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Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind
From the author of How to Think and The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, a literary guide to engaging with the voices of the past to stay sane in the present
W. H. Auden once wrote that "art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead." In his brilliant and compulsively readable new treatise, Breaking Bread with the Dead, Alan Jacobs shows us that engaging with the strange and wonderful writings of the past might help us live less anxiously in the present—and increase what Thomas Pynchon once called our "personal density."
Today we are battling too much information in a society changing at lightning speed, with algorithms aimed at shaping our every thought—plus a sense that history offers no resources, only impediments to overcome or ignore. The modern solution to our problems is to surround ourselves only with what we know and what brings us instant comfort. Jacobs's answer is the opposite: to be in conversation with, and challenged by, those from the past who can tell us what we never thought we needed to know.
What can Homer teach us about force? How does Frederick Douglass deal with the massive blind spots of America's Founding Fathers? And what can we learn from modern authors who engage passionately and profoundly with the past? How can Ursula K. Le Guin show us truths about Virgil's female characters that Virgil himself could never have seen? In Breaking Bread with the Dead, a gifted scholar draws us into close and sympathetic engagement with texts from across the ages, including the work of Anita Desai, Henrik Ibsen, Jean Rhys, Simone Weil, Edith Wharton, Amitav Ghosh, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Italo Calvino, and many more.
By hearing the voices of the past, we can expand our consciousness, our sympathies, and our wisdom far beyond what our present moment can offer.
W. H. Auden once wrote that "art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead." In his brilliant and compulsively readable new treatise, Breaking Bread with the Dead, Alan Jacobs shows us that engaging with the strange and wonderful writings of the past might help us live less anxiously in the present—and increase what Thomas Pynchon once called our "personal density."
Today we are battling too much information in a society changing at lightning speed, with algorithms aimed at shaping our every thought—plus a sense that history offers no resources, only impediments to overcome or ignore. The modern solution to our problems is to surround ourselves only with what we know and what brings us instant comfort. Jacobs's answer is the opposite: to be in conversation with, and challenged by, those from the past who can tell us what we never thought we needed to know.
What can Homer teach us about force? How does Frederick Douglass deal with the massive blind spots of America's Founding Fathers? And what can we learn from modern authors who engage passionately and profoundly with the past? How can Ursula K. Le Guin show us truths about Virgil's female characters that Virgil himself could never have seen? In Breaking Bread with the Dead, a gifted scholar draws us into close and sympathetic engagement with texts from across the ages, including the work of Anita Desai, Henrik Ibsen, Jean Rhys, Simone Weil, Edith Wharton, Amitav Ghosh, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Italo Calvino, and many more.
By hearing the voices of the past, we can expand our consciousness, our sympathies, and our wisdom far beyond what our present moment can offer.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published September 8, 2020
241 people are currently reading
5,978 people want to read
About the author
Alan Jacobs
73books522followersAlan Jacobs is a scholar of English literature, literary critic, and distinguished professor of the humanities at Baylor University. Previously, he held the Clyde S. Kilby Chair of English at Wheaton College until 2012. His academic career has been marked by a deep engagement with literature, theology, and intellectual history.
Jacobs has written extensively on reading, thinking, and culture, contributing to publications such as The Atlantic, First Things, and The New Atlantis. His books explore diverse topics, from the intellectual legacy of Christian humanism (The Year of Our Lord 1943) to the challenges of modern discourse (How to Think). He has also examined literary figures like C. S. Lewis (The Narnian) and W. H. Auden. His work often bridges literature and philosophy, with books such as A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love reflecting on the ethical dimensions of interpretation.
An evangelical Anglican, Jacobs continues to influence discussions on faith, literature, and the role of reading in contemporary life.
Jacobs has written extensively on reading, thinking, and culture, contributing to publications such as The Atlantic, First Things, and The New Atlantis. His books explore diverse topics, from the intellectual legacy of Christian humanism (The Year of Our Lord 1943) to the challenges of modern discourse (How to Think). He has also examined literary figures like C. S. Lewis (The Narnian) and W. H. Auden. His work often bridges literature and philosophy, with books such as A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love reflecting on the ethical dimensions of interpretation.
An evangelical Anglican, Jacobs continues to influence discussions on faith, literature, and the role of reading in contemporary life.
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September 21, 2020
2020 desperately needed Alan Jacobs's Breaking Bread with the Dead. Reading it was a breath of fresh air.
If you appreciate old books and feel increasingly dismayed by the fragility of well educated twenty-first century readers who can’t tolerate any views that are out of step with their own “enlightened� sensibilities, sensibilities that couldn’t possibly be wrong, then this book is for you.
“There is an increasing sense� Jacobs notes, “not just that the past is sadly in error, is superannuated and irrelevant and full of foul ideas that we are well rid of, but that it actually defiles us—its presence makes us unclean.�
With a warm and ecumenical tone that seems increasingly rare, Jacobs argues “for an account of the past that emphasizes its treasures more than its threats.� Depending on one’s politics and worldview, it can be tempting to either vilify long-dead authors or romanticize them. Jacobs presents what should be obvious to us: a sensible middle ground where we honestly grapple with old books, celebrating and learning from what is good and true while wrestling with what we humbly believe is wrong. In this way, we develop “personal density”—an antidote to “the feeling of being at a frenetic standstill”—the “twitchiness,� and “low-level anxiety� we feel when we temporarily put down our phones and are therefore “communicatively unstimulated.�*
“No one should be defined by the worst thing that they ever did,� argues Jacobs. “We need to look at the whole person.� One of the benefits of bringing this charitable perspective to our study of old books is that we might come to better understand ourselves in our own moment.
In one of my favorite chapters of the book, Jacobs holds up Frederick Douglass as an exemplar of this nuanced, charitable, and sometimes costly approach to understanding the past. In his famous Rochester speech, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,� Douglass calls the Founders “great men� for “the good they did and the principles they contended for�, while also lamenting “the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them.� Jacobs then asks his readers to reflect on “what it cost Douglass to speak so warmly of the Founders,� despite “their failure to eradicate slavery at the nation’s founding.� Jacobs marvels at how Douglass “conquered his indignation" and suggests to us that, if Douglass is willing to do so, we can at least try.
Breaking Bread with the Dead is a special book that I hope many will read and consider thoughtfully. I’ll close this review by sharing an interesting classroom experiment that Princeton professor Robert P. George likes to conduct with his students. It perfectly illustrates why we must put on humility, charity, and generosity when engaging with the past, if only for the sake of better understanding ourselves. I agree with Jacobs's belief that “you can’t understand the place and time you’re in by immersion. The opposite’s true. You have to step out and away and back and forward. And you have to do it regularly. Then, you come back to the here and now and say, 'Ah! That’s how it is.'"
I sometimes ask students what their position on slavery would have been had they been white and living in the South before abolition. Guess what? They all would have been abolitionists! They all would have bravely spoken out against slavery, and worked tirelessly against it.
Of course, this is nonsense. Only the tiniest fraction of them, or of any of us, would have spoken up against slavery or lifted a finger to free the slaves. Most of them—and us—would have gone along. Many would have supported the slave system and happily benefited from it.
So I respond by saying that I will credit their claims if they can show evidence of the following: that in leading their lives today they have stood up for the rights of unpopular victims of injustice whose very humanity is denied, and where they have done so knowing: 1) that it would make them unpopular with their peers, (2) that they would be loathed and ridiculed by powerful, influential individuals and institutions in our society; (3) that they would be abandoned by many of their friends, (4) that they would be called nasty names, and that they would risk being denied valuable professional opportunities as a result of their moral witness. In short, my challenge is to show where they have at risk to themselves and their futures stood up for a cause that is unpopular in elite sectors of our culture today.
That's just brilliant. I would love to sit in on that classroom discussion.
*My only criticism of Breaking Bread with the Dead is that the concept of “personal density� and its relationship to the reading old books remains a little opaque in my mind. I think this might be because Jacobs uses an excerpt from a Thomas Pynchon novel to define the term. Pynchon is not exactly a model of clarity! Reading between the lines, I suspect that, with “personal density,� Jacobs is making a similar argument to that found in The Coddling of the American Mind—that young people need exposure to ideas that make them uncomfortable (not “trigger warnings� and “safe spaces�) if they are to develop the stability and resilience required to thrive in this world.
If you appreciate old books and feel increasingly dismayed by the fragility of well educated twenty-first century readers who can’t tolerate any views that are out of step with their own “enlightened� sensibilities, sensibilities that couldn’t possibly be wrong, then this book is for you.
“There is an increasing sense� Jacobs notes, “not just that the past is sadly in error, is superannuated and irrelevant and full of foul ideas that we are well rid of, but that it actually defiles us—its presence makes us unclean.�
With a warm and ecumenical tone that seems increasingly rare, Jacobs argues “for an account of the past that emphasizes its treasures more than its threats.� Depending on one’s politics and worldview, it can be tempting to either vilify long-dead authors or romanticize them. Jacobs presents what should be obvious to us: a sensible middle ground where we honestly grapple with old books, celebrating and learning from what is good and true while wrestling with what we humbly believe is wrong. In this way, we develop “personal density”—an antidote to “the feeling of being at a frenetic standstill”—the “twitchiness,� and “low-level anxiety� we feel when we temporarily put down our phones and are therefore “communicatively unstimulated.�*
“No one should be defined by the worst thing that they ever did,� argues Jacobs. “We need to look at the whole person.� One of the benefits of bringing this charitable perspective to our study of old books is that we might come to better understand ourselves in our own moment.
In one of my favorite chapters of the book, Jacobs holds up Frederick Douglass as an exemplar of this nuanced, charitable, and sometimes costly approach to understanding the past. In his famous Rochester speech, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,� Douglass calls the Founders “great men� for “the good they did and the principles they contended for�, while also lamenting “the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them.� Jacobs then asks his readers to reflect on “what it cost Douglass to speak so warmly of the Founders,� despite “their failure to eradicate slavery at the nation’s founding.� Jacobs marvels at how Douglass “conquered his indignation" and suggests to us that, if Douglass is willing to do so, we can at least try.
Breaking Bread with the Dead is a special book that I hope many will read and consider thoughtfully. I’ll close this review by sharing an interesting classroom experiment that Princeton professor Robert P. George likes to conduct with his students. It perfectly illustrates why we must put on humility, charity, and generosity when engaging with the past, if only for the sake of better understanding ourselves. I agree with Jacobs's belief that “you can’t understand the place and time you’re in by immersion. The opposite’s true. You have to step out and away and back and forward. And you have to do it regularly. Then, you come back to the here and now and say, 'Ah! That’s how it is.'"
I sometimes ask students what their position on slavery would have been had they been white and living in the South before abolition. Guess what? They all would have been abolitionists! They all would have bravely spoken out against slavery, and worked tirelessly against it.
Of course, this is nonsense. Only the tiniest fraction of them, or of any of us, would have spoken up against slavery or lifted a finger to free the slaves. Most of them—and us—would have gone along. Many would have supported the slave system and happily benefited from it.
So I respond by saying that I will credit their claims if they can show evidence of the following: that in leading their lives today they have stood up for the rights of unpopular victims of injustice whose very humanity is denied, and where they have done so knowing: 1) that it would make them unpopular with their peers, (2) that they would be loathed and ridiculed by powerful, influential individuals and institutions in our society; (3) that they would be abandoned by many of their friends, (4) that they would be called nasty names, and that they would risk being denied valuable professional opportunities as a result of their moral witness. In short, my challenge is to show where they have at risk to themselves and their futures stood up for a cause that is unpopular in elite sectors of our culture today.
That's just brilliant. I would love to sit in on that classroom discussion.
*My only criticism of Breaking Bread with the Dead is that the concept of “personal density� and its relationship to the reading old books remains a little opaque in my mind. I think this might be because Jacobs uses an excerpt from a Thomas Pynchon novel to define the term. Pynchon is not exactly a model of clarity! Reading between the lines, I suspect that, with “personal density,� Jacobs is making a similar argument to that found in The Coddling of the American Mind—that young people need exposure to ideas that make them uncomfortable (not “trigger warnings� and “safe spaces�) if they are to develop the stability and resilience required to thrive in this world.
September 1, 2022
This is the September 2022 selection.
I’ve enjoyed Jacobs’s compact nonfiction works like The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction over the years. Though short, I find myself reading these books in small bites, a few pages at a time. In his new release, he argues for the importance of reading old books, both to increase our “personal density� and to better understand and appreciate our present moment. He also explores how to approach these old books, which were often written with an entirely different worldview. The title comes from W. H. Auden, who once wrote that “art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.�
I’ve enjoyed Jacobs’s compact nonfiction works like The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction over the years. Though short, I find myself reading these books in small bites, a few pages at a time. In his new release, he argues for the importance of reading old books, both to increase our “personal density� and to better understand and appreciate our present moment. He also explores how to approach these old books, which were often written with an entirely different worldview. The title comes from W. H. Auden, who once wrote that “art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.�
April 11, 2021
This was an enjoyable swim in some deep waters. Jacobs is a new favorite author with me and I have liked each of his books better than the one before. Jacobs quotes other books frequently and while some find that distracting, it is what I loved best about the books. He uses many examples to illustrate what he is proposing and I found that helpful.
June 18, 2021
An excellent book about why and how we should read books from the past. It makes no sense to judge books written in other times by the ideas and sensibilities of today. We need those books to understand how far we've come, and rejecting the wisdom they do offer makes no sense at all. Let's not forget that readers of the future will be judging us as well.
Want to read
December 13, 2023For Jacobs on "temporal bandwidth," see (adapted from this book). Related post . CT review . Interview (might be more about 1943). Reviews at , (by Mark Ward), , and .
Jacobs to a WSJ misreading.
The Brazos Fellows was very good (watch it ). Elizabeth Corey said that Jacobs's book is a defense of liberal arts education, and there is a political vision to the book, including issues of race and sex, in a nonthreatening way. Oakeshott: Poets and other creative folks would be squandering their genius by engaging in traditional politics; traditional politics may protect culture to a degree, but poets recreate society itself. Robin Sloan: Social media is an orthographic camera: You see everything, but there's nothing to tell you what's significant. Reading old books helps you to shift from orthographic projection to perspective. Perspective can lead to tranquility. Jacobs doesn't read the news daily; he reads it weekly, using The Economist—it helps one to avoid bad hot takes and the outrage cycle. Burke and Douglass aren't threatening because they're not yelling at you regarding our contemporary moment; nevertheless, they have relevant points to make that can apply to our situation. Jacobs acknowledges that there's some tension between this book and The Pleasures of Reading, because an agenda of reading old books could become like a duty, as opposed to reading at whim. Jacobs: When teaching old authors/works, he focuses on positive selection first (see what's valuable), and then later might address negative selection; that order helps readers take the positive more readily than if they were presented with the negative first. Jacobs wrote this book and How to Think as a citizen. He didn't necessarily write as a Christian, although he certainly thought as a Christian (and he's clear elsewhere in his works). However, the chapter titled "Table Fellowship" includes some underlying theology.
Jacobs to a WSJ misreading.
The Brazos Fellows was very good (watch it ). Elizabeth Corey said that Jacobs's book is a defense of liberal arts education, and there is a political vision to the book, including issues of race and sex, in a nonthreatening way. Oakeshott: Poets and other creative folks would be squandering their genius by engaging in traditional politics; traditional politics may protect culture to a degree, but poets recreate society itself. Robin Sloan: Social media is an orthographic camera: You see everything, but there's nothing to tell you what's significant. Reading old books helps you to shift from orthographic projection to perspective. Perspective can lead to tranquility. Jacobs doesn't read the news daily; he reads it weekly, using The Economist—it helps one to avoid bad hot takes and the outrage cycle. Burke and Douglass aren't threatening because they're not yelling at you regarding our contemporary moment; nevertheless, they have relevant points to make that can apply to our situation. Jacobs acknowledges that there's some tension between this book and The Pleasures of Reading, because an agenda of reading old books could become like a duty, as opposed to reading at whim. Jacobs: When teaching old authors/works, he focuses on positive selection first (see what's valuable), and then later might address negative selection; that order helps readers take the positive more readily than if they were presented with the negative first. Jacobs wrote this book and How to Think as a citizen. He didn't necessarily write as a Christian, although he certainly thought as a Christian (and he's clear elsewhere in his works). However, the chapter titled "Table Fellowship" includes some underlying theology.
September 13, 2020
A gentle reminder I actually need to read the books I’ve accumulated.
December 13, 2022
While I immediately loved his concept of "temporal bandwidth" and will be using that concept for years to come, I didn't love this book as much as I'd hoped. I think I was hoping it would read more like Karen Swallow Prior's or , which made me fall deeply in love with all the books she discusses and immediately want to read them. In this case, I really appreciated all of the premises Jacobs used to support his claim that we must read books from the past. But I didn't fall in love with any of the books themselves. Somehow the book lacked an inviting warmth that I was hoping to experience. Nonetheless, Jacobs reinforces what I've suspected: we're invited to a feast at a banquet table that stretches far into the past and we would all benefit from being a more humble guest at this table.
