Remembering Leonard Ralph Casper
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Linda Ty-Casper’s Will You Happen, Past the Silence, Through the Dark?: Remembering Leonard Ralph Casper
We were discussing her book because she had asked my publishing house, PALH (Philippine American Literary House) to publish her recent work.
During our conversation, Linda mentioned that the title came from one of her husband’s letters. She did not elaborate, and it was only later when I learned that the phrase --“Will you happen”-- came from Len’s courtship letter to her:
“I feel like an island, feeling this is the moment before something: will you ever come, scrape this shore, pass through the silence? Will you happen? Even as I wait, I love you. Len. Burnham Park, Baguio. May 25, 1954.”
Then I understood that we were talking about emotion and poetry and that Linda was now asking her dead husband: “Will you happen, past the silence, through the dark?”
In her own words, Linda Ty-Casper explains that her recent book, Will You Happen, Past the Silence, Through the Dark: Remembering Leonard Ralph Casper, is the memoir that her husband did not get to write. How she embraced this task came about this way. After he died in 2018 (on his 95th birthday), Linda tried to organize his office.
She found a box of old photos and was intrigued by a 1952 photo of Len that she had never seen. (The photo is used in the book’s cover designed by Ian Rosales Casocot). Linda also found tightly folded letters, to and from editors, professors, students, friends, and colleagues. While looking at all that, Linda thought those letters would be Leonard Casper’s memoir.
Leonard Ralph Casper in 1952
She arranged the letters in chronological order, typed them out, sometimes lost files in her computer, and thank God for her daughters who helped her out. The end-result is a book that reflects the long and rich life of Leonard Casper, starting from the time of his birth in 1923 in Fond du Lac at the foot of Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin, to his demise on July 6, 2018.
The book starts with family information, including his military service during World War II. It moves on to show his early literary success: letters from editors, including those from the prestigious Southwest Review who asked him to send stories from the European front during World War II. There are numerous exchanges between Leonard Casper and Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Penn Warren on whom Casper wrote his dissertation for his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In fact, Casper wrote two critical books about Robert Penn Warren (the first book was the “first” written about Warren).
The letters reflect Len’s academic background: In the US, he taught at Cornell, the Universities of Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Boston College. But where he enters the story of “Philippine literature” was in 1953, when he went to the Philippines to teach at the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, and Philippine Normal College. Aside from meeting the literati and academics, he also met the woman who would become his wife of over 60 years.
Belinda Ty, daughter of a man who worked in the Philippine National Railways and a teacher in the Bureau of Public Schools, had law degrees from the University of the Philippines and Harvard University. However, according to her she became a writer because of erroneous and biased statements in books at the Widener Library, which converted her into an advocate, through faithfully researched historical fiction, of Filipinos’ right to self-definition/determination.
Linda and Leonard Casper
In the Philippines and even after he returned to the US with Linda, Len connected with Filipino literary folk, including Edith and Edilberto Tiempo, N.V.M. Gonzalez, Gilda Cordero Fernando, Jose Villa, Virgie Moreno, Alberto Florentino, Ceres Alabado, Bienvenido N. Santos, F. Sionil Jose, Ninotchka Rosca, Krip Yuson, and many more. (The banter in the letters of some important writers is amusing.)
He knew them all; and they knew him. And he wrote books about Filipino writers and writings — I was fortunate and remain grateful that he included his analysis of my first novel, Song of Yvonne (also known as When the Rainbow Goddess Wept) in the book Sunsurfers Seen from Afar: Critical Essays 1991-96. (When you are written about favorably by the renowned literary critic Leonard Casper, you never forget.)
His other books about Philippine writing, include: Wayward Horizon: Essays on Modern Philippine Literature, 1961; The Wounded Diamond: Studies in Philippine Literature, 1961; New Writing from the Philippines: A Critique and Anthology, 1966; and he collected anthologies of Filipino writings including: Six Filipino Poets, 1955; Modern Philippine Short Stories,1962; New Writing from the Philippines, 1966. Some of these books were published in the US, introducing, so to speak, Philippine literature to American readership.
Thus, did Leonard Casper become a kind of conduit and catalyst of Philippine literature, influencing Filipino literary folk by his teaching and books so that even now, writer/editor Joel Pablo Salud says, “Casper, it would be safe to say, was one of my earliest influences in writing the essay.”
But back to Linda’s work about her husband. The letters she included were not just business, professional, and literary ones; she included personal letters -- love letters to her, letters about his family life. He writes of his fatherly chores in taking care of two daughters when Linda was away (to take care of her sick mother or for literary reasons). He gives Linda husbandly advice. He writes about the mundane -- cooking adobo or watching his daughter doing gymnastics. There are letters about literary agents and reviews for books. There are poetic letters and letters with poetry.
