And Now A Good Word from Butch Dalisay...

Eminent writer Butch Dalisay gives two-thumbs up on the launch of The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories.

The article can be found in the January 22, 2007 issue of The Philippine Star. Some quotes:

Kenneth’s project, while decidedly modest, has the advantage of its focus on what’s been called “genre fiction.” “Genre” means category, and genre fiction involves specialized categories like sci-fi, fantasy, horror, mystery, romance, historical fiction, and detective and crime fiction. It’s a kind of writing that, perhaps ironically, used to be mainstream fiction, or the stuff everyone loved to read, before “highbrow” fiction pushed it aside and relegated it to the entertainment book bin as second-class literary fare. That’s an unfortunate misimpression. There’s no doubt that genre fiction is entertaining and often aims to do little more than give us an hour’s escape from the drudgery of daily living, but we forget that much of the kind of “classic” fiction we discuss in graduate seminars today started out as popular fiction, written to thrill the ordinary reader and to pay the writer’s rent. That’s what Poe and Chekhov were doing. That they wrote some memorable masterpieces along the way is for us a happy bonus.

And his opinion?

Bravo, Kenneth, and all the best to you on this brave new venture.

You can read the scanned images of his column here: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.