But that's not to take away from the lessons of the book. Jacobs understands the kinds of bias and historical disagreements that might prevent us from reading and engaging with older books, and he address all of these concerns with helpful frameworks. I especially liked his instructions on positive selection (reading for what is good and right about a book) rather than negative selection (refusing to read that which has any offensive/disagreeable content). Jacobs' explanation of Frederick Douglass' respectful rebuke of the founding fathers in "What to the slave is the Fourth of July" shows us that we can engage with the ideas of our flawed forebears in a way that both celebrates their ideals and recognizes their shortcomings.
I intend to reread bits and pieces of this one before returning it to the library, even though it's already overdue. Sorry to the next reader!
But that's not to take away from the lessons of the book. Jacobs understands the kinds of bias and historical disagreements that might prevent us from reading and engaging with older books, and he address all of these concerns with helpful frameworks. I especially liked his instructions on positive selection (reading for what is good and right about a book) rather than negative selection (refusing to read that which has any offensive/disagreeable content). Jacobs' explanation of Frederick Douglass' respectful rebuke of the founding fathers in "What to the slave is the Fourth of July" shows us that we can engage with the ideas of our flawed forebears in a way that both celebrates their ideals and recognizes their shortcomings.
I intend to reread bits and pieces of this one before returning it to the library, even though it's already overdue. Sorry to the next reader!
April 11, 2021
Summary: A case for reading old books as a means of increasing our “personal density� to expand our temporal bandwidth.
Alan Jacobs teaches students to read old books and contends, contrary to many critics, that this reading is essential in a day when we are bombarded by an avalanche of information, and all matter of questions about the future. Drawing upon Thomas Pynchon in Gravity’s Rainbow, he argues that old books increase our “personal density� through expanding our temporal bandwidth.
What does this mean? Jacobs is not arguing for learning from the lessons of the past or that old books help us recognize universal truths. Rather, he suggests that the great works of the past startle us with their difference. They help us see the choices of our own age in light of those of the past. They are the “other,� the “generative oddkin.� Jacobs believes that understanding how people of other ages met the challenges of life equip us to better face challenges of the future than if we draw only upon the resources of the present.
The greatest challenge to Jacobs� proposal is the invidious aspects of many of these works–racist, chauvinist, colonialist, and more. Jacobs does not deny any of that. What he observes is that those in the past often enunciated ideas, the implications they failed to fully grasp in their own lives. He points to the American founders who laid the groundwork for our own ideals of equality, yet held slaves and failed until 100 years ago to enfranchise women. Reading them forces us to ask how future generations will evaluate us. Drawing upon Ursula LeGuin’s novel Lavinia, an adaptation of the Aeneid, giving voice to the woman Aeneas loved, Jacobs argues both that we read with double vision, recognizing both the work and the flawed character of work, and that our reading from our time can bring new insight that perhaps even an author like Virgil had not grasped.
Jacobs develops these themes through nine essays in which we consider works like The Iliad, The Doll’s House, and Jane Eyre, and authors from Virgil to Italo Calvino. He contends that the presence and tranquility of mind enabling us to meet the challenges of the day comes from a perspective that goes beyond “the latest thing.� If we read only sources from the present, as diverse as they may be, we may still be caught in “echo chambers.� Sometimes, the voices of the past will give voice and words that make sense of our own reality. At other times they will startle and challenge us. Rather than lulling us to sleep with placid verities, they challenge and shake us up, nurturing the kind of resistance fostering “unfragile� and resilient thought.
Jacobs does all this in elegant prose evoking the voices he would have us give more careful attention–an engaging read and a warm invitation.
Alan Jacobs teaches students to read old books and contends, contrary to many critics, that this reading is essential in a day when we are bombarded by an avalanche of information, and all matter of questions about the future. Drawing upon Thomas Pynchon in Gravity’s Rainbow, he argues that old books increase our “personal density� through expanding our temporal bandwidth.
What does this mean? Jacobs is not arguing for learning from the lessons of the past or that old books help us recognize universal truths. Rather, he suggests that the great works of the past startle us with their difference. They help us see the choices of our own age in light of those of the past. They are the “other,� the “generative oddkin.� Jacobs believes that understanding how people of other ages met the challenges of life equip us to better face challenges of the future than if we draw only upon the resources of the present.
The greatest challenge to Jacobs� proposal is the invidious aspects of many of these works–racist, chauvinist, colonialist, and more. Jacobs does not deny any of that. What he observes is that those in the past often enunciated ideas, the implications they failed to fully grasp in their own lives. He points to the American founders who laid the groundwork for our own ideals of equality, yet held slaves and failed until 100 years ago to enfranchise women. Reading them forces us to ask how future generations will evaluate us. Drawing upon Ursula LeGuin’s novel Lavinia, an adaptation of the Aeneid, giving voice to the woman Aeneas loved, Jacobs argues both that we read with double vision, recognizing both the work and the flawed character of work, and that our reading from our time can bring new insight that perhaps even an author like Virgil had not grasped.
Jacobs develops these themes through nine essays in which we consider works like The Iliad, The Doll’s House, and Jane Eyre, and authors from Virgil to Italo Calvino. He contends that the presence and tranquility of mind enabling us to meet the challenges of the day comes from a perspective that goes beyond “the latest thing.� If we read only sources from the present, as diverse as they may be, we may still be caught in “echo chambers.� Sometimes, the voices of the past will give voice and words that make sense of our own reality. At other times they will startle and challenge us. Rather than lulling us to sleep with placid verities, they challenge and shake us up, nurturing the kind of resistance fostering “unfragile� and resilient thought.
Jacobs does all this in elegant prose evoking the voices he would have us give more careful attention–an engaging read and a warm invitation.
December 22, 2020
Alan Jacobs is a master essayist, a wonderfully talented and important public intellectual, and simply fun to hangout with. But he also loves going down side trails in his books and this one seemed to be mostly digressions from the theme of why we must read outside our time in order to have the depth and breadth to understand our own. An important thesis but I am not sure he ever truly made the case for it.
November 27, 2022
Essays that argue why we should read the classics despite their antiquated views about race, gender, and class. Equally interesting and dull depending on the essay/chapter.
October 14, 2020
To explore books from previous generations has long been a joy to me as it allows one to soak up an atmosphere of another time, another culture, and to view the progress of God's story throughout time. One is invited in to other people's perspectives and to live in the moment with them. In reading these stories one can easily see that things have not changed. Man's cruelty, greed, lusts, perversions, and any of the other sins one cares to add, have not changed. Often new names are given, but the sins remain the same. Can we learn from the past? Have we progressed beyond their sins? Yes, we can learn from the past and from pagans since God provides common grace. In so doing, great works of art and literature, by pagans, have been created and enjoyed by Christians because God has given them wisdom in certain areas. But in all reading, a Christian must bring a Christian world view with the absolutes in scripture to test what is being read as to its value. As far as progressing, I would say that I see great advancements at times throughout history when the Christian view was the dominating factor in the society. An explosion of the arts, science, and literature occurred after the Reformation.
Mr. Jacobs' book was a disappointment as he writes in an arrogant manner with a view of societal evolution. He also writes as if he had not read widely, which I know he has. He labours on about the besetting sin of slavery in America as if this is a tragedy unequaled. I wonder that he does not remember the British parliamentarian who wrote of the Irish in the 1850's. The gentleman was preparing a report for parliament and said, 'Viewing the Irish woman with her child one would almost suspect her of having maternal feelings.' The Irish were considered a sub-human set by the English. And so we see that any minority at any time is viewed as the Irish or the American slave. As Christians, any of the sins of society should be addressed and efforts should be made to correct the situation to bring the culture into keeping with God's perfect plan.
Mr. Jacobs did not present a strong argument for the joy of feasting with the older authors. This is a deplorable situation. There is such richness and beauty in the works of our ancients. Please! Come and join them in the banquet. You don't have to agree with them, but some times the sheer beauty of their prose makes the effort profitable to your very soul.
Mr. Jacobs' book was a disappointment as he writes in an arrogant manner with a view of societal evolution. He also writes as if he had not read widely, which I know he has. He labours on about the besetting sin of slavery in America as if this is a tragedy unequaled. I wonder that he does not remember the British parliamentarian who wrote of the Irish in the 1850's. The gentleman was preparing a report for parliament and said, 'Viewing the Irish woman with her child one would almost suspect her of having maternal feelings.' The Irish were considered a sub-human set by the English. And so we see that any minority at any time is viewed as the Irish or the American slave. As Christians, any of the sins of society should be addressed and efforts should be made to correct the situation to bring the culture into keeping with God's perfect plan.
