Memoirs of Service: Richard D. Haynes

When Richard D. Haynes was Consul General in the Philippines, he, like officers of both the Consular and Political Sections, went out of his way to learn and master Tagalog. One morning his language teacher, Marcy, informed me that Mr. Haynes had chosen to read my Cubao Book Series. I was alarmed. The series, for the most part, is untranslatable, has eccentric punctuation, and cannot be taken literally. One of my stories he'd been reading, for example, was "Ang Mga Manananggal" from Cubao Pagkagat Ng Dilim. I wasn't quite sure then as to who would be shocked by my work: Marcy or Mr. Haynes. Mr Haynes, however, comprehended and translated the story into English. According to him, both he and Marcy were "unfazed by the salacious passages."

Mr. Haynes and I carried on an albeit irregular correspondence via e-mail from then on. He read all of my books. Even after he left the Philippines for another post he consistently asked Helen, his assistant, whether I had any new books, and Helen would faithfully ship them to him.

Mr. Haynes was one of the few readers who saw in my books not only psychological perception and Philippine metaphysics. He understood that I am perhaps the only Filipino writer who pays attention to structure in great detail, something I have never seen in the works of any of my colleagues and something that, perhaps, only a detached foreigner would be capable of correctly observing.