MANILA, Philippines--Adrian E. Cristobal Sr., political satirist, essayist, columnist, fictionist, playwright, literary organizer, popular historian of Andres Bonifacio, and Marcos government functionary and adviser, died of complications arising from lung cancer Saturday morning. He was 75.

"Adrian Cristobal was first and foremost a political writer who started writing short stories but developed into a fine essayist in the tradition of Fred Mangahas, Salvador P. Lopez, and perhaps E. Aguilar Cruz," said writer Elmer Ordoñez who, like Cristobal, was a member of the original Raven group of writers based in the University of the Philippines.

"A quite cynical person, possibly acquired in the practice of journalism (as reporter, columnist, editorial writer, and publisher) and writing for public figures, he was in his element in the satirical mode," added Ordoñez, who’s national secretary of the Philippine Center of the International PEN (Poets, Playwrights, Essayists, Novelists).

"He took his death with grace," said Inday Espina Varona, editor in chief of the monthly Philippine Graphic news magazine, where Cristobal was publisher.

Early last month, Cristobal became suddenly sick and failed to grace the annual Nick Joaquin Forum, sponsored by the Graphic. He thought he had bronchitis but a biopsy showed he had cancer. He was hospitalized at the Makati Medical Center.

Friends who visited him said he was upbeat and quick on the banter. "He took it very well," Varona said. "He was not a whiner. Everybody in the family was calm."

He is survived by his wife, the former Ma. Teresita Soriano, and children Anna C. Torres, Celin, Stella C. Arenas, Adrian Jr., Pia Kahn and Monica Graham.

His remains were cremated Saturday. A wake will be held on Dec. 26 and 27 at the Santuario de San Antonio in Forbes Park, Makati. A funeral Mass will be held at 9 a.m. on Dec. 28.

Although known mainly to the public as a columnist (he used to write columns for this paper, and was writing them for the Manila Bulletin and the Graphic before he became bed-ridden), Cristobal led a multi-faceted public life.

During the Marcos years, he headed the President’s Center for Special Studies, a Malacañang think tank whose staff wrote speeches and policy papers for Marcos and published publications on public affairs. Much later during the Marcos administration, Cristobal headed the Social Security System.

In a statement, the National Press Club mourned the death of Cristobal, calling him "a man of great intellect, and unmistakably, a writer of consequence."

Citing his many public accomplishments, the NPC said Cristobal was mainly a writer: "Mister Cristobal may be many other things -- public servant, administrator, academic, presidential adviser, etc., but he was first and last, a writer."

Born on Feb. 20, 1932, Cristobal studied at University of the Philippines and the University of the East. He gained recognition as a writer at a very young age, winning his first major literary prize -- for a short story -- when he was 15. At 17, his byline was appearing in the Manila Chronicle, Sunday Times, Saturday Mirror, Free Press and Midweek.

"Dropping out of university (possibly because he could not abide pompous professors) he continued his education by reading as widely as he could, and engaging scholars with nationalist bent like Cesar Majul, O.D. Corpuz, Armando Bonifacio, SV Epistola and writers of UP Diliman in discussion and debate," Ordoñez said.

"He became one of the Diliman-based group of writers called the Ravens whose friendship he nurtured to his last moment."

As a fictionist, Cristobal was best tackling historic figures. His most anthologized story is "I, Sulayman," a recreation in stream-of-consciousness of the historic Manila rajah as he prepares to do battle with the Spanish conquistadores.

Cristobal was also a playwright whose most popular drama was one about the trial of Bonifacio. But his most notorious stage work is a political satire which, however, does not exist anymore: "The Largest Crocodile in the World," which won a prize in the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 1960. No copy of it remains even in the Palanca archives; it is believed that the politician who was the subject of the play’s scathing depiction had it stolen.

