During the 1960s, a barren cultural period in Taiwan, Chang spent most of his university days in the library perusing masterpieces of modernism: novels by Albert Camus and Franz Kafka, theater-of-the-absurd plays by Samuel Beckett and Jean Genet, and surrealistic paintings.
在那個空虛荒蕪的六○年代，張照堂在台大的日子，幾乎都在圖書館裡啃著一些現代主義的文學作品，像是卡繆、卡夫卡的小說，還有貝克特、紀涅等荒謬劇作家的劇本，還有超現實主義繪畫。