’t tag it a favorite, but it’s there, filed away. Come to think of it, I also like a lot of Roald Dahl’s short stories . . . hmmm, I seem to have a fondness for dark tales.

I have to be honest. I don’t have a favorite Filipino storyteller actually.

My real favorite favorite Filipino storyteller was my father, although he wasn’t Filipino and he didn’t write. He told us stories . . . made them up every night.

I always enjoyed the style of Nick Joaquin, Kerima Polotan, Cirilo Bautista . . . we have so many gifted writers. Krip Yuson, Butch Dalisay, Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo, Gilda Cordero, and Carmen Guerrero Nakpil. Lakambini Sitoy, I like what I’ve read of hers. I always get a kick out of Jessica Zafra . . . I remember reading stories of Carlos Bulosan ( I think he was the first Filipino writer I ever read. I found the stories moving.)

Paz Benitez: masterful in that old-fashioned way. Her use of English is romantic, like a wrought-iron fence, rusted but still elegant, its design traced by tendrils from a cadena de amor in full bloom . . .

I didn’t answer your question ‘no?


ON THIS ISSUE . . .

The weaving together of beasts and humans; the conversation between heaven and earth, the divine and the mundane, and how they hide behind one another’s masks. I like Dean Alfar’s “The Maiden and the Crocodile” because it hints, but never specifies. So always there is mystery, and it’s a love story besides! Beauty and the beast in reverse. And it is written sparingly; the author leaves room for the reader.

You were such a pest, and impossible to say no to, so I agreed to be your guest editor. Thank God you don’t push drugs.


ON WRITING . . .

You mean aside from TV ads? Yes, I’ve written a bit of fiction. Just short exercises; nothing published. The little writing that I’ve done with any consistency was a column in The Evening Paper.

International Appeal? Why not? I think we have some outstanding writers in English. I just don’t think anyone here is pushing hard enough for international publication or distribution.


ON READING . . .

I still think we have a job to do trying to get Filipinos to read, period.

The first book I ever owned (though my father bought it) was a compilation of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Pretty grim stories. I was around 8-9.

We had tons of books to read at home; my father was a hungry reader. He was trying to improve his English at the same time, I guess.


Read "The Green Chair" by Emily Abrera