MULTI-AWARDED Filipino-American poet and novelist R. Zamora Linmark gave a lecture before Literature majors of the University of Santo Tomas for the 17th Filipino-American Lecture Series held last August 30, 2012 at the Tanghalang Teresita Quirino of the Benavides Building.

     “The lying part of fiction is imagination,” said the author of the best-seller “Rolling the R’s.”

     The two-time Fulbright Scholar, who last visited the University six years ago, started his lecture “Why Bother: On Writing and Other Necessary Lies” with a self-written prayer titled “On days that break us,” written two days after the September 11 incident in the United States.

     According to the 44 year-old writer, writing requires one to wrestle with language and it needs sensory details that drives one to see, hear, taste, touch, and think. He further added that the necessary lies are memory and imagination, when combined results to truth. But truth has a twin: lying.

     “Memory, which is our tool, is never reliable,” said Linmark.

     The novelist read some poems from his book “Evolution of a Sigh,” a book filled with break-up poems. After which, a student asked how does he turn something painful into something beautiful.

     “Love is the most difficult thing to write about for what we do not know about love is that it produces ambivalence and ambiguity,” he answered.

     Asst. Prof. John Jack Wigley ended the program with his closing remarks, where he said, “Writing helps us be in touch of what may have been suppressed or forgotten and in the process we come to know ourselves better.”

     Furthermore, Linmark reminded the students to always make room for imagination and that lying is an essential part of fiction.

     The event was organized by the Literary Society and The Varsitarian.

By Charry Fatima D. Garcia