Jose David Lapuz - Reviews of Work

Reviews of Work

Dr. Ofelia A. Dimalanta, Ph. D. and Director of the UST Center for Creative Writing has said that José David Lapuz's voice had resounded quite powerfully and arrestingly in the halls of the academe all these many years and one couldn't help not only hearing but listening. "Lapuz certainly has been one prodigous fountain spouting forth brilliant, fresh ideas and insights on sundry subjects particularly Rizal, foreign policy, international news and affairs, his formidable yield always rich, enriching, and boundless. This book of essays (Perspectives in Politics: Public and Foreign, UST Press, 2005) has long been overdue, but this result is certainly well worth the wait. Now we do not only have to listen to him pour away, whether we like it or not, willingly or willy-nilly, but we may sit down and read and ponder and contemplate and read over and over or pause to refresh before taking him up again, all in our own good time. We may then more fully savor his words, his rapier-sharp wit, his clever turns of phrase, his neatly couched sarcasm, his carefully contained vitriol, his intellectual vigor. In Lapuz's lectures and speeches, he would display the force and irrepressible energy of Juvenal (Roman satirist) one moment and the next, the urban savoir-faire of Horace (Roman writer). Certainly, all this is best captured by the readers when they finally have all the time to read him and absorb the quality of his mind, a mind vividly alive and alert to catch every flow and flux of the goings-on in the contemporary historico-political scene and beyond. Finally, the dynamic voice of José David Lapuz is impaled on print for the pleasure and intellectual enlightenment of readers and posterity." Professor Ofelia A. Dimalanta who wrote the above-cited review is a consistent Palanca winner in poetry and is a most highly esteemed professor of World Literature in the Pontifical and Catoholic University of Santo Tomas, Asia's most ancient university having been founded by the Dominican Friars (Fr. Miguel Benavidez) in 1611. Similarly, in 2005, the Very Reverend Father Tamerlane R. Lana, OP, Rector Magnificus of the University of Santo Tomas (1611), España, Manila, Philippines, wrote of Lapuz the following: "This collection of essays and comments on political issues (Perspectives in Politics: Public and Foreign, UST Publishing House, 2005) written by Comm. Lapuz over the past years is the result of his studies, reflections and life-experiences of political concerns which he shared with his students and various audiences here and abroad. Known to many of us as the "Professor of Political Science," Comm. Lapuz shares in this endeavor the commitment of the University of Santos Tomas to imbibe among her students the Catholic social doctrines and political thoughts that would permeate the way they will conduct their lives and thus hopefully effect a transformation in our society. Considering the current political events haunting our country and the characters that play a major role in our nation's political drama, I convey my gratitude to Comm. Lapuz for the many fruitful years he spent as a Thomasian educator and I gladly commend him for this lasting contribution to the growing discourses on the political realities affecting our present lives." Sr. Don Professor Guillermo Gomez Rivera, Member of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language and Premio Zobel de Hispanidad in 1975 and Chairman for Spanish and Culture of Adamson University, located in Marquis de Comillas Street, Manila, said of Lapuz: "Jose David Lapuz is the many-sided diamond that cuts out new highways in the darkened glass of world-wide culture... He is the brilliant voice that sings of the Filipino feelings in 'his different tokens, in his doubts and in all that makes him sad.' It is voices, it is pens, it is sounds like that of Jose David Lapuz that must come forth and demand, or struggle if necessary, that the embodiment of what is Filipino be respected. This is the summary of the life, thoughts and works of Jose David Lapuz. This quest for the respect due the Filipino as attested by his own personal history. A review of all that he has written and said, point to the same direction that his beautiful life has taken. It is because of all these day-to-day struggle and labor of Jose David Lapuz that 'a plaque of honor and distinction' was given to him by Adamson University, then represented by Atty. Marcos Herras, Fr. Rolando de la Goza, CM, and Fr. Augusto Goecoechea, CM. This plaque of honor calls Jose David Lapuz "A genius of the race and the pride of his people because he possesses a vast erudition and an enviable culture."