A leftist intellectual when he was a young man, Cristobal had a consuming interest in Bonifacio, the plebian who founded the Katipunan movement that led the Philippine revolution against Spain. He wrote his last most famous work, "The Tragedy of the Revolution," complaining about the "official neglect" of Bonifacio: "It is ironic … that among our national heroes, Andres Bonifacio is destitute of a 'Life' in more than one sense: no memoirs, no diaries -- his life was cut short." (He was referring to the execution of the Bonifacio brothers in the mountains of Maragondon, Cavite on orders of President Emilio Aguinaldo.)

Cristobal was also an indefatigable literary organizer. He founded the Unyon ng Manunulat na Pilipino (Umpil), a national federation of writers, and was a patron of young writers.

Said Ordoñez: "Raven Raul Ingles remembers Adrian as quite 'generous at heart' to fellow human beings, especially writers, by providing them with opportunities to pursue their vocation."

But to Ordoñez, Cristobal’s most lasting legacy is the UP Creative Writing Center (now the UP Institute of Creative Writing), which he helped found in the 1970s.

"If there is one palpable achievement of Adrian Cristobal in literature, it is the UP Institute of Creative Writing which he initiated as a member of the UP Board of Regents in the late seventies," Ordoñez said. "He made sure it would be an independent unit of the university catering to the needs of writers in their craft not only from campus but from all over the country. National Artist for Literature Francisco Arcellana was the Institute's first Director."

Cristobal followed a distinguished but vanishing line of writer-thinkers such as I.P. Soliongco, Nick Joaquin, Guillermo de Vega, Lopez, and Mangahas who were public intellectuals in the distinctly Filipino sense of the term -- more public than intellectual.

Public intellectuals in the West are mainly academe-based scholars such as Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, and Jurgen Habermas, who sally forth from their university chair, armed with their doctoral cap and toga, to engage in public affairs.

In contrast, Cristobal and the Filipino public intellectuals are mainly journalists and columnists who might have reached college but dropped out. And even if they had a modicum of academic education, their stint in the wild and wooly world of journalism would have made them generalists, not specialists; polemicists and controversialists, pundits.

Public intellectuals in the West have an ideological framework (Said’s postcolonial Orientalism, which draws its roots from poststructuralism, Chomsky’s libertarian socialism, and Habermas’s Neo-Marxism) which they use to frame their views on and responses to public affairs.

In contrast, Cristobal and his ilk have none of the "isms" associated with the academe, except perhaps for nationalism and, especially in the case of Joaquin, some form of a classic humanism.

This is not to say that Cristobal and the Filipino public intellectuals are less scholarly, less severe. They are thinkers in their own right, and definitely, they have an inimitable if not a more trenchant prose style than their counterparts in the West.

Even Chomsky was highly critical of his fellows from the academe. He denounced "intellectual communities" for their snobbery and their academic jargon. He said many scholars are mere "clerks" and he urged the general population to be "anti-intellectual" because academic scholars may be "a special class who are in the business of imposing thoughts, and framing ideas for people in power."

In a way, the more apt Western parallel to Cristobal and Filipino public intellectuals would be the press opinion-makers such as Walter Lippmann, who were eagerly sought by presidents and influential public-policy makers for their counsel and opinion.

In the case of Cristobal, he not only used the pen to influence public policy and decision-making, he also got to join the corridors of power as among the bright and eager young minds drafted by the Marcos administration, which included Francisco Tatad, Juan C. Tuvera, O.D. Corpuz, and Guillermo de Vega.

As head of the Presidential Special Studies Center, Cristobal had a number of top writers on his staff who wrote speeches and policy drafts for Marcos. How they justified the strongman’s authoritarian rule would eventually hound most of them, including Cristobal.

Often on the lashing end of writers and critics of the Marcos dictatorship, Cristobal, like many of Marcos’ brilliant information men such as Tatad, Gregorio Cendana and Jose Aspiras, was always gracious and did not harbor grudges.

Although known for his acerbic pen and satiric jabs, Cristobal remained friendly and conciliatory to all writers, even if they didn’t see eye to eye with him.