Chapter 18 The appendix has this street, which is bigger than the whole world

However, it is not really just the temptation of Bookstore No. 84. What I really want to say is that if people who are engaged in publishing work, or just people who love books and enjoy reading, there must be a holy place, just like the city of Mecca for Like Muslims, if you say anything in your short life, you have to try to go to it at least once. Then I personally think it must be Charing Cross Road, this incomparable old book street in London, England, and the most shining place for books and reading maps in the world. One location, without which there should be no second answer. donno When I first read this manuscript, I kept trying to recall what this small bookstore at 84 Charing Cross Road looked like (I firmly believe that Helene Hanff, who wrote the book, is not a lie, in the real world it must be There is such a "solid" bookstore), I must have walked past the door of this bookstore more than once, even went in, and took off the books on the shelves to read them-in the book, through a letter dated September 10, 1951 Helene Hanff's letter after visiting the bookstore of her friend Maxine, we saw that it was "a cute shop that just popped out of a Dickens book", and there were several shelves of books (must be cheaper) displayed at the door of the store , the store is full of old oak bookshelves that reach the ceiling, and the smell of ancient books is all over the nose, which is "mixed with musty smell, long-term dusty smell, and the woody smell from the walls and floors..." , Of course, there is also a man in his fifties who greets you lightly with an old British accent (it is not appropriate to call the clerk as impolite).

But isn't this what a bunch of old bookstores on Charing Cross Road still look like half a century later? ——Such suspense made me muster more courage and give birth to lofty ambitions. I really want to go to Charing Cross Road to check it out again. For a person like me who has a smoking habit and a slight claustrophobia, it will take up to 20 hours. I thought it was a big impulsive and heroic attempt, didn't I? However, it is not really just the temptation of Bookstore No. 84. What I really want to say is that if people who are engaged in publishing work, or just people who love books and enjoy reading, there must be a holy place, just like the city of Mecca for Like Muslims, if you say anything in your short life, you have to try to go to it at least once. Then I personally think it must be Charing Cross Road, this incomparable old book street in London, England, and the most shining place for books and reading maps in the world. One location, without which there should be no second answer.

At least, the translator of this book will definitely support my assertion——Chen Jianming, as far as I know personally, is exactly the person in this way in the world of book reading.Generally, the society has a superficial recognition of his identity. He is an excellent book graphic designer who is beautiful, old British and elegant, but introverted and not good at bargaining. He translated the whole book without contacting any publishing house and buying the copyright from foreign countries (so Chen Jianming is actually the book selector of this book). Based on his understanding of the publishing process, it is impossible not to Knowing that if one link is not coordinated, all the hard work will be wasted on the spot, but Chen Jianming, who is calm and orderly, can suddenly go crazy because of Charing Cross Road.

These are the lunatics I know, love, and have always been grateful for. In the world of books and reading, they are few in number but they have existed for generations. "Little guerrilla warfare" (borrowing Herzen's self-proclaimed words), so that the market law, which is so strong that it is almost invincible, has never been able to carry out its autocratic rule with confidence, so that the world of books and reading, as Hannah Orland said As Benjamin said, it is always the most marginal and heterogeneous people who get their clearest marks. Book Street with or without This beautiful book is interwoven with letters between New York, USA and this small bookstore from 1949 to 1969. A female playwright who lives in New York buys books and works for "Marks and Cohen Bookstore" "The manager of Frank Del is responsible for finding and sending books. It was originally a boring business transaction, but soon, books defeated business, as John Van Loon said, "A manger defeated an empire" (of course, in On the basis of the stack of books, it was Hanfu who opened the gap with her reckless Aries enthusiasm at the beginning, especially when she kept sending food parcels such as eggs and ham to poor people who were dependent on rationing and black markets due to the shortage of war materials at that time. British), people's emotions, minds, and even friendships close to each other began to flow freely.Across Charing Cross Road, they were joined by their entire staff (six in all), then by Del's own family (wife Nora and two daughters), and then Mary Bourdain, the neighbor's old embroidery lady; Here, stage actress Maxine, friend Ginny and Ed visited "her bookstore" instead of Hanfu, but unfortunately and slightly dramatic, Hanfu herself failed to make it to the end before everything ended. Set foot on the UK to practice her unforgettable trip to Charing Cross Road.The book ends with a reply letter from Del's eldest daughter who replaced her father in October 1969. Del himself died of peritonitis at the end of 1968.

