{"id":1034,"date":"2020-09-09T18:17:14","date_gmt":"2020-09-09T18:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=1034"},"modified":"2020-09-29T19:53:31","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T19:53:31","slug":"breaking-bread-with-the-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2020\/09\/09\/breaking-bread-with-the-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking Bread with the Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Sparring with the Past and Breaking Bread with the Dead<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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In his newest book, Alan Jacobs encourages us to give dead authors the time of day\u2014neither judging them too harshly nