Reading your essays, especially those that look back to your own experiences, reminds me that dystopias miraculously seem to create and stimulate wholesome and optimistic people, who somehow carry an idea of a better way.

I’m sure a lot of folks became most acutely aware of life in the Philippines only in the unquiet days following the assassination of Ninoy Aquino, and the grace of his widow Corazón responding to the vast arousal of the population.

I remember being thunderstruck at the resolute courage of nuns, students, street vendors, merchants, jitney-drivers, and workers facing armed soldiers in the demonstrations after Ferdinand Marcos was prounounced the winner of the next election, widely perceived as a blatant fraud. In the U.S. we assume the government will not fire on crowds except where violence has already been going on, but that doesn’t seem to be a common constraint in other places.

What I particularly remember is how the (mostly) quiet and determined non-violent resistance of the Philippine people won the admiration and respect of many millions of folks around the world.

The image comes to mind of residents of Calcutta’s shanty towns emerging in spotlessly clean business suits to make their way to work after navigating dingy narrow passages and open sewers, trying day-by-day to make a better life. Many of us would give up, faced with relentless grime and chaotic physical and moral situations. I can only wonder at the journey that Wretchard has made.

I also really liked your observation you could truly disappear amongst the street vendors that the military and ruling elites in the Philippines saw as invisible.

I have been a regular reader since you were blog-rolled by Steven den Beste. You have one of the most rewarding blogs on the Internet. Thank you for all that you have written.

I had an an assignment in Manila for about five years. (I was a contractor.) I learned to like Manila and I long to return for a very long visit. I recognized in your story much of the details of Manila, (e.g., the mountains east of Manila that I have driven through many times, the balot vendors, and so on.)

For what it is worth, I want you to know that I enjoyed this story of life in and around Manila. I will welcome future stories of this nature.

all of my best,

I read “How can I tell you” four times; (I didn’t listen to the linked tune because my computer doesn’t have audio). Each time I labored through it I found it stronger. This was my response: Disjointed, though evocative; or, alternatively, evocative, though disjointed.

I mean two separate things. If it’s disjointed though evocative it means that the emotions are solid but the artistry needs work; if it’s evocative though disjointed, it means that it’s the personality that hasn’t yet gotten things sorted out; there’s a lot of emotion, it communicates, but it doesn’t yet quite make sense within the personality of the artist. In this case artistry isn’t the problem, but understanding.

Taking the last first. It was Hemingway who said: “The hardest thing about writing is knowing how you feel about things.” (That may not be an exact quote but it’s close enough.) Hemingway was a simple fellow, so he knew what he felt about things by the time he was twenty-five and was able to write The Sun Also Rises. His understanding never moved much beyond that. More complex men, like Hawthorne or Melville, didn’t write their best work until in their forties; it took them awhile to discover how they “felt about things.” In general, the more complex a man the longer it takes him to find his voice.

As to the artistry. I personally find the transducer stuff clunky. It’s hard to move from a destroyer tracking a Soviet sub to a greasepit blaring the weirdly terrifying to the submerged self trying to outrun the transducer, and hold all that in mind well enough for it to finally communicate an impact. It’s a concept, but to work it would need work, (even though I admit that the “aching desire to become ‘normal’” in a society in which to be normal would presumably mean to abandon personal values is something that is communicated with some sharpness).

The piece becomes stronger on several readings, but it has to be “figured out”; that I take as an indication that the artistry doesn’t yet match the event, but whether the problem lies in lack of the clarity of the art, or in lack of clarity of the feeling isn’t clear. Probably a little of both…

Since I’m in the process of being nobody’s friend I might as well continue.

In a previous comment you wrote: “Writing fiction is a whole lot harder than writing essays…” (True, and recreating a past world utilizes exactly the same talents used in creating a fictive world) “…fiction requires the construction of a backdrop; a fictional universe in which to set your tale. Tolkien spent decades creating Middle Earth before he set the first story inside of it.” True, and all of us spend decades creating our own Middle Earth, it’s called our own life; but before we can “set a story in it”, or write of it well, we have to understand it, we have to know “what we feel about things”. Tolkien did something necessary to him, he created a fictive world that made sense of the world in which he lived, but for most of us that’s not necessary. It’s not necessary to invent, it’s necessary only to understand what we’ve lived, and most of that understanding comes through just plain writing.

Further: “Then there is the tale itself. A story is a special construct, in which all the virtues of the essay –clarity, directness, brevity– become vices.” Wrong. Clarity, directness, brevity, are exactly the virtues of a good story –never an unnecessary work, never a word out of place. The very best writing is always breathtaking in it’s directness, inherent logic, and simplicity. –There is of course a huge difference with the essay. The essay is purely analytical, the story is purely imaginative, with all that’s analytical in it hidden behind the clarity, brevity, and directness of image. The analytical and imaginative functions can exist in the same man, but they can not function at the same time. It’s the analytical that has to take a walk, and modestly hide itself as the artist goes about his work of portraiture.

“In the essay you maintain a distance from the subject. But in a story you’re in the subject itself.” Nope. In writing a story you’re ice cold, even if you’re the subject. Great excitement is possible, but if, while writing, you have more attachment to the subject than to a corpse then you’re not concentrating. Imagination is a cold business. Simply write accurately. It’s the reader who gets emotional. You can have your emotion two or three years later.

So, I have pontificated. I do this to my friends too. Their wives like me.

I do think that the struggle to simply express the powerful emotions of the past, and put them into some comprehensive order, is one of the finer things a man can do with his life.

Do you mean V. S. Naipaul?

yes

I think that program self selected atypical people. And of course there were, and are Filipino patriots who really want to serve their nation, but I don’t believe they represent the norm. It’s standard there to pay bribes to the cops, the local military, the civil service, whomever you need to get services from the local government. Sure, we have corrupt judges and cops and politicians in the US, but they aren’t supposed to be and their discovery always provokes outrage and much scuttling for cover.

Well, maybe not always, say in Chicago or parts of NYC, where indicting some influential scumbag brings out the ordinary Joe citizens loudly proclaiming the sterling civic qualities of this stand up guy, who looks out for his neighbors and is always there the help out.

And that’s been the modus operandi in much of the Philippines for a very long time. It will take generations, I think, for it to fade out. Recall that the American colonists were heir to a long tradition of political thought concerning the nature of citizenship. The PI, along with much of the rest of the world, was shortchanged that. Case in point, Russia. They still have figured out how to be free sovereign citizens, or even why they ought to be.

Do you mean V. S. Naipaul?