What he talked about was theme and intent.Ī loose extract from what he wrote for Not On Our Watch: "I was invited to the late great NU on a Septemer 21 to talk a bit about martial law. I knew he was swamped with his four-times-a-week column writing, interminable speaking engagements, high-profile meetings with political sources, and habitual visits to music dives, but, well, there was no one else I knew who could write very fast, very well, and for free.īetween us, we knew, from a friendship that began in 1971, that if I could produce money, he would be paid for sure, but that if I could not, it was what it was. Miserably close to printing date, I still had no book introduction. I am editor of that one, and as is often the case when I take on the editor's job, I run out of writing time. One such book is 2012's Not On Our Watch. Of course, being famous, he can also be found in many an author's book for which he could not refuse pleas to write prologues and epilogues. ![]() After being invited so regularly as guest speaker in graduations, inaugurations, and anniversaries in Metro Manila and the provinces, he had enough to fill a book, the more timeless of which he selected for publication. The fellow was just, as tiring as it is to keep saying so, brilliant.Īnother book, Tongues on Fire, is a slim collection of his speeches. Likewise, it was a welcome treat to start the morning with his cunning turns of phrases, superior English, and thickets of new political gossip- all of it coming off as quite literary. Suddenly, ponderous subjects weren't boring when he subverted them with wit and humor and served them up in prose that gave gruff thoughts a surprising civility. Such was the craze for his hard-hitting, often political, writing. Publisher Karina Bolasco, after noting that Conrad's young readers were cutting out his columns, and thereafter clipping, pasting, and sticking them onto notebooks, cartolinas, and clear books, because they wanted to write like him, sought him out as author.Īnd so came the first, Flowers from the Rubble, and the second, Dance of the Dunces, anthologies of his commentaries that even changing times and tastes have not diminished.Ī believer, I was the self-assigned project manager for both books. The Inquirer's own young reporters were fans.īeing unashamedly "kikay" -as veteran columnist Ceres Doyo says playfully- one of them, Juliet Javellana, now the paper's associate editor, recalls that when Conrad was going to be at the Inquirer building for a meeting or a talk (as columnist, he was free to send his pieces from wherever he was), the girls would go to the parlor first and have a "beauty fix." No wonder his fans, as it goes, were legion. He was highly visible, after all, from 1991 to 2014-or a good 23 years, four times a week, without fail- as he racked up his column, "There's the Rub," in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, at a time newspapers enjoyed the biggest respect among media platforms. Conrado de Quiros is a name that, I like to assume, is known to us.
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