To read is to remember: Small publishing house to reprint forgotten Filipino novels
MANILA, Philippines — Is there space for old, forgotten books in print in an age of hot takes, video stories and text written by machines?
Carlos Ruiz Zafón opened The Shadow of the Wind with protagonist Daniel’s trip to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for “books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader’s hands.”
If there are Filipino books in that fictional Cemetery of Forgotten Books, Exploding Galaxies is there digging up old Filipino classics.
The small publishing house is re-releasing out-of-print works of contemporary Philippine fiction—at two to four books a year—to reacquaint old lovers with these pages and to introduce the titles to a new generation of readers.
Exploding Galaxies publisher Mara Coson shared with Philstar.com that she knows the desire for copies of books that have changed one's life and how, often, as with “our greatest novels,” these are hard to find.
Securing a copy would mean scouring secondhand bookstores and friends' bookshelves. Buying a copy abroad is an option, or asking a friend to bring one home, but these books are often priced their weight in gold. Libraries may have them, but the pandemic affected their operations and even then, copies are only to lend.
“Sometimes I don’t end up finding the books—but for those that I find and that changed my life, I have felt like I needed to make it more available to other readers too,” she said.
Wilfrido Nolledo. Released/Exploding Galaxies
The Filipino reader
When the pandemic locked most people down in their homes, many turned to cultivating hobbies. Some found solace in books.
Words Rated, a US-based non-commercial research organization, found that the “American print book market” had a different fate from other industries that faltered during the pandemic: It actually soared. This is despite physical stores having a hard time and eventually shifting to online sales.
In the Philippines, the National Book Development Board said in a BusinessWorld report that registered book sales rose by 72% to P3.35 billion during the worst of the pandemic in 2020, compared to a year earlier.
To this day, bookstores in the country are nearly never empty, and hordes of people swarm book fairs, braving long lines and the heat inside these venues, in search of their next favorite—and potentially life-changing—read.
Exploding Galaxies editor Don Jaucian said that based on his conversations with Filipino booksellers, he can surmise that “the current Filipino reader is a voracious reader.”
While admitting that he has yet to take a deeper survey on Filipino readership culture, frequent visits to bookstores and the rise of Bookstagram and BookTok—short-form book recommendations on social media—suggest that “we’re all very excited to bury our heads in books.”
The National Book Development Board-commissioned 2017 Readership Survey, the most recent poll on this, showed that an overwhelming 96% of Filipino adults and 96% of young Filipinos, aged six to 17 years old, said they enjoy reading.
It also showed that 76.75% adult Filipinos said they had read a printed book in the last 12 months. More young readers said they had finished a printed book (84.99%) in the same period.
Homecoming for Nolledo
Jaucian said Exploding Galaxies wants to reach readers, both the avid and the casual.
The publishing house is starting their mission with Wilfrido D. Nolledo’s But for the Lovers, bringing the classic novel about life in the Philippines during the Japanese Occupatiion and eventual liberation back to its home shores 50 years after publication in the United States.
For Coson, But for the Lovers was one of the greatest Filipino novels ever written. Out of print for decades, it has been inacessible and therefore all but forgotten.
“And in a way, the book changed my life not only as literature does to readers, but it made me a publisher and set the rest in motion,” she said.
Exploding Galaxies' venture to reintroduce old Filipino works come just as Filipinos rekindle their interest in the writings of Jose Rizal, following the popularity of teleserye Maria Clara at Ibarra. There are also those who are about to read Amado V. Hernandez's Mga Ibong Mandaragit — set in the waning days of the Japanese occupation — in anticipation of a possible spinoff series.
“Those are essential reads of Philippine literature and But for the Lovers fits right into that reading trajectory, one that is a playful journey into the ‘alma’ (soul) of the Philippines and is set in the precarious period of the Japanese occupation era,” Jaucian said.
Preparing for the republication of But for the Lovers went beyond just acquiring the rights. Much thought was also put into the actual book, on how it would feel in the reader’s hand or how it would look when put on a shelf.
“So, with the really deep red and neon orange cover on uncoated paper stock, the comfortable typesetting, down to thick margins for thumbs, we’ve tried to make reading the book a rounder experience and good for hours of reading,” Coson said.
Exploding Galaxies' books will have the year of first publicaiton on their spines, a feature meant to make them visually striking when shelved.
Pre-order for But for the Lovers began on May 8, with the book priced at P590; regular pricing is at P640.
But, in a Philippines often tagged as forgetful, how important is it to read and learn about roots?
Coson shared this: “I was recently talking to the novelist Linda Ty-Casper about this press, and we talked about the importance of republishing literature so people remember. She has also said before that ‘history is our biography, and literature is our autobiography.’”
“I agree.”
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