MEMBERS of the Philippine writing community expressed sorrow over and offered tributes to Clinton Palanca, the award-winning fictionist, essayist and food critic whom many consider as among his generation’s finest, who passed away on May 30 at the age of 45.
His wife, Lourdes Gordolan, led the tributes, calling her husband — whom she described as a “kindred spirit, friend, chef, travel partner, creative soul” — in a Facebook post as “a man of many words, but there seem to be too few words to describe you.”
A contemporary and friend of Palanca, prize-winning fictionist Angelo R. Lacuesta, penned his for the Esquire Philippines website, writing that “Clinton taught us how to live richly; that is to say, to live life in all ways and see everything from all sides. He had certainly done more than teach it—he demonstrated it.”
“Clinton showed us how to know things the only way they must truly be known—deeply, fully, with equal parts distance and surrender, with an absolute understanding of that ever-present moment in which the thing happens: the construction of a sentence, the preparation of a dish, the arrival of a morsel on the tongue, the shaping of an opinion, the perfection of a craft,” he added.
One of those who shared Lacuesta’s tribute on social media was novelist, essayist and scholar Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, who praised Palanca as “one of the best writers of his generation” and wrote that “there are no words for this kind of sorrow.”
2008 Man Asian Literary Prize winner Miguel Syjuco was another, writing on Facebook that Clinton “cast such an elegant sheen on everything he touched, and he touched on so many things — writing, food, all manner of arts, collectibles, every aspect of life.”
“To me, he showed how to live fully, how to appreciate what was finely wrought, how to love deeply and without hesitation — all of which prepared me to now appreciate and celebrate his life as it should be. There’s nobody like him and never will be,” he added.
For their part, journalist Howie Severino wrote that Palanca’s “heart was as big as his talent,” while poet and maverick filmmaker Khavn de la Cruz lauded him in Filipino as the finest fictionist and essayist in English in their batch and “the great beyond.”
‘Most impressive’
Born in 1974, Palanca finished elementary and high school at the Xavier School in San Juan City and his Philosophy and English Literature degree at Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City. He later earned a master’s degree in Sociology and a doctorate degree in Food Anthropology from the University of Oxford and SOAS University of London, respectively, in the United Kingdom.
In 1996, Palanca, together with Gina Apostol and Jaime An Lim, published an anthology edited by poet Ricardo M. de Ungria, titled Catfish Arriving in Little Schools, which contained his novella “Identifications;” and collected his early short stories in Landscapes. One story in that book, “The Apartment,” won the Palanca award in 1995 — one of three he had earned, the others being the essay “In Paris,” also in 1995, and the short story “The Window” in 1997.
Hidalgo wrote on Landscapes’ back cover that Palanca “may well be the most impressive among the young writers, because of his mastery over language and the formidable intelligence that informs his fiction.” And author and 2000 Palanca Hall of Fame inductee Jose Y. Dalisay Jr. wrote in his essay “The Filipino Short Story in English: An Update for the ‘90s” that “[f]or sheer gift of language, Clinton Palanca… seems matchless,” adding that with him, “the language is often the material; the story is not so much in the spider, but the web.”
Palanca later ventured into food writing, penning essays and reviews on the subject for various publications, including The Manila Times, Esquire Philippines and the Philippine Daily Inquirer, where he had a widely followed column in the paper’s lifestyle section.
His later books focused on food: The Mad Tea Party: The Pleasures of Taste; My Angkok’s Noodles, which gathers classic recipes from the Chinese in the country; The Gullet: Dispatches on Philippine Food; and The Malagos Book of Chocolate, which features photographs by Neal Oshima. He also published Chinese-Filipinos: Hua Fei with scholar Jonathan Chua.
Palanca is survived by Lourdes and their two children, to one of whom he wrote an open letter published on the Esquire Philippines website on June 14, 2017, titled “A Letter to My Daughter: The Things in Life You Shouldn’t Forget.”
His wake is being held at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in New Manila, Quezon City until Sunday.
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“To me, he showed how to live fully, how to appreciate what was finely wrought, how to love deeply and without hesitation — all of which prepared me to now appreciate and celebrate his life as it should be. There’s nobody like him and never will be.”
— Miguel Syjuco
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