The great novelist Green, who also came from England, said in his "Havana Correspondent": "Population research reports can print various statistics and calculate the population of cities to describe a city, but it is not true for everyone in the city. As far as people are concerned, a city is just a combination of a few lanes, a few houses, and a few people. Without these, a city seems to have fallen, leaving only sad memories.” ——Yes, after 1969, to Helian For Hanfu, this bookstore and this book street can no longer be the same, as if it has fallen, just because "the kind person who sold these good books to me has passed away a few months ago, and the owner of the bookstore, Mr. Max, is no longer here. "The World", this book is a book of mourning and mourning, commemorating an adventure in the hearts of the people in twenty years of book time.

But Helene Hanff wrote this scene into a book, and all this will not be lost again, and even since then she has a stronger power to resist the erosion of time than her own life-humans have invented words, know how to write and Printed into books, we are no longer at the mercy of time in vain, we can even defeat time partially and meaningfully. Books are indeed the best form of memory retention that human beings have successfully owned. From then on, memory can be placed outside our body and will not decay with our body. Because of this, the bookstore, and more importantly, Charing Cross Street, which is paved with books one by one, will not disappear because of the abrupt end of this adventure. Hanfu's good memory adds a bit of halo color, just like it has never stopped being included in the writing of all thinkers, commemorators, watchers, and dreamers, so the sad Hanfu can still muster up the courage to say : "However, the bookstore is still there. If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road and give me a kiss, I owe it a lot..."

This is unmistakable. Today, including myself, many people can confirm that Charing Cross Road is still there. I went there in the 1980s and 1990s after more than ten years. Even though the "Marx and Cohen Bookstore" at No. 84 regrettably did not survive as the note at the end of the book and became the "Covent Garden Record Store", Charing Cross Road is indeed still there. a river of time Charing Cross Street, this cross does not mean a crossroads, but a cross. In fact, it is a winding city street about one kilometer long. A beautiful period, go north through the National Gallery, through Soho and Chinatown, next to Covent Garden, until Oxford Street, then go down and become Tottenham Road, you will soon see the famous The British Museum (the area around the British Museum is another gathering place for bookstores, but here it is mainly composed of finely printed large-format art books).

Old England and old London are full of good things, which are piled up from the long and glorious past of the old empire, as Hanfu said in the book (she said similar words more than once): "I remember a friend many years ago Once said: When people come to England, they can always see what they want to see. I said, I'm going to pursue English literature, and he told me: 'It's there!'” However, it is very different from other glorious things in old England such as sunset and evening in that Charing Cross Street is not a relic or an ancient relic sealed and protected for tourists to take pictures of. It has a long history, but it is active and active. The present, we are still working hard at the moment we are talking, we can remember it and use it at the same time, it is both historical and at this moment, such a strange feeling of complete time, think carefully , isn't it just the original essence of the book, the greatest invention and achievement of mankind?The reason why we have lost such a feeling may be because the real world we continue to disenchant has successfully exorcised time, amputated the past and the future, and become a so-called "eternal present" that is fleeting but lingering. "——Some biologists tell us that the relationship between animals other than humans and time is likely to be only this way. In the eternal present, memory fades away and only vague ghost shadows are left, so there is no meaningful prospect forward. , there is only such a narrow and unforgiving time gap left, so it is difficult to tolerate the unique continuous thinking and exquisite feeling of human beings, and only the instinctive reflex that does not take up time can still operate effectively, which is actually an atavism.

More precisely, the time landscape of Charing Cross Road refers not only to its experience, origin and years of existence, but more importantly, even if you don’t know its history and past glory, you can still The real-time landscape that was clearly captured at the moment of meeting at first glance is naturally composed of various bookstores and their respective collections in the bookstores—almost every bookstore in Charing Cross Road has the same style, size, display layout, and book categories. The indescribable taste, aesthetics and thoughtfulness revealed in the variety, price and overall atmosphere of the bookstore.Of course, the difference between bookstores is generally the difference between general new bookstores and second-hand old bookstores, which widens the scope of time, but in fact, even general bookstores that sell new books are quite different from each other, and each contains books of various colors with very different publication dates. , presenting extremely rich and detailed time levels.