And somehow all these letters, perhaps because of their authenticity, are engrossing. It is not just me; writer-editor Joel Pablo Salud said: “Reading the memoir … was like meeting an old friend, and allowing me to walk through the now open doors of his life … I love how the letters expanded his humanity, the ordinariness of an author’s life while he navigated the profound. It was a feast, needless to say.”
For indeed the book, When You Happen, Past the Silence, Through the Dark: Remembering Leonard Ralph Casper reveals a person’s LIFE – a man who was highly intelligent and complex, but in some ways uncomplicated — he loved books and literature and his family and friends and trees and yuccas and gaillardias and God; he loved to sit by the Sudbury River even during his last years when Alzheimer’s (may have) kept him from writing his own memoir.
“Then I understood that we were talking about emotion and poetry and that Linda was now asking her dead husband: “Will you happen, past the silence, through the dark?””
Joel Salud says it well and so I quote from his book review in Santelmo #7, 9/21/22:
“Will You Happen, Past the Silence, Through the Dark: Remembering Leonard Ralph Casper is a treasure trove of charms and jewels for those like me who find Leonard Casper a bit of a cryptic, enigmatic figure. Linda Ty-Casper has done a great service by shedding light on Len’s memory, allowing us a voyeur’s look into a life dedicated to the magic and unease found in letters.
“I am sure this book will remain relevant for decades to come.”
An excerpt:
My darling Linda,
I know you will understand when I tell you this. If I didn’t believe you are capable of sustained caring and devotion, how could I ever have begun to care for you? You must feel what I feel now, down here, alone against all my inclinations, taken into the house but kept apart—as I wait here for you, I don’t know how long nor do I know how brief the time will be that we can spend together, when you come down as you promised. Whatever I am good for, whatever I can amount to I have dedicated to you, Linda—with finality and without reservation, almost three months ago. I wanted us to pledge to each other even then, but you thought that, though you yourself were willing, that we should wait until Christmas, the best time to talk to your father.
The only thing that has kept me sane—and I wish I were not exaggerating, but I don’t think that I am, has been your promise that at Christmas, surely, we would be engaged. I have not succeeded in waiting as patiently as either of us have wanted, but in those three months I have learned to love you more and more until I realize now that you are my whole life—my home, my family, my beloved. It is for you that I have worried through troubles with UP, the Bureau of Immigration, and the vast unfriendliness of a vaster city…and for you, Linda I have begun to work out plans for a writers’ workshop, and annual of short stories, and other ways of helping the local writers help each other—because I believe that literature can be a mode of truth, and that the sensibility and sensitiveness of good writers is important to be preserved, for the society, the other people, among which they must live out their lives. But all these efforts need strength, Linda, and I am human and limited. My strength needs renewal; I can help only if I am helped, I can care only if I am wanted. Not just by these persons among whom I work—their affection is of a sort and quality which can hardly satisfy the full depths of my needs—but by you, Linda, for whom all this effort is intended. How can I help make a better world unless I am allowed to be with you, who are for me the heart of all that matters—the good, the beautiful, the true.
I love you, Linda, more than I could ever have expected—more than pride, more than tears. There is nothing outside you, for me. This is the terrible love that I have wished on you; having admitted as much several times and done my best to prove it whenever I could...The goodness I have seen in you, Linda; the joy you have already returned, the peace you have renewed in me—these are my hope.
Three months have been a long wait for me, Linda, because my love having engaged me to you that long ago, wants to be impatient. But I have tried to be patient, and not show the strain of being in doubt about what might happen. And the times that you have seen me reduced to anger, unhappiness or tears, none of which could be hidden, are only signs of that strain; they are not part of the permanent me which I have dedicated. Be with me when you can; I need you now as much as I ever will. This being imprisoned in a lovely room, being the guest but outsider, the still untrusted by the aunts is making me slowly into someone I do not enjoy being, someone whom you may be right not to marry. But if you will not be with me, at least sustain these hours of my loneliness…
Christ was born to give man peace by giving meaning to their suffering; by making the goodness of grace available to them. In His name give me that same peace, Linda, on His birthday. Make these months mean something by giving us each other. Love, Len. UP Diliman. December 12, 1953.
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard’s recent books include her Selected Short Stories and The Newspaper Widow. Her official website is ceciliabrainard.com
The website of Cecilia’s publishing house PALH is palhbooks.com. Recent books include Linda Ty-Casper’s Will You Happen, Past the Silence, Through the Dark? The anthology Growing Up Filipino 3: New Stories for Young Adults, which collects 25 stories, is forthcoming. Most PALH books are available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Ebook editions are available from various ebook vendors such as Kindle, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and others.
More articles from Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
To listen to a rare interview with Linda Ty-Casper:
