Dear Mr F Sionil Jose As someone who has read ALL your books (and essays), it was right for you to offer your condolences to me in a US embassy event, more than a decade ago. The role of the writer is to "expose our grievous faults" as Steinbeck said, in his 1962 Nobel Prize banquet speech. You have done that, to a nation, to our tragedy as writers, that nation does not read. And this nation is expected never to read. Ask any of the candidates for the elections when they have recently read a book? Reading all your books is both enslaving and liberating at the same time. Books should enslave us to ideas and paradoxically should liberate us too. The Book is where enslavement and liberation start. John Steinbeck the socialist, noted that in Stalin's Russia, people did not ask for arms, or food (the Russians being hungry because of Stalin's collectivization), but books! And Steinbeck too, predicted that the book in the hand is the weapon and people will never abandon bo
Well it seems with that proposal to rename Camp Aguinaldo to Camp Antonio Luna in time for National Heroes Day has generated a lot of social media buzz. We really have to really understand our national heroes. Antonio Luna was a remarkable personality but like all of us was flawed. He likely would be an academic had the revolution not intervened. He would have been the first Dean of a College of Science of the Philippine University had the nation made the transition to indepe ndence in a peaceful manner. That was recognized by the American College of Pharmacy when they feted Dr Luna on what would have been his 60th birthday noting his work in combating malaria. But that was not to be. He became a soldier. General Luna was for a professional military within the bounds of the constitution. Perhaps that is the biggest sign of contradiction for today. Please answer the question: Would President Duterte (or a President Aquino, Marcos, Arroyo, Quezon etc) have a General Luna as his c