The Lovely Bienvenido N. Santos

by Isagani R. Cruz

The Creative Nonfictional Biographical Play in Two Acts The Lovely Bienvenido N. Santos won one of the five first prizes in the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature that earned Isagani R. Cruz a place in the Palanca Hall of Fame.

92 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 2005

About the author

Former Philippine Undersecretary of Education ISAGANI R. CRUZ (Ph.D. English, University of Maryland) is currently a Professor Emeritus, a University Fellow, and the Academic Publications Executive Publisher of De La Salle University, the Director of the Teachers Academy of Far Eastern University, and a Visiting Lecturer at the Ateneo de Manila University and the University of Santo Tomas. He writes plays, essays, biographies, and short stories in Filipino and English, for which he has won numerous national and international awards, including the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards in Literature Hall of Fame and the Southeast Asian Writers (SEAWRITE) Award. He has written or edited more than thirty books. He has been a professor or a visiting fellow at various universities in the Philippines, the United States, Iran, Japan, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom, including the University of Oxford. He heads the Philippine Fulbright Scholars Association, Wika ng Kultura at Agham (WIKA), Books for Philippine Schools Foundation, the Active E-Learning Technologies Foundation, and Libro Amigo Publishers. He co-founded the Manila Critics Circle, the Philippine Association of Scholarly and Academic Publishers (PASAP) and the Philippine Journals Online project. He is the former President of the Philippine Studies Association (PSA). He is a retired Senior Bibliographer of the Modern Language Association of America (MLA). He has been decorated by the Government of France as a Chevalier dans l’Ordre National du Mérite and by the Ramain family as Honorary Sultan of Iligan City. He is a Project Director of the Foundation for Upgrading the Standard of Education (FUSE) and is the Program Director of the Philippine Cultural Education Program (PCEP) of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). He is a member of the English Speaking Union (ESU) Philippines, the Technical Advisory Council of the Congressional Commission on Science, Technology, and Engineering (COMSTE), Filipinas Licensing Copyright Society (FILCOLS), and Former Senior Government Officials (FSGO). He writes for Philippine Star and BizNews Asia.

Reviews

[JANICE DUMAGPI · Rating 5 out of 5]

well... I think this story is wonderful even if I didn't read this story yet. I like the title so I'm curious about it.

[Sage · Rating 3 out of 5]

a piece
of autumn's
chill fell into
my coffee
and i cried
waiter
take this
away
and give me
spring

English was one of Bienvenido N. Santos' native tongues. In fact he wrote mostly in English. Yet that did not make him less of a Filipino.

I picked up The Lovely Bienvenido N. Santos because I loved his short stories in high school. I hoped I'd finally put a face to the name I admired greatly. Sadly, the book gave little information that I haven't already encountered on the internet.

Isagani Cruz himself stated that he only showed curated sides of Santos. The manner of presentation was experimental. This is not a traditional biography. In the book are two plays: one featuring characters from Santos' pieces, and another with a single character: Bienvenido Santos himself. To fully appreciate this book, one must be familiar with his opus maximum (is my latin correct?). Although I read some pieces, I did not know his work as well as I would have wanted to... Thus limiting my understanding of the book.

I appreciate Cruz's choice of a nontraditional biography, however the content of the first play seemed unnecessary, and he could have written a more powerful representation. Included are excerpts from Santos' novels, short stories, and poems. I wish there were more.

At the end I felt like Cruz was dangling Bienvenido Santos on a fishing pole, and I could almost reach out to him and his lovely, lovely mind -- until Cruz yanked him back.

Plus points for the physical presentation: the material used for the cover feels luxurious for a paperback.

3 stars.

[Ness]

lovely