It is not an exaggeration to say that this has become a street most like a river of time, more like a complete fossil layer of human intellectual thinking, you can and must go in and out of each house, acting like entering a showroom rather than a store. Relatively speaking, what we call "going to bookstores" in Taiwan is hardly a compliment that only makes us feel good.On the one hand, entering a single bookstore is closer to a purely commercial "purchase" than to "shopping" with Benjamin-style idleness. On the one hand, "shopping" should not completely presuppose the subject matter. You look forward to and reserve space for surprises, discoveries, and unexpected encounters. However, there are no second-hand bookstores in Taiwan, and the books in general bookstores are active. Books published two or three months ago are likely to be as hard to find as unearthed cultural relics two or three thousand years ago.

Even the bookstore and its book landscape are eternal and present, in Taiwan. eternal present disaster Helene Hanff mentioned in the book that one of her rules for reading and buying books is so unfamiliar to us that it can be frightening. She told Del that she would never buy a book that she hadn't read. Isn't it as reckless as buying clothes without trying them on?Of course, we don't need to be as fierce as this respectable Aries lady, but this is actually a very interesting sentence, which shows that the purchase, collection and re-reading of old books (in a broad sense, not just rare editions) It's nothing more than outlandish obnoxious behavior or arty disgusting behavior.This is rooted in the constant nature of books that are difficult to understand and difficult to fully grasp, especially books that are better, richer in content, and farther along the road of creativity, often far exceeding our current knowledge preparation, moral preparation and emotional preparation. We then need a long or short turn around space to get along with it.A good book is like true love, it may fall in love at first sight, but it takes a long time to understand and sympathize with Zicheng when he talks about life and death, holding his hand and growing old together. Therefore, from the perspective of reading needs, re-reading a book is not only possible, but necessary. You can't hope that you can see through it at a glance. At the age of fifty, it will open up to you different things due to your different inquiries, concerns and confusions. To be honest, I try to recall, but I still can’t think of a book that I really like that I don’t have and don’t need to read again. Re-reading (you even deeply remember the fragments, which means you keep re-reading in your memory); therefore, from the perspective of the supply side of books, we should be smarter to give books a little more time and give ourselves a little more Opportunity, historical experience has repeatedly told us that our current society does not have the ability to recognize many pioneering and significant books at a glance. Those who don't believe it can go to the famous New York Times Book Review The translation of the book), the classics that have been proven in the future for a hundred years, what they missed is ten times and a hundred times more than what they caught with their discerning eyes, and the few captured books have such works as Salinger's or Chandler's "Big Books". "Sleep" was repaired to nothing (the reason is too much swearing and so on).If a society intends to decide whether a book is good or bad within two weeks to one month, and requires books to play a single-elimination match that it is not good at, this society is not only arrogant and stupid, but also sadly walking towards disaster step by step . A sad catastrophe where only the eternal present remains. the part is greater than the whole It is the revelation of this eternal and present disaster that allows us to overthrow an ancient mathematical principle in the world of books and reading-this is Plato's favorite quote, the whole is always greater than the part, but we know that the fact is not always the case, short The short Charing Cross Street is indeed only a small part of the world we live in, but many times, we feel that Charing Cross Street is far bigger than our whole world, much bigger. When will we have such a weird feeling?Especially when we are full of urgent puzzles that cannot be solved.It is easy for us to be amazed again and again in one book after another. Compared with the existing book world, the real world we live in has so little knowledge, such a narrow vision, and such poor thinking endurance. The human heart is so closed and lazy, and many problems that continue to torture us, including public and private domains, not only have experienced suffering and thought about it seriously, but even sealed their experiences and wise and delicate answers in books. From a morphological point of view, the world in front of us often only has a thin layer of the present, while the images of the world revealed by Charing Cross Street through books are superimposed on endless layers of time, including those lost by us due to amnesia. And even the endless past that we don't even know existed, and the endless future that we have neither the power nor the intention to look forward to. Look at Mill's and "On Representational Politics", which is a book that existed a full hundred and fifty years ago. Today we have a free society and democratic politics. Isn't it good to write all the malicious manipulations in the book? Take a look at Ricardo's "Principles of Political Economy", which was written two hundred years ago. The book could not be more clear and reveals the most basic principles of economics and necessary reminders. Continuing to make mistakes day in and day out? Or take a look at Benjamin's "Lyric Poets in the Age of Advanced Capitalism", which was written more than half a century ago. Today, our Greater Taipei City has just replaced new sidewalks and has just begun to learn how to live in the city. Walking around and