Memorywork: Gregorio Brillantes remembers his fiction through time, theme & technique

• Main Author: Sering, Tara February T.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1996
• Subjects: Brillantes; Gregorio; in fiction; drama; poetry; etc; Philippine fiction; Fiction > Technique; Fiction writing; Authors; Filipino
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/1401
• Institution: De La Salle University

This paper has for its subject writer Gregorio Brillantes and two of his major works of fiction, with emphasis on the second, The Apollo Centennial: Nostalgias, Predicaments and Celebrations (1980). It includes a three-hour interview, conducted on two separate occassions, with Brillantes himself. Through the interview, it is expected that Brillantes's own comments on his work with allow further insight into them. Apart from the interview, a Marxist reading has been made on Brillante's second collection of short stories for a fuller understanding of the work itself and its implications. The Marxist critique is done on a general level for the whole collection itself, and more in-depthly on three representative stories: Help , Janis Joplin, the Revolution, and the Melancholy Widow on Diego Silang Street, and A Taste for the Fine Whiskey of the Bourgeoisie. This critique is incorporated into the essay segment of this paper. Also in the essay are certain details Brillantes himself shared during the interview: his boyhood, the early stages in his writing career, the influences on his work (both past and present), the stories in both collections, his career as an editor and several of his personal observations about the state of Philippine literature. A brief introduction appears in the first few pages of this study. It supplies background on Gregorio Brillantes and his works. Also here is a reconstruction of the interview with Gregorio Brillantes (for reasons of his own, he is not comfortable with having his voice recorded on tape).