Mr. Jacobs did not present a strong argument for the joy of feasting with the older authors. This is a deplorable situation. There is such richness and beauty in the works of our ancients. Please! Come and join them in the banquet. You don't have to agree with them, but some times the sheer beauty of their prose makes the effort profitable to your very soul.
October 1, 2020
This book is a balm to the frenetic pace of 2020. The relation between “temporal bandwidth� and “personal density� provides much needed language for our informational predicament. The book ends simply with, �...as people told me breathlessly of the latest astonishing video or the latest appalling tweet, I could say, I’m sorry, I know nothing about all that, for I have been thinking of old books, and to that work I must return.� A short, gentle read that heartens the weary lover of books.
October 5, 2020
If you've ever wished C. S. Lewis's introduction to On the Incarnation had been a book instead of an essay, here your wish is fulfilled in one of Lewis's foremost disciples. But Jacobs is no mere placeholder for Lewis. No doubt Jacobs says things Lewis would not. But he thinks like Lewis. And perhaps if Lewis were our contemporary he would say something like what Alan Jacobs says here.
I loved it.
I loved it.
September 17, 2022
The author uses a lot of words to say: instead of canceling problematic writings of the past (and the entire catalog of the author), we should learn to read them with a critical eye, not accepting their ideas but learning from them to understand the time in which they were written, the errors of their ways, and progress that has been made. In this way we broaden our own horizons or as he terms it, we increase our personal density.
November 15, 2020
Those of us alive in the 21st century often feel obligated to grapple with such a flood of new information and ideas (information triage, as Jacobs calls it), and we often think, who would be bothered to read authors from the past, but we should because they can help bring us perspective and even tranquility. Sadly, according to Jacobs only about 2 percent of the population will be bothered by it, and those are the ones reading his book which may or may not have been his strategy for making his readers feel smart and special. I will say the book is a good antidote to presentism (a word he keeps using, meaning, as close as I can tell, trying to make sense of life only through the lens of our current events, likes and dislikes, cultural moods, etc.).
The past is never completely past but continues to unfold as we live out the present. We should try to stay connected with the past because someday the present (all-important though it may seem to us) will join the river of time and it would be good if we didn't screw things up so badly that the river can't flow properly. Oh, and you will learn all about acquiring personal density and temporal bandwidth. Also, as of this writing, an average of 150,000 people are dying worldwide each day. Not sure how that fits with learning from the past but I just thought I should write it! You're welcome! (Bye.)
The past is never completely past but continues to unfold as we live out the present. We should try to stay connected with the past because someday the present (all-important though it may seem to us) will join the river of time and it would be good if we didn't screw things up so badly that the river can't flow properly. Oh, and you will learn all about acquiring personal density and temporal bandwidth. Also, as of this writing, an average of 150,000 people are dying worldwide each day. Not sure how that fits with learning from the past but I just thought I should write it! You're welcome! (Bye.)
February 1, 2021
For a book that claims on the cover to be a reader’s guide to a more tranquil mind and then proceeds to touch on every divisive, hot-button topic we as a society are continually inundated with, it laughably falls short. The author would’ve been more accurate to promise the reader TMJ pain from all the gritted-teeth moments you’ll experience while listening to yet another arrogant, condescending professor preaching about feminism, toxic masculinity, slavery, racial issues, and climate change. If you like to read a book that teaches you the same lesson over and over again in every single chapter, the lesson being that you should read ancient books from authors that you probably disagree with, this is the book for you. If you want to obliterate the Western canon because of modern-day SJW issues, this book is also for you.
June 19, 2024
"Why read?"
"Why read old books?"
"How do you live a good and tranquil life?"
All of these are questions I often think about. Alan Jacobs also considers those questions, and the result of his thinking is Breaking Bread with the Dead.
Alan Jacobs starts by looking at the storms (I'd call them Category 5 hurricanes) that blow around us in contemporary life by means of the onslaught of news and social media. To survive, to stand, to move ahead amid the storms requires, he tells us, "personal density," a term that comes from one of the characters in Thomas Pynchon's book, Gravity's Rainbow. Jacob writes, "...the development of personal density, to which reading old books can be a vital contribution...might provide...a port, for however brief a time, in the storm."
How to achieve this personal density? We tend, according to Jacobs, to spend time with others like us. "But I believe," Jacob tells us, "that any significant increase in personal density is largely achieved through encounters with un-likeness." Jacobs reminds us that the French thinker Simone Weil that looking for eternal truth can be difficult to do when we deal with our actual neighbor because emotions tend to be close to the surface. Books, on the other hand, offer some emotional distance.
One of my favorite parts of this book is where Jacobs shares some thoughts from Italian novelist Italo Calvino about reading old books. "Your classic author is the one you cannot feel indifferent to, who helps you to define yourself in relation to him, even in dispute with him." Jacobs goes on to share a little more Calvino: "A classic is something that tends to relegate the concerns of the moment to the status of background noise, but at the same time this background noise is something we cannot do without." During the process of encountering a book from the past, "When we perceive some sudden dissonance between ourselves and those people, we should not run from that dissonance but straight toward it,"Jacob asserts. Further he adds, "This testing of our responses against those of our ancestors is an exciting endeavor---a potentially endless table conversation, though, again, one we can suspend at any time."
I loved this marvelous conclusion by Jacobs, where he talks about deeply meeting with people from the past: "When we own our kinship to those people, they may come alive for us not just as exemplars of narrowness and wickedness that we have overcome, but as neighbors and even as teachers. When we acknowledge that even when they go far astray they do so in ways that we surely would have, had we been formed as they were, we extend them not just attention but love, the very love that we hope our descendants will extend to us."
Author Alan Jacobs is interviewed at The Trinity Forum
"Why read old books?"
"How do you live a good and tranquil life?"
All of these are questions I often think about. Alan Jacobs also considers those questions, and the result of his thinking is Breaking Bread with the Dead.
Alan Jacobs starts by looking at the storms (I'd call them Category 5 hurricanes) that blow around us in contemporary life by means of the onslaught of news and social media. To survive, to stand, to move ahead amid the storms requires, he tells us, "personal density," a term that comes from one of the characters in Thomas Pynchon's book, Gravity's Rainbow. Jacob writes, "...the development of personal density, to which reading old books can be a vital contribution...might provide...a port, for however brief a time, in the storm."
How to achieve this personal density? We tend, according to Jacobs, to spend time with others like us. "But I believe," Jacob tells us, "that any significant increase in personal density is largely achieved through encounters with un-likeness." Jacobs reminds us that the French thinker Simone Weil that looking for eternal truth can be difficult to do when we deal with our actual neighbor because emotions tend to be close to the surface. Books, on the other hand, offer some emotional distance.
One of my favorite parts of this book is where Jacobs shares some thoughts from Italian novelist Italo Calvino about reading old books. "Your classic author is the one you cannot feel indifferent to, who helps you to define yourself in relation to him, even in dispute with him." Jacobs goes on to share a little more Calvino: "A classic is something that tends to relegate the concerns of the moment to the status of background noise, but at the same time this background noise is something we cannot do without." During the process of encountering a book from the past, "When we perceive some sudden dissonance between ourselves and those people, we should not run from that dissonance but straight toward it,"Jacob asserts. Further he adds, "This testing of our responses against those of our ancestors is an exciting endeavor---a potentially endless table conversation, though, again, one we can suspend at any time."
I loved this marvelous conclusion by Jacobs, where he talks about deeply meeting with people from the past: "When we own our kinship to those people, they may come alive for us not just as exemplars of narrowness and wickedness that we have overcome, but as neighbors and even as teachers. When we acknowledge that even when they go far astray they do so in ways that we surely would have, had we been formed as they were, we extend them not just attention but love, the very love that we hope our descendants will extend to us."
Author Alan Jacobs is interviewed at The Trinity Forum
July 7, 2022
I loved parts and didn't love parts so I'm taking the middle road in the rating.
Reading old books is an education in reckoning with otherness; its hope is to make the other not identical with me but rather, in a sense, my neighbor.
Here's the odd thing about 'otherness'. When it is very other it is easier to digest with detachment, it seems, than when it is just a bit 'other.' I first noticed this in church denominations. Someone who shares 92% understanding with another can fight to the death about the 8%.
I'm nervous that I am the 'someone' and Alan Jacobs is the 'another'. I expected to love this because I agree with his premise, but I found it heavy, and plodding, and � dare I say it � woke, punctuated with light and delightful words.
Reading old books is an education in reckoning with otherness; its hope is to make the other not identical with me but rather, in a sense, my neighbor.
Here's the odd thing about 'otherness'. When it is very other it is easier to digest with detachment, it seems, than when it is just a bit 'other.' I first noticed this in church denominations. Someone who shares 92% understanding with another can fight to the death about the 8%.
I'm nervous that I am the 'someone' and Alan Jacobs is the 'another'. I expected to love this because I agree with his premise, but I found it heavy, and plodding, and � dare I say it � woke, punctuated with light and delightful words.
October 23, 2020
W. H. Auden wrote, "Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead," and thus we have our title. Jacobs here advocates for reading old books, the words of dead people, as a means to greater "personal density," tranquility, and enjoyment of life. Fear not: he also advocates for fanfiction, more on that later.
Jacobs refers to theater critic Terry Teachout's idea of the "theater of concurrence," in which playwrights assume audiences share their opinions and write plays that affirm them, guaranteeing audience's agreement in a circle of confirmation. For me, this was a "book of concurrence." I'm a historian--I traffic in the written remnants of the deceased--and I have always loved old books, for as long as I can remember. Jacobs's acknowledgment that "attention to the past is a hard sell" might be true for some, but it's not a hard sell for me, or even a sell at all, because I've already bought into it.
Jacobs quotes and affirms Tony Tost in the first chapter: "younger folks don't have any cultural memory or taste for aesthetic adventure." (16) Excuse me? My whole life contradicts this assertion, making me unable to accept it as a blanket statement. I grew up on the Beach Boys, on Alfred Hitchcock, on Victorian and Edwardian and children's literature. When I was in high school and my brother in college, we had "Audrey Hepburn Tuesdays" one summer, where we ate frozen custard and watched Audrey Hepburn movies on Tuesdays. I do not deny that, perhaps, many of my generation and Gen Z lack this "temporal bandwidth," but I don't think it's quite as awful as Tost claims. Jacobs has a more measured view, since he is a college professor and thus in constant contact with the young'uns, but I still challenge the assertion--even a small assertion--that it's a generational problem.
When I got past my considerable cognitive dissonance with much of the first chapter (it was really just the Tost quotation), I settled into Jacobs's methods for and ideas about engaging with the past. He argues for "table fellowship" with writers of the past, even those who do not conform wholly to our modern sensibilities. He has a whole chapter on "The Sins of the Past" and working through Wharton's antismeitism and Shakespeare's horrifyingly abusive Petruchio. Instead of tossing babies out with their bathwater, Jacobs argues, we should read with as much "positive selection" as we do with "negative selection." Instead of just finding things to discard, we should find what we can to admire. "Wisdom lies in discernment," he writes, "and utopianism and nostalgia are ways of abandoning discernment." (58) Heinrich Schliemann, who was quite literally obsessed with ancient Greece, displays for Jacobs an acceptance of "the past without difference," which is not what Jacobs promotes. The past is a different place, perhaps a foreign country, but not one we need to avoid or denigrate, nor one we should accept without criticism.
What we must look for, then, is "the authentic kernel," a phrase coming from feminist scholar Patrocinio Schweickart, who seeks the medium between the extremes of "canceling" patriarchal works or assuming their points of view. The "utopian moment," the "authentic kernel," instead, is what we should pursue. That "moment when something deeply and beautifully human emerges from that swamp of patriarchal ideology," as Jacobs puts it, defining the "'authentic kernel' [as] something perhaps hidden deep inside the book that speaks to you, that articulates an experience you can share." (82) This is when the book began deeply resonating with me--my utopian moment, if you will. As a historian, I regularly face texts and figures who do things that seem unconscionable to me, like enslave others or persecute people with contrary opinions. But I can't deny those people their humanity, and have often been at a loss to define precisely why I accept and love their work even in its problematic moments.
Here, Jacobs turns to fanfiction: "Sometimes when a story both entrances and offends you, you'd love to alter it or add to it in ways that redress its imbalances. If you're a writer, you can do this. This is, importantly I think, one of the chief prompts for fan fiction, which, despite its name, doesn't just celebrate the works it draws on: sometimes it extends, sometimes it even corrects them." (82-83) He points to Ursula K. Le Guin's Lavinia, inspired by Virgil's Aeneid, and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, inspired by Jane Eyre. "What drove Le Guin and Rhys to write their powerful novels was not merely frustration, but rather frustration mixed with admiration and even love. The Aeneid and Jane Eyre are truly great works of literary art--that is what makes them worth responding to. (85)
When it comes to fan fiction being Literature�, I can only think of one thing...
...and also more recent popular works like Circe by Madeline Miller, and March by Geraldine Brooks.
That chapter, with the following two, are worth the price of the book alone. Jacobs considers Peter Abrahams, a mixed-race young man in South Africa who profoundly loved Keats and W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois gave words to Abrahams' bone-deep knowledge that he was not free in his contemporary society. Yet Keats and others "were, for me, more alive than the most vitally living." (95) This tension Jacobs also explores in Frederick Douglass, particularly with respect to his view on the American founders in "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro." (1852) I found this section compelling, because I heard this speech quoted everywhere over the summer, without the appreciation Douglass displayed for the founders, though he could not accept Independence Day for himself, being a Black man. Douglass says, "With them, justice, liberty and humanity were 'final;' not slavery and oppression...You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation." (114-115) Earlier, Jacobs writes that the founders "rarely understood the full implications of their best ideas." (51-52) Returning to the present for a moment, I think of--what else?--Hamilton. Surely, George Washington would cringe at being played by Christopher Jackson, when Washington himself went to inconvenient lengths to keep Black people in his enslavement. Thomas Jefferson would likely not appreciate being played by Daveed Diggs and his rapping expertise. But could either of them deny the heady freedom of experimenting with the United States, "young, scrappy, and hungry," is adapted incredibly well in this musical? Methinks not.
As a side note, this book is a powerful antidote to cancel culture. I find cancel culture harmful in many ways--no one is exempt; the whim of the masses overcomes any reasoned, prolonged discussion; canceling a person is also known as murder, assassination, and execution, all of which are ethically horrifying.
Jacobs's argument is that we can take the good with the bad, not accepting or bowing to the bad, but reading generously, simply accepting that people of the past are human as we are today. If cancel culture stopped at taking away the social media/public figure privileges of people who need to learn the virtues of silence, I'd be fully behind it (I have a list). But when it comes to canceling someone, their work, and everyone connected with them, I draw the line. J. K. Rowling stands out to me as a contemporary writer who does not live up to her own best ideas. Yet, her failure does not impeach her ideas; you could say she trained her cancelers herself. I thank Jacobs wholeheartedly for giving me the words to deal with this, to handle historical texts in all their paradoxes, and to live with complex figures from the past in a way both generous and critical.
I'd highly recommend this to anyone who's struggled with reading old books, or who wants to read more old books, or who finds it challenging to explain to others why reading old books is valuable. This would make a great text for the classroom (upper high school and above).
"You don't silence the part of you that sees the problems with the book, its errors, its moral malformations; neither do you silence the part of you that responds so warmly to that 'utopian moment.'" (82)
[to the book] "You gave me many sweet months when, as people told me breathlessly of the latest astonishing video or the latest appalling tweet, I could say, I'm sorry, I know nothing about all that, for I have been thinking of old books, and to that work I must return." (159)
Jacobs refers to theater critic Terry Teachout's idea of the "theater of concurrence," in which playwrights assume audiences share their opinions and write plays that affirm them, guaranteeing audience's agreement in a circle of confirmation. For me, this was a "book of concurrence." I'm a historian--I traffic in the written remnants of the deceased--and I have always loved old books, for as long as I can remember. Jacobs's acknowledgment that "attention to the past is a hard sell" might be true for some, but it's not a hard sell for me, or even a sell at all, because I've already bought into it.
Jacobs quotes and affirms Tony Tost in the first chapter: "younger folks don't have any cultural memory or taste for aesthetic adventure." (16) Excuse me? My whole life contradicts this assertion, making me unable to accept it as a blanket statement. I grew up on the Beach Boys, on Alfred Hitchcock, on Victorian and Edwardian and children's literature. When I was in high school and my brother in college, we had "Audrey Hepburn Tuesdays" one summer, where we ate frozen custard and watched Audrey Hepburn movies on Tuesdays. I do not deny that, perhaps, many of my generation and Gen Z lack this "temporal bandwidth," but I don't think it's quite as awful as Tost claims. Jacobs has a more measured view, since he is a college professor and thus in constant contact with the young'uns, but I still challenge the assertion--even a small assertion--that it's a generational problem.
When I got past my considerable cognitive dissonance with much of the first chapter (it was really just the Tost quotation), I settled into Jacobs's methods for and ideas about engaging with the past. He argues for "table fellowship" with writers of the past, even those who do not conform wholly to our modern sensibilities. He has a whole chapter on "The Sins of the Past" and working through Wharton's antismeitism and Shakespeare's horrifyingly abusive Petruchio. Instead of tossing babies out with their bathwater, Jacobs argues, we should read with as much "positive selection" as we do with "negative selection." Instead of just finding things to discard, we should find what we can to admire. "Wisdom lies in discernment," he writes, "and utopianism and nostalgia are ways of abandoning discernment." (58) Heinrich Schliemann, who was quite literally obsessed with ancient Greece, displays for Jacobs an acceptance of "the past without difference," which is not what Jacobs promotes. The past is a different place, perhaps a foreign country, but not one we need to avoid or denigrate, nor one we should accept without criticism.
What we must look for, then, is "the authentic kernel," a phrase coming from feminist scholar Patrocinio Schweickart, who seeks the medium between the extremes of "canceling" patriarchal works or assuming their points of view. The "utopian moment," the "authentic kernel," instead, is what we should pursue. That "moment when something deeply and beautifully human emerges from that swamp of patriarchal ideology," as Jacobs puts it, defining the "'authentic kernel' [as] something perhaps hidden deep inside the book that speaks to you, that articulates an experience you can share." (82) This is when the book began deeply resonating with me--my utopian moment, if you will. As a historian, I regularly face texts and figures who do things that seem unconscionable to me, like enslave others or persecute people with contrary opinions. But I can't deny those people their humanity, and have often been at a loss to define precisely why I accept and love their work even in its problematic moments.
Here, Jacobs turns to fanfiction: "Sometimes when a story both entrances and offends you, you'd love to alter it or add to it in ways that redress its imbalances. If you're a writer, you can do this. This is, importantly I think, one of the chief prompts for fan fiction, which, despite its name, doesn't just celebrate the works it draws on: sometimes it extends, sometimes it even corrects them." (82-83) He points to Ursula K. Le Guin's Lavinia, inspired by Virgil's Aeneid, and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, inspired by Jane Eyre. "What drove Le Guin and Rhys to write their powerful novels was not merely frustration, but rather frustration mixed with admiration and even love. The Aeneid and Jane Eyre are truly great works of literary art--that is what makes them worth responding to. (85)
When it comes to fan fiction being Literature�, I can only think of one thing...
...and also more recent popular works like Circe by Madeline Miller, and March by Geraldine Brooks.
That chapter, with the following two, are worth the price of the book alone. Jacobs considers Peter Abrahams, a mixed-race young man in South Africa who profoundly loved Keats and W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois gave words to Abrahams' bone-deep knowledge that he was not free in his contemporary society. Yet Keats and others "were, for me, more alive than the most vitally living." (95) This tension Jacobs also explores in Frederick Douglass, particularly with respect to his view on the American founders in "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro." (1852) I found this section compelling, because I heard this speech quoted everywhere over the summer, without the appreciation Douglass displayed for the founders, though he could not accept Independence Day for himself, being a Black man. Douglass says, "With them, justice, liberty and humanity were 'final;' not slavery and oppression...You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation." (114-115) Earlier, Jacobs writes that the founders "rarely understood the full implications of their best ideas." (51-52) Returning to the present for a moment, I think of--what else?--Hamilton. Surely, George Washington would cringe at being played by Christopher Jackson, when Washington himself went to inconvenient lengths to keep Black people in his enslavement. Thomas Jefferson would likely not appreciate being played by Daveed Diggs and his rapping expertise. But could either of them deny the heady freedom of experimenting with the United States, "young, scrappy, and hungry," is adapted incredibly well in this musical? Methinks not.
As a side note, this book is a powerful antidote to cancel culture. I find cancel culture harmful in many ways--no one is exempt; the whim of the masses overcomes any reasoned, prolonged discussion; canceling a person is also known as murder, assassination, and execution, all of which are ethically horrifying.
Jacobs's argument is that we can take the good with the bad, not accepting or bowing to the bad, but reading generously, simply accepting that people of the past are human as we are today. If cancel culture stopped at taking away the social media/public figure privileges of people who need to learn the virtues of silence, I'd be fully behind it (I have a list). But when it comes to canceling someone, their work, and everyone connected with them, I draw the line. J. K. Rowling stands out to me as a contemporary writer who does not live up to her own best ideas. Yet, her failure does not impeach her ideas; you could say she trained her cancelers herself. I thank Jacobs wholeheartedly for giving me the words to deal with this, to handle historical texts in all their paradoxes, and to live with complex figures from the past in a way both generous and critical.
I'd highly recommend this to anyone who's struggled with reading old books, or who wants to read more old books, or who finds it challenging to explain to others why reading old books is valuable. This would make a great text for the classroom (upper high school and above).
"You don't silence the part of you that sees the problems with the book, its errors, its moral malformations; neither do you silence the part of you that responds so warmly to that 'utopian moment.'" (82)
[to the book] "You gave me many sweet months when, as people told me breathlessly of the latest astonishing video or the latest appalling tweet, I could say, I'm sorry, I know nothing about all that, for I have been thinking of old books, and to that work I must return." (159)
November 6, 2020
This book is superb. I will be returning to this again and again for its sanity and wisdom. I love that Jacobs demonstrates in this book what he recommends, which is to draw on dead authors to recommend reading dead authors. This is the kind of book that stays in my brain and pops into conversations I have throughout the day, either in my head or spoken aloud. It applies to so many conversations. It felt prescient to start it right before and finish it during election week, a good way to stay grounded.
I should say that I agree implicitly with the premise of this book--that reading books by dead authors is valuable (for reasons laid out in the book). However, I was interested to see what kind of arguments Jacobs uses to support his premise.
In Chapter 5, called The Authentic Kernel, I could see his argument taking clear shape. At the start of the chapter he quotes from an essay of literary criticism that forwards the idea of reading old books in a double fashion. You don't put aside what you find troubling in a novel, but you also hold onto the "authentic kernel" in the novel, what is human and moving and relatable. Holding the tension of these two things is part of developing generosity towards the author and his or humanity while also learning humility ourselves since we have our own blind spots.
Jacobs gives the example of two authors who have written stories from the point of view of women in classic literature who were not given a voice (Lavinia in the Aeneid and Bertha in Jane Eyre). Perhaps we can do this as readers, too, by simply asking questions of silent characters: What might this character's perspective have been? and using our imaginative capacity to think outside the narrative. Heaven knows we need that practice in our living, breathing daily lives.
It makes so much sense that these things would help increase our personal density and decrease our presentism (lack of perspective). It's an exercise in virtue: in patience, in prudence, in courage, in hope. I also like, in this chapter, that Jacobs recapitulates his theme of opposition. That opposition can actually be something healthy and scouring. We don't oppose what we're indifferent to, so when we feel opposition to a book, don't let go! Hang on to it, like Jacob wrestling with the angel in Genesis...the wrestling itself led to a blessing. Maybe we do more harm when we dismiss something that troubles us instead of exploring why it does, and even what good may be lurking beneath the offensive.
In the chapter The Boy in the Library, Jacobs quotes a writer who has a tattoo on her arm of a Latin phrase, translated “I am human, and nothing human is alien to me.� The writer calls this a statement with a lot of “internal tension�. Love that phrase! Here’s the wonderful way Jacobs follows up with that: “I often quote this Latin phrase. When I do, I always point out that Terence [the original author of the phrase] does not say that everything human is instantly accessible to him. He says it is not alien, not wholly outside the scope of his experience, not opaque to his inquiries. It puts up resistance. But that resistance, and the work we do to overcome it, are alike necessary to the task of breaking bread with the dead.� (102) Love that!
Chapter 7 is a heavy hitter, too. I like this quote: “[Douglass offers] a model of reckoning with the past, to sift, to assess, to return and reflect again.� (117).
I should say that I agree implicitly with the premise of this book--that reading books by dead authors is valuable (for reasons laid out in the book). However, I was interested to see what kind of arguments Jacobs uses to support his premise.
In Chapter 5, called The Authentic Kernel, I could see his argument taking clear shape. At the start of the chapter he quotes from an essay of literary criticism that forwards the idea of reading old books in a double fashion. You don't put aside what you find troubling in a novel, but you also hold onto the "authentic kernel" in the novel, what is human and moving and relatable. Holding the tension of these two things is part of developing generosity towards the author and his or humanity while also learning humility ourselves since we have our own blind spots.
Jacobs gives the example of two authors who have written stories from the point of view of women in classic literature who were not given a voice (Lavinia in the Aeneid and Bertha in Jane Eyre). Perhaps we can do this as readers, too, by simply asking questions of silent characters: What might this character's perspective have been? and using our imaginative capacity to think outside the narrative. Heaven knows we need that practice in our living, breathing daily lives.
It makes so much sense that these things would help increase our personal density and decrease our presentism (lack of perspective). It's an exercise in virtue: in patience, in prudence, in courage, in hope. I also like, in this chapter, that Jacobs recapitulates his theme of opposition. That opposition can actually be something healthy and scouring. We don't oppose what we're indifferent to, so when we feel opposition to a book, don't let go! Hang on to it, like Jacob wrestling with the angel in Genesis...the wrestling itself led to a blessing. Maybe we do more harm when we dismiss something that troubles us instead of exploring why it does, and even what good may be lurking beneath the offensive.
In the chapter The Boy in the Library, Jacobs quotes a writer who has a tattoo on her arm of a Latin phrase, translated “I am human, and nothing human is alien to me.� The writer calls this a statement with a lot of “internal tension�. Love that phrase! Here’s the wonderful way Jacobs follows up with that: “I often quote this Latin phrase. When I do, I always point out that Terence [the original author of the phrase] does not say that everything human is instantly accessible to him. He says it is not alien, not wholly outside the scope of his experience, not opaque to his inquiries. It puts up resistance. But that resistance, and the work we do to overcome it, are alike necessary to the task of breaking bread with the dead.� (102) Love that!
Chapter 7 is a heavy hitter, too. I like this quote: “[Douglass offers] a model of reckoning with the past, to sift, to assess, to return and reflect again.� (117).
November 8, 2020
Timely, thought provoking, and saying similar things to what I've been thinking about a lot these past few years. Where he uses phrases like personal density, mental bandwidth, and the big here and the long now, I'd say read for diversity of thought and opinion. Hold every thought captive. Ask the hard questions. Wrestle with the uncomfortable ideas and content. Leave the chronological snobbery at the door. And most importantly, read with grace.
January 10, 2023
Jacobs's conservatism shows most when he talks about women's rights. His greatest mistake in this is his tendency to consider all movements for human rights (sexuality, race, sex, class) as roughly equivalent. This leads to him sometimes falsely presuming that the average woman is as affected by oppression than the average, say, gay man. The inaccuracy of this is most starkly shown by the recent regressions in women's rights in both the United States and Afghanistan. Women's rights, contrary to what Jacobs presumes, are not beyond question, and, at least in my opinion, they are evidently the human rights which are currently the most fragile, most commonly attacked. Rape, for instance, is still not considered a hate crime. Hate crimes against women do not exist, and women victims of all manner of assault and atrocity from rape to dismemberment to murder are told they ought to be grateful for it if they at least make the news.
All that to say that the rest of this is superbly useful to cultivating better reading abilities and a more tranquil mind. Don't let the above note make you presume the book is sexist. It isn't, it just has a particular blind spot regarding the state of feminism. Jacobs cites plenty of woman writers and academics, and his perspective is carefully balanced and succinctly delivered.
All that to say that the rest of this is superbly useful to cultivating better reading abilities and a more tranquil mind. Don't let the above note make you presume the book is sexist. It isn't, it just has a particular blind spot regarding the state of feminism. Jacobs cites plenty of woman writers and academics, and his perspective is carefully balanced and succinctly delivered.
February 4, 2021
This required a lot of focus and rereading of paragraphs for me. But it was worth the effort, and it's a book I'll continue to think about moving forward.
June 2, 2023
What a marvelous book! I really enjoyed Alan Jacobs' thought process as he worked through the importance of reading classic books and how it affects our lives. Some of the points were so spot on and completely aligned with how I felt. Some of the points were new for me and were interesting. Some of the points I'm not sure I agreed with, but I really enjoyed contemplating them. This is a new favorite and a book I will revisit time and time again!
If you've ever wondered why reading classics is a good idea, if you have difficulty reconciling great plots with problematic elements found in classic literature or if you just like to read in general, this is for you!
If you've ever wondered why reading classics is a good idea, if you have difficulty reconciling great plots with problematic elements found in classic literature or if you just like to read in general, this is for you!
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November 2, 2023I loved this book! Jacobs offers many wise and clarifying principles to keep in mind when reading old books, which he argues is essential in this age plagued with "presentism." He explores concepts like "personal density" and "temporal bandwidth" in the first half of the book, all along drawing examples from literature to inform the issues he discusses. Some of those ideas I will be thinking about for a long time and immediately had to share with my husband haha. Later in the book he discusses navigating books and writers whose ideologies are woefully out of date with grace and intention, indeed to our benefit and edification. I thought he was refreshingly clear on that issue, which is one I grapple with often. Such a great book.
September 18, 2020
A good antidote to presentism and prescription for a “more tranquil mind.�
July 2, 2021
Jacobs, Alan. Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind. New York: Penguin Press, 2020.
Alan Jacobs wrote this book before Cancel Culture got full bloom. The subtitle isn’t so much about developing a tranquil mind. Rather, it is about how to read those from other times and cultures whose values we not only do not share, but sometimes abhor. To be sure, as I am not a delicate snowflake, this problem doesn’t bother me.
Jacobs employs the term “temporal bandwith� as a device for breaking free of the myriad distractions in the modern world. He asks a good question, “Can you remember the second to last thing media culture told you to be outraged about?�
Temporal bandwith is the “width of your present now� (Jacobs 19). Reading old books and authors forces the mind to slow down from our fast pace. It allows our mind to stop and address the “frenetic standstill.� Older works can provide a “buffer of centuries� that allow us to evaluate a position that we would otherwise ignore if it came from a modern-day pundit.
The rest of the book deals with how to navigate those authors who might have moral failings as judged by our culture.
Alan Jacobs wrote this book before Cancel Culture got full bloom. The subtitle isn’t so much about developing a tranquil mind. Rather, it is about how to read those from other times and cultures whose values we not only do not share, but sometimes abhor. To be sure, as I am not a delicate snowflake, this problem doesn’t bother me.
Jacobs employs the term “temporal bandwith� as a device for breaking free of the myriad distractions in the modern world. He asks a good question, “Can you remember the second to last thing media culture told you to be outraged about?�
Temporal bandwith is the “width of your present now� (Jacobs 19). Reading old books and authors forces the mind to slow down from our fast pace. It allows our mind to stop and address the “frenetic standstill.� Older works can provide a “buffer of centuries� that allow us to evaluate a position that we would otherwise ignore if it came from a modern-day pundit.
The rest of the book deals with how to navigate those authors who might have moral failings as judged by our culture.
March 12, 2025
Updated review, 2025:
After reading it again, I’d say “Breaking Bread with the Dead� deserves five stars. Jacobs manages to deliver a complex philosophy on reading while still being accessible and entertaining.
On a personal note, I used this book as inspiration for a seminar writing course I teach to college students. For anyone teaching old books, Jacobs’s ideas will help to clarify your curriculum.
I love this and hope I read it again in five years.
Original review, 2020:
This is a 4.5 rating.
I recommend this to everyone on this app because, admit it, you don’t use goodreads because you kind of like reading.
In Breaking Bread with the Dead, Jacobs invites us to meet those long dead authors in their old, dusty, often confusing, often offensive, writing. He does not shy away from counter arguments and takes them seriously (a piece of rhetoric that is as useful as it is rare). But I don’t need to remake his argument for you. Read the book. It’s a quick read that is certainly worth your time.
After reading it again, I’d say “Breaking Bread with the Dead� deserves five stars. Jacobs manages to deliver a complex philosophy on reading while still being accessible and entertaining.
On a personal note, I used this book as inspiration for a seminar writing course I teach to college students. For anyone teaching old books, Jacobs’s ideas will help to clarify your curriculum.
I love this and hope I read it again in five years.
Original review, 2020:
This is a 4.5 rating.
I recommend this to everyone on this app because, admit it, you don’t use goodreads because you kind of like reading.
In Breaking Bread with the Dead, Jacobs invites us to meet those long dead authors in their old, dusty, often confusing, often offensive, writing. He does not shy away from counter arguments and takes them seriously (a piece of rhetoric that is as useful as it is rare). But I don’t need to remake his argument for you. Read the book. It’s a quick read that is certainly worth your time.
October 15, 2020
Very good. Jacobs offers here a potent apologetic for reading old books. He advocates neither for canceling the dead, nor white washing them, but rather for learning from them, and negotiating with them. There is much humility and wisdom to the vision of the tranquil life described by Jacobs here.
July 14, 2022
Breaking Bread with the Dead by Alan Jacobs
Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote -
How do we deal with the past?
How do we deal with books from the past?
Today, people despise the past. Rather than viewing the past as a place we can turn to for knowledge, wisdom or inspiration, we look at the past with contempt or disgust. The past is a different country; they do things different there, and the way they do things does not measure up to our refined standards. Worse still, we fear we might be dragged back to those awful days with slavery and imperialism:
"This is not far from how many people feel about the whole of the past: that if we’re not careful we could be dragged back toward it. (That fear is the source of the power of stories like The Handmaid’s Tale, in its novelistic but especially in its filmed form. The past as undead, as revenant.)"
This is an erudite, introspective book looks for the root of this attitude and ways to live with the past. the Author Alan Jacobs suggests that one problem we have with the past is that we live in a time of overload. Too much information from too many sources are competing for our attention. our response is triage - we look for reasons to discount information as biased or irrelevant.
Jacobs also observes that information overload leads to uneasiness as we are moved around by new information as it comes to us. Jacobs suggests that the answer to this uneasiness is to increase one's "personal density" by increasing one's "temporal bandwidth," which means paying more attention to the past. Jacobs explains:
"You need the personal density that will hold you firmly until, in your considered and settled judgment, it is time to move. And to acquire the requisite density you have to get out of your transitory moment and into bigger time. Personal density is proportionate to temporal bandwidth."
Personal density is capable of approaching the past on its own terms without giving in to terms set by the past. We can read The Taming of the Shrew without being feminists or chauvinists:
"To say “This text offends me, I will read no further� may be shortsighted; but to read a “great book� from the past with such reverence that you can’t see where its views are wrong, or even where they differ from your own, is no better. Indeed, in foreclosing the possibility of real challenge it is worse."
Jacobs offers an interesting discussion of the modern mindset that is most uncomfortable with those that are close but not close enough:
"I suspect that—to borrow a tripartite distinction from the psychiatrist and blogger Scott Alexander—most people who use that kind of language are fine with their ingroup (“antiracist, anticolonial, anticapitalist, proqueer feminists of every color and from every people�) and fine with the fargroup (pigeons), but the outgroup? The outgroup that lives in your city and votes in the same elections you do?"
What we see today is that those are the most hated. We are far more tolerant of the illegal alien than we are of the Trump-voting Republicans.
This insight applies to the past. The past is a different country, but it is often our country. Our differences with the past make us inhospitable to our neighbors.
"We buy a book and take it home, and the writer appears before us, asking to be admitted into our company. If we find that the writer’s views are ethnocentric or sexist or racist, we reject the application, and we bar his or her entry into the present.� But no, thought Morton: “it isn’t the writer who’s the time traveler. It’s the reader. When we pick up an old novel, we’re not bringing the novelist into our world and deciding whether he or she is enlightened enough to belong here; we’re journeying into the novelist’s world and taking a look around.� The author is not a guest at our table; we are a guest at hers."
Learning to deal with the past makes us better humans:
"And this is also true of any legitimate interest in the past. Reading old books is an education in reckoning with otherness; its hope is to make the other not identical with me but rather, in a sense, my neighbor. I happen to think that this kind of training is useful in helping me learn to deal with my actual on-the-ground neighbors, though that claim is not central to my argument here, and in any case there’s nothing inevitable about this transfer: I know people who are exquisitely sensitive readers of texts who are also habitually rude to the people who serve them at restaurants. But surely to encounter texts from the past is a relatively nonthreatening, and yet potentially enormously rewarding, way to practice encountering difference."
Jacobs concludes:
"When we own our kinship to those people, they may come alive for us not just as exemplars of narrowness and wickedness that we have overcome, but as neighbors and even as teachers. When we acknowledge that even when they go far astray they do so in ways that we surely would have, had we been formed as they were, we extend them not just attention but love, the very love that we hope our descendants will extend to us."
This is a thoughtful book. Jacobs shares his broad reading with tantalizing snippets and observations from books I've read or now want to read. It is a rare person who can turn an insight from science fiction author R.A. Lafferty into a striking analogy.
Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote -
How do we deal with the past?
How do we deal with books from the past?
Today, people despise the past. Rather than viewing the past as a place we can turn to for knowledge, wisdom or inspiration, we look at the past with contempt or disgust. The past is a different country; they do things different there, and the way they do things does not measure up to our refined standards. Worse still, we fear we might be dragged back to those awful days with slavery and imperialism:
"This is not far from how many people feel about the whole of the past: that if we’re not careful we could be dragged back toward it. (That fear is the source of the power of stories like The Handmaid’s Tale, in its novelistic but especially in its filmed form. The past as undead, as revenant.)"
This is an erudite, introspective book looks for the root of this attitude and ways to live with the past. the Author Alan Jacobs suggests that one problem we have with the past is that we live in a time of overload. Too much information from too many sources are competing for our attention. our response is triage - we look for reasons to discount information as biased or irrelevant.
Jacobs also observes that information overload leads to uneasiness as we are moved around by new information as it comes to us. Jacobs suggests that the answer to this uneasiness is to increase one's "personal density" by increasing one's "temporal bandwidth," which means paying more attention to the past. Jacobs explains:
"You need the personal density that will hold you firmly until, in your considered and settled judgment, it is time to move. And to acquire the requisite density you have to get out of your transitory moment and into bigger time. Personal density is proportionate to temporal bandwidth."
Personal density is capable of approaching the past on its own terms without giving in to terms set by the past. We can read The Taming of the Shrew without being feminists or chauvinists:
"To say “This text offends me, I will read no further� may be shortsighted; but to read a “great book� from the past with such reverence that you can’t see where its views are wrong, or even where they differ from your own, is no better. Indeed, in foreclosing the possibility of real challenge it is worse."
Jacobs offers an interesting discussion of the modern mindset that is most uncomfortable with those that are close but not close enough:
"I suspect that—to borrow a tripartite distinction from the psychiatrist and blogger Scott Alexander—most people who use that kind of language are fine with their ingroup (“antiracist, anticolonial, anticapitalist, proqueer feminists of every color and from every people�) and fine with the fargroup (pigeons), but the outgroup? The outgroup that lives in your city and votes in the same elections you do?"
What we see today is that those are the most hated. We are far more tolerant of the illegal alien than we are of the Trump-voting Republicans.
This insight applies to the past. The past is a different country, but it is often our country. Our differences with the past make us inhospitable to our neighbors.
"We buy a book and take it home, and the writer appears before us, asking to be admitted into our company. If we find that the writer’s views are ethnocentric or sexist or racist, we reject the application, and we bar his or her entry into the present.� But no, thought Morton: “it isn’t the writer who’s the time traveler. It’s the reader. When we pick up an old novel, we’re not bringing the novelist into our world and deciding whether he or she is enlightened enough to belong here; we’re journeying into the novelist’s world and taking a look around.� The author is not a guest at our table; we are a guest at hers."
Learning to deal with the past makes us better humans:
"And this is also true of any legitimate interest in the past. Reading old books is an education in reckoning with otherness; its hope is to make the other not identical with me but rather, in a sense, my neighbor. I happen to think that this kind of training is useful in helping me learn to deal with my actual on-the-ground neighbors, though that claim is not central to my argument here, and in any case there’s nothing inevitable about this transfer: I know people who are exquisitely sensitive readers of texts who are also habitually rude to the people who serve them at restaurants. But surely to encounter texts from the past is a relatively nonthreatening, and yet potentially enormously rewarding, way to practice encountering difference."
Jacobs concludes:
"When we own our kinship to those people, they may come alive for us not just as exemplars of narrowness and wickedness that we have overcome, but as neighbors and even as teachers. When we acknowledge that even when they go far astray they do so in ways that we surely would have, had we been formed as they were, we extend them not just attention but love, the very love that we hope our descendants will extend to us."
This is a thoughtful book. Jacobs shares his broad reading with tantalizing snippets and observations from books I've read or now want to read. It is a rare person who can turn an insight from science fiction author R.A. Lafferty into a striking analogy.
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