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Doreen Fernandez: Writer in her milieu by Clinton Palanca There are so many different aspects of your life. How would you describe yourself? I think I'm basically a teacher. Basically, completely, and thoroughly, a teacher. The other things feed into it or are born of it. What has your career been like? Well, I graduated with an AB English and History degree from St. Scholastica's College, then went to the Ateneo for graduate school. But I found that I had a lot of free time, so I went to St. Theresa's to study accounting—because, I thought, I didn't know anything about accounting. Gilda Cordero-Fernando was there, teaching her first course in short story writing; she was pregnant with her first child. She had gathered together the best writers of the school. I said, Please, will you let me in? She said, Well, we're only taking the best writers. I said, In my last school, I did write... . So they let me in. It was very good. Gilda claimed that she didn't know what she was doing and just read us stories...but she reads very well. I did try to write something, and I got a good grade; but it wasn't a short story. I think I ended up writing an essay. How did you come to teach at the Ateneo? I came to the Ateneo not to teach, but to study, to get further courses. My first discovery when I went there was such a thing as Philippine Drama—Bienvenido Lumbera was teaching a course. I had done my MA Thesis on Christopher Fry; I really liked drama. But I didn't know there was Philippine drama, nor even Philippine literature... . I hadn't even heard of Nick Joaquin until Gilda's course! So in this regard, Bien was my first teacher, and he set me on a course for life. To what degree were you involved in the politics of the time? Not at all. I came to the Ateneo in the 70s a housewife—the kind who went to Inner Wheel Club meetings. The activists, like Bien and [his wife] Shayne, wondered what I was doing there—was I serious? I knew Shayne, though; she had been my student at St. Scholastica's. So I learned a lot just sitting around and talking with them. I did receive some criticism for not being politicized at that time. I joined a few discussion groups, though it was mainly to learn, since I was so ignorant. There were some friends who said, How can you sit there and do the burgis things you do? Write things like the restaurant column you do with your husband? So, I said to them, Teach me. And they did. But I could never attend a rally or anything like that. I knew there were some things I could do and some things that I couldn't. When did you start writing about food? That was around '69, I think. It was actually my husband that they asked to do the column, because he was famous as a gourmet. Geny Lopez was his good friend, and Santi Dumlao; they said, Write a column that will make people's mouths water. He said, like the male chauvinist that he was, Sure, I'll eat, and she'll write. And it was on those terms, really—I could write, but I knew nothing about food. But I talked to him, I traveled, I learned. I asked questions: What's in that? Why is it good? I looked things up, did research. In the beginning, it was mostly food reviews, saying this restaurant is good or not. Eventually, I began to write more about culture; and these days, I don't like doing plain restaurant reviews. I write about the spirit of it, and its relation to the culture... . I would love to teach a course on food anthropology, actually. People do know you best as a food writer, although you've done so much more. How do you feel about that? One reason I've persisted doing things about food is that I feel it's a popular and easy way that anyone can look into culture and into themselves. And if I can get people curious about family recipes and hometown recipes and regional cooking, I think I am encouraging them to look at their culture. But yes, I'm sorry, though, that they don't know that I'm a theater historian, and that I write theater criticism—and that I'm a teacher. Let's talk about your involvement in theater—? When I decided to do a Ph.D, I was certain that I would do a dissertation on theater. Yet I'm not an actress, a playwright, or a director. But I really just liked theater, so I did some production work with Fr. Reuter; I researched on Philippine theater history. For me, that meant going to everything that was viewable, bad or good, student or professional. Nic Tiongson and I used to go to everything. Eventually, that led me to my dissertation. I was stuck for a dissertation topic until my mother unearthed, in our back yard, a zarzuela that my grandfather had apparently written. So that was it. When Martial Law was declared, Bien and Virgilio Almario went underground, and then eventually so did Nic. So that left the entire Philippine Studies department of the Ateneo empty. So they asked Joey Francisco, Mario Francisco, and me to take over. So I began to teach there. That was the time, too, of political theater—our political theater was very advanced. Theater was a fighting weapon: you could say things in theater that you couldn't say in a novel. But after there was no obvious enemy anymore, things went in different directions. Some of the playwrights found themselves with no one to fight. But Tony Perez's plays after Martial Law, for instance, are his best—Biyaheng Timog and North Diversion Road. These days, I don't do as much theater criticism, because of my schedule—I can't go and watch as often. But there are more people doing it now, so there's less of an urgency for me to do it. But our problem here is that the theater world is rather small, so it ends up being actors and directors doing theater criticism, which shouldn't be the case. You mentioned once that when you do your food criticism, you only do positive reviews—if you don't like it, you say nothing. Do you work the same way with theater criticism? Well, with theater, my attitude is like that of a teacher. The producers and playwrights and actors—they need feedback. They need to be told if they're good or not, and if they're not, what they can improve. I never say, It's terribly bad, because if the play closes because of that, then there's no chance to improve. But we must also educate the theater audience. We have to tell them, for instance, that Shakespeare can be fun! I guess I'm basically a teacher trying to educate an audience. There are two modes of criticism: one assumes that the reader has already seen the piece, and tries to elucidate or discuss what they've both seen; the other assumes that the reader has not seen it, and serves to encourage or to warn him... It's very hard to make that distinction here, because our plays have very short runs. If I could, I would go on the first night of every run. If you wait till the middle of the run and take your time doing your review, then it'll be over by the time your review comes out. So you have to sort of do both at the same time. But sometimes even if it's too late, I still write it anyway; it's for the benefit of the producers. What are the most difficult or interesting aspects of writing about food? Oh! Well, when I was younger and more arrogant, I thought that you had to reform things, tell "them" how things should be. There's a review that I really regret. I went into this restaurant and it was super-pretentious. There were all these plants, but they were all plastic...It had a very pretentious name, as well. They were serving steak—not very good, and not very well served, either. I said, Who would come here? Well, maybe middle-level or low-level executives and their wives in their long dresses, and they'd be so impressed with all this, when the restaurant didn't know the first thing about what they were doing! So I wrote a rather sharp review. But with politicization came the idea, too, that food doesn't have to be the way it is in the best restaurants in Europe. One should put food in the context of the culture. An example: I remember going out to sea with a fisherman who is a poet. We set out with nothing but a pot of rice and some tomatoes, and we bought all our food on the way, from passing fishermen. And we cooked everything on a bonfire, with those tomatoes for acidity. I now try to review all kinds—high cuisine, or what's trying to be high cuisine. I try to write about wine, although I don't know very much about wine. I try to show how everything fits into the culture. I keep trying to put food in context. |
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