You lovely people / Bienvenido N. Santos; with an introduction by N.V.M. Gonzales.

It must have been November--somehow, I cannot seem to fit the scene to any other month. But whether it was 1939 or 1940, I cannot now recall. Perhaps the year does not matter. In any case, the young man was literally on his way to America, for he had passed a government pensionado examination or something of the kind. With that sense of triumph, and an overwhelming eagerness, which was understandable in the 'thirties,' he had joined his friends, writers most of them, in a last visit to some favorite coffee shop on the old university campus at Padre Faura. Naturally, the shop talk was about the future. There was a suggestion, and to some of us it was an assurance, that literature and studying for future service in the government would not be incompatible. At least, it did seem so to the young man in question. Perhaps to announce his loyalty he had carried around his Modern Library edition of Ulysses and allowed his friends the memento of a snapshot of himself with the book clasped to his breast. --From the introduction