"At a time when many Americans . . . are engaged in deep reflection
about the meaning of the nation's history [this] is an exceptionally
useful companion for those who want to do so with honesty and
integrity." --Shelf Awareness
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.