trying to start understanding the city isn't it? Or are we asking constitutional questions (cabinetary, presidential, dual-principal, and the mysterious Senegalese)?Questions to ask about nationalism and populism?Ask about eco-environmental protection or just remediation of a Keelung River?Ask about equal rights for men and women?Ask labor and unemployment?Ask about the electoral system and constituency planning?Ask about media roles and self-discipline?Or more importantly, ask questions such as overall education, social value and moral crisis? Yes, as Helene Hanff said, the bookstore is still there. cheapest thing in the world And Charing Cross Street is not only bigger than the world in front of us, in fact, it does better - Charing Cross Street not only has rich time levels, but also presents specific spatial divisions; it is a street of time that flows continuously, It is also a small world surrounded by bookstores, compartments, and single books, which makes people who walk in it bright and bright. I guess, part of the reason is the accidental infiltration of history, for example, the old-fashioned, old London buildings that are more than a hundred years old, the thick and strong stone walls that do not change the weather, restrict the flow of commerce, demolish everything and flatten everything Therefore, small bookstores bloom like flowers, and even large-scale comprehensive bookstores have twists and turns in their internal layout, and each block is often closed and isolated, forming a cave of its own, rather like stacks of books. Moreover, the hegemonic reception of the United States has prevented English from declining with the fall of the old empire. It is still today's "quasi-Esperanto" and the general source and gathering place of universal book publishing activities. , so, when you turn around, you come out of the struggling Eastern European world in just two steps, but immediately stumble into the strange spelling, but it is very likely to be the dark world of Africa, the oldest homeland of mankind, just like Umberto Eco in The climax of the thrilling scene in the book—on the seventh day, Brother William and the trainee Eisen finally entered the end of Africa where all the secrets are buried in the library of the Great Labyrinth. A boundless intellectual world is made up of small caves. I especially like the caves in Charing Cross Road. On the one hand, this may be the memory of human beings from ancient times. It is a kind of nostalgia, like every generation of children has the urge to find caves and build caves. A sense of security and security, and reading, from reading, thinking to fascination, at its root, is a lonely activity like being in a cave; The existence of caves like heaven and earth provides us with opportunities to escape, what kind of oppression do we escape from?To escape a phenomenon of what Levi-Strauss refers to as massification, meaning an increasingly consistent, uninteresting, and no longer characterless, universal horror of oppression (precisely the presentation of society's eternal present), And these moving caves are just like the tree holes in "Alice in Wonderland". When you pass through them, you will fall into a completely heterogeneous and completely unexpected world. Therefore, I am always worried that we will eventually lose the Charing Cross Street that belongs to our generation, just like Hanfu has already lost her Charing Cross Street. Information (for example, the corrosiveness of business is only slowed down, not really stopped), it is a natural neurotic reaction of people in the face of enough good things. You know that everything is constantly changing, and cherished things especially cannot remain forever , such as morning glow, such as spring flowers, such as love. But you can buy it—not the whole of Charing Cross Road, of course, but the books on which it really exists and derives its meaning. The street is never an effective form of resisting the erosion of time, but the books are, just like Hanfu Said: "Maybe so, even if it's not there (meaning England and Charing Cross Road), look around me (meaning the books she bought from Charing Cross Road)... I'm pretty sure they're here Stop." Having been in publishing for more than half my life, I still have one personal question that I still don't get a satisfactory answer to: I've never really understood why people don't buy books?Isn't this the cheapest thing in the world?A human being has ever possessed the most intelligent, serious, imaginative, and greatest mind. Isn’t it very likely that you can buy all of his miraculous life for only three thousand Taiwan dollars for an unattractive dress (as a writer , ten books in a lifetime, 300 yuan per book, not to mention that there are usually discounts when buying this way)?Don't you pay for a cheap lunch and get a wonderful cave and a complete world connected by it? Hanfu is obviously from the same country as me. She paid for books, but she sent food out of her own pocket and asked her friends to send stockings, but she still felt that she was taking advantage. On December 12, 1952, she said: "From the bottom of my heart I think this is really a bad exchange of Christmas gifts. What I send you, you will eat up in a week at most, and you can't even hope to keep it for the New Year; Can be with me day and night, until death; I can even leave it in the world and smile." In the final settlement on April 11, 1969, she still came to the conclusion that "I owe it a lot". Lawrence Block, who is also the best detective novelist in the United States and also lives in New York, thinks so. In his book "The Thief in the Rye", he tells a novelist (namely Salinger) Say: "This man, who wrote such a book and changed our entire generation, I always feel that I owe him something." So - buy it, I mean the book, read it well, while reading it If you save money during the day, save it and find a chance to go to Charing Cross Road, while it is still there, if you do make it and get there, please give us a kiss, we all owe it a lot...