The Never-Ending Appeal of the Classics

Esther　/　photos Chuang Kung-ju　/　tr. by Jonathan Barnard

November 2016

中文日本語

Reading Classic Works Together

“To find answers about life’s basic questions, to understand different eras, to resolve burning inner doubts, to learn how the world works, we need knowledge and thus we read classic works to acquire wisdom.” These are the ideals set forth by Eslite bookstore under its three-year, five-stage project called “Reading Classics Together.” Of course, books can only become classics if many people read them, so there is the desire to keep them being read. But there is also the greater hope that celebration of the classics will help to pass down to future generations the habit of reading.

Planning director Shining Lin leads the Eslite team that drew up the plans for the Reading Classics Together project.

The classics project’s origins

What is a classic work? From ancient times to the present, there has been a huge accumulation of books on a multitude of topics. People all have their own standards for deciding which books to read and enjoy. Likewise, there are different ways of determining which of these are classics.

“The designation of a book as a ‘classic’ can’t be decided through a vote,” says Chen Fang-ming, a writer and a professor at the Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Literature at National Chengchi University. “When people of different ethnicities, genders and socio-economic statuses read a classic, they all can draw enrichment from them. As one person after another reads them, they gradually become classics.”

Ann Lang, artistic director of the Spring Sun Performing Arts Troupe, says that books worthy of being deemed classics are those that have “in different situations, at different times in one’s life, and in different memories prompted fireworks through reading by providing realizations about the meaning of life in that realm between understanding and the lack of it.” As one grows in age and memories deepen, these classics take on new meanings in one’s mind. “Reading is like the sea: It nourishes all the life forms within it. They grow more beautiful and swim farther and dive deeper thanks to it.”

Eslite chairman Robert Wu explains that these books help people to find value within themselves and provide important access to a realm of reflection in their daily lives. He has a particular fondness for Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving and Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics. Although Taiwan’s Chinese-language editions of these books are out-of-print titles from Zhiwen Publishing House, they are not books that should be allowed to disappear amid the sea of titles over the course of time. “One book can change a person’s life. Reading makes life richer and more beautiful.” It is the pursuit of these universal values that is a motivating force behind the “Reading Classics Together” project.

Eslite kicked off the project in March, and it will continue for three years. Now in stage two, Eslite is inviting the editors-in-chief of ten publishing houses to each recommend ten books from their own catalogs—100 books altogether—during each of the five separate stages, resulting in a total of 500 titles. For Taiwan’s readers, they are picking books that both celebrate the power of reading and at the same time mold a conception of “classics” for this era.

Eslite’s planning director Shining Lin describes the start of the process: “We send out invitations to publishing houses and then through the Reading Classics Together project give each book a chance to have its profound significance exposed again. Even if a book has fallen from favor and is no longer popular, we want to point out how it runs counter to the mainstream, believing that these books can stand the test of time and win over those readers thirsty for knowledge.” During the process the planning team has often expressed gratitude and admiration for the editors: “If it weren’t for these editors’ rich and unique visions and their determination to publish books, we would lose the chance to read so many cherished classics.”

These covers for the new series of classics give them a new identity that eschews the cool and the flashy. The covers seemingly cast the entire series in a new light, providing a sense of elegance to the prospect of reading the classics.

New covers for old books

The leading roles in the classics project are, of course, played by books. So that these books are clearly identifiable and brought into clear focus, the transdisciplinary artist Page Tsou has been specially invited to design book covers that put the value of these classics in a new light. “If time is a filter, classics are the pure substances that have passed through that filter,” says Tsou, describing his simple and straightforward view of these books. “I believe that classics must contain a metaphysical quality, and their covers must provide a sense of a realm between the trendy and the tried and true.” Consequently, the stippled designs of the covers depict natural images. Whether the sun, the moon, or fog, these covers are infused with an aura of great sense and sensibility. Apart from giving different visual themes to the different series of classic works, Tsou has also provided small pleasant surprises, such as a bookplate hidden in a cover’s fold. “The image of a lighthouse in the shape of a gigantic fountain pen is a blend of realism and surrealism and represents the notion that classics will light the way for future generations.” Tsou says that rather than reinterpreting these books, the packaging is intended to establish their value and give them a new identity. Instead of looking for cool or dazzling designs, by reorganizing these books into new series they have brought a visual elegance to the experience of reading the classics.

Classics and divination slips

One particularly fun element of the project is the creative divination machine Eslite has borrowed, skillfully decorated, and put on rotating display in all their bookstores. After one inserts a coin, a child figure in the machine, which plays on the theme of a classical Chinese school, carries forward in its arms a paper slip with a “divination reading from the classics.” When the child drops the slip, the machine ejects it for the reader. The famous playwright Birdy Fong and the novelist Luo Yijun were invited to play the role of fortune tellers, selecting passages from classic works under various thematic categories, including love, career, family and health. The slips, 25 in all, help readers to overcome obstacles and point them to the most suitable classics. One of them recommends Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human with the passage: “Osamu Dazai accompanies you to the absolute bottom. Or perhaps the process of falling will make you understand that you have overestimated the appeal of suicide and underestimated your attachment to the world, and you will hope that arms will be there to catch you.” Another recommends Kenneth Pai’s short story collection Taipei People with this passage: “Sense and sensibility: you need to know how people change their positions and roles within a group and how people in this complicated world are loved and remembered. This book will teach you all of this.”

For Eslite’s project, the classics are divided into five areas: giants of literature/literary biographies in translation, advances in cultural understanding, social sciences, management exemplars, and the varied landscape of Chinese-language books.

Promoting pluralism, planning for the future

With the project now in its second stage, there have already been a wide variety of responses and suggestions from readers. Some people have voiced praise and support, participating enthusiastically and buying books. Others have brought up doubts about the selection criteria. And still others have complained that it is impossible to finish 100 volumes. “Now that the trend in publishing is toward books that are short and closely related to life, the reason for selecting non-traditional methods to make series of classic books is that readers are changing,” Lin says. “Publishers are facing millennials with a visual attention span of only 0.7 seconds. We repeatedly considered how to best attract their focus and encourage them to read.” Grateful for the feedback from all quarters, the project team is sincerely considering all of the suggestions and is using a variety of methods to engage in conversations with groups of readers of different ages as it plans the following stages.

Asked about what promotions are next for the project and about new ideas for promoting reading, Lin responded that she and the planning team have been working hard to develop a plan for the coming two years. What is certain is that just as the project has been successfully implemented in Taiwan, Eslite wants at some point in the future to move it abroad, transplanting Taiwan’s enthusiasm for classic books to Chinese communities overseas.

Surrounded by books, we lose ourselves in the joy of reading classic works.

One of the bright spots of the Reading Classics Together project is a machine that issues literary-themed “divination slips.”

Experts from various fields were invited to attend seminars where they told of their own experiences in reading classic works and described how the books molded their lives.