Nick Joaquin, 86
Nick Joaquin died yesterday morning--in his sleep, some reports say.

I have never met Nick Joaquin, but one friend, a townmate from Bicol did. She was then rehearsing for a play, whose title I no longer remember, when a drunk old man came and started commenting on the performances. My friend was so vexed and aghast that all the other people do not seem to mind the presence of the rowdy man. She was just about to ask the old man to leave the premises when a friend told her it was the great Nick Joaquin she was about to shoo.

We all had a good laugh when she told the story, almost as good a laugh as that story of a high school student asking to see the playwright for an interview after a viewing of Oedipus Rex.

My literature humanities teacher, who had such an exacting standard in literature she thought the Filipino literary voice in English is serviceable at its best, has the highest praise for Joaquin's The woman who had two navels, which she said eerily reminded her of James Joyce (our class was then discussing Joyce's much-anthologized short story Araby).