PALH BOOK REVIEWS
FAST FOOD FICTION
Edited by Noelle De Jesus
published by Anvil, paperReview by Lifestyle Feature - Sunday Life
Philippine Star-11/09/2003
COPYRIGHT 2003 The Philippine Star
Who has time to read fiction these days? More people
than you might think: short-story collections are one
of the publishing world’s secret successes.
Maybe the trick is to get people to read fiction in
really small portions. That’s the idea, at least,
behind Fast Food Fiction: a collection of short, short
stories (all pieces run at 1,000 words or less)
recently put out by Anvil Publishing.
Sixty stories by 57 local writers, all less than four
pages long. The result is fiction you can read
anywhere – on the MRT, in the office, waiting for your
number to be called at the LTO. Perfect, in short, for
today’s busy urban dweller.
But that doesn’t mean the pieces come up short on
content. After a few patient years of wheedling and
pleading, editor Noelle de Jesus managed to convince a
batch of diverse writers to contribute one or two
stories to this collection (all in English, by the
way; an all-Filipino collection should be Anvil
Publisher Korina Bolasco’s next project). You’ll find
names like Gregorio C. Brilliantes, Jessica Zafra,
Jose Y. Dalisay Jr., Ramon C. Sunico, Nadine Sarreal
and Fran Ng in Fast Food Fiction. You’ll also get a
look at how the "fast fiction" form (also known as
"flash" or "postcard" fiction) can be explored and
manipulated in interesting new ways. With a mix of
young and old writers, there’s a wide range of
expression here – everything from the Filipino abroad
to the far reaches of science fiction (comic book
writer Budjette Tan’s "And All Things Nice").
Small moments are poetically compressed (as in Butch
Dalisay’s meditation on a seashell, "Cypraea
Leucodon"), characters convincingly studied (Jaime
Lim’s "Son"), snapshots taken (Libay Linsangan
Cantor’s "Aperture"); quicksilver insights on love and
loss surface in page after page.
Variety is the lifeblood of such a project, but often
styles can clash or lead to a scattered, disjointed
collection. Not so here, I think. De Jesus did an
admirable job of picking and choosing, grouping
stories in batches of five (though in no discernible
order). If there is one interlocking theme to these
pieces, it’s brevity: the writers work on the fly, as
it were, under the assumption that the average reader
is also in a hurry. An advantage to this approach is:
if one story doesn’t quite grab you, you can quickly
forget it and move on to the next.
A small confession here: I am one of the writers
represented in Fast Food Fiction, and so is my wife,
Therese. (My story, "Love Birds," appeared in a
slightly different form in these pages two years back.
My wife’s story is called "Beauty.") Self-serving as
it may be, I have no problem saying this volume is
worth checking out, just for the sheer variety of
writing talent. One interesting thing is that none of
the writers, as far as I know, was aware of who else
would be involved, or what others were working on. We
just blindly threw our stories into one big pot, and
let De Jesus drain off the dregs. She deserves credit
for making it all gel into something good.
Since there were no rules about theme, content or
style, Fast Food Fiction runs all over the map, from
humor and satire (Zafra’s "The Boy Next Door" draws
the first laughs in the book, and Roberto Clemente’s
"What They’re Reading in Manila" is a satirical gem
about a yearbook editor who goes nuts and decides to
print all the city’s dark, dirty secrets) to surreal
fantasy (Ma. Milagros T. Garcia-Agustines’ "The
Centaur").
Length also varies. Lilledeshan Bose’s "What Is To
Come" runs a mere 124 words, while Dalisay’s piece is
precisely 500 words (which was De Jesus’s original
request to her contributors, thus proving it can be
done). Most of us strayed toward the 1,000 limit. A
piece like Carla Pacis "Star" occupies a single,
unbroken paragraph; others manage to weave two or
three short vignettes into 700 words (Bose’s "The
Break-Up Stories"). Gay lifestyles are explored by
some (Jose Claudio Guerrero’s "Saturday Nights When
Quilts Get Ruined," Floy C. Quintos "Ninong Tells A
Story"), while motherhood is another persistent theme.A story like Fan Ng’s "White Elephants Like Hills"
slyly inverts the Hemingway classic it’s based on,
while others take a look at deadly-serious issues such
as the death penalty (Sarreal’s "Clearing Debt") or
female oppression (Sunico’s "Our Secret Language").
I guess what really helps this collection stand out is
texture. Five hundred to 1,000 words is not a lot of
room in which to create a living, breathing world, but
the best pieces in Fast Food Fiction do just that.
Some pieces strive too hard, some could have used
fewer adjectives and more development, some writers
suffer in comparison to more experienced masters. But
it’s a curious thing: I read this collection a month
ago, shortly after it was launched. As I peruse the
titles again now, I realize that quite a few of them
still seem fresh in my mind. Like a pop song with good
hooks, there’s a surprising amount of impact to be
found in such a short, pithy form. Maybe it proves
that the "fast fiction" genre is about more than just
flashy classroom exercises. Texture and impact are
qualities you may not expect from a book with "fast
food" in the title. But – surprise – it‘s in there.
And what do you know? My review came in under 1,000
words.
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