N. V. M. Gonzalez made “a new clearing within the English idiom”

[Joe Carillo]

N.V.M. González—teacher, author, journalist, and essayist—was proclaimed Philippine National Artist in 1997 for his outstanding body of literary works in English. In his novels as well as short-story and essay collections, Gonzalez (September 8, 1915-November 28, 1999) wrote with sensitivity about Filipinos living their lives in their hometowns or abroad, in the process “making a new clearing within the English idiom and tradition on which he established an authentic vocabulary.” For his creative genius, he has become one of the most widely anthologized and well-studied Filipino writers in English.

Among his notable works are the novels The Winds of April, The Bamboo Dancers, and A Season of Grace and the short-story collections Children of the Ash-Covered Loam and The Bread of Salt and Other Stories. He received many prestigious awards for his works, among them the Palanca Memorial Award for Literature (winning it several times), the Jose Rizal Pro Patria Award, and the City of Manila Medal of Honor. Many of his works have been translated into Chinese, German, Russian, and Bahasa Indonesian. Of Gonzalez’s novels, Wallace Stegner, the American historian, novelist, short story writer, and environmentalist who was often called “The Dean of Western Writers,” said in 1950: “For the good of my soul lately I have been reading Jose Rizal and as much as I admire Mr. Rizal’s political sentiments, I must say I prefer Gonzalez as a novelist.”

González was only one of two faculty members without a degree who were allowed to teach at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. On the basis of his literary credentials, he also later taught in many universities in the United States, among them the University of California in Santa Barbara, the California State University in Hayward, the University of Washington, the University of California in Los Angeles, and the University of California in Berkeley.

We now invite you to read two of his short stories, “The Bread of Salt” and “The Happiest Boy in the World,” as well as a fuller biographical sketch of him.

Read “The Bread of Salt” by N. V. M. Gonzalez

Read “The Happiest Boy in the World” by N. V. M. Gonzalez

Read “N.V.M. Gonzalez: An Affair with Letters”

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What do you think of N.V.M. Gonzalez’s position in Philippine literature as well as in world literature? Click the Reply button to post your thoughts on Jose Carillo’s English Forum.

[dan0324]

With  my respect to Mr. Gonzalez, I think his literary works need a serious editing. e.g.,  adverbs or prepositional phrase placed before the main sentence require a comma.

[Joe Carillo]

With  my respect to Mr. Gonzalez, I think his literary works need a serious editing. e.g.,  adverbs or prepositional phrase placed before the main sentence require a comma.

I think your comment about the placement of adverbs and prepositional phrases in sentences is very interesting. It would be more instructive, though, if you could cite specific examples from Mr. N.V.M. Gonzalez's works. We could then take them up and see if they are indeed grammatically problematic. The discussions should prove to be very enlightening to a lot of English users and learners.

[dan0324]

Correct. The  most common error of most unprofessional writers are putting "comma" after adverb and prepositional phrase before the main sentence. This is the most visible common error that an editor can see to any writing material, I think.