Snapshots of a Literary Friendship: Francisco Arcellana and Jose Garcia Villa*

Abstract

Accounts of literary friendships provide one with material for literary scholarship. This paper presents “snapshots” of the friendship of Francisco Arcellana (1917–2002) and Jose Garcia Villa (1908– 97). Arcellana and Villa’s friendship bears indelible traces of Philippine literary history at large; to look at the microcosm that is their friendship is also to get a glimpse of a macrocosm of relations, forces, and movements that have constituted Philippine literature. 

*An earlier version of this paper was read at a panel organized by the Department of English Studies and Comparative Literature, College of Arts and Letters, University of the Philippines, on 9 September 2016, on the centenary of Francisco Arcellana. The author thanks Paolo Manalo and Isabel Banzon for the invitation to speak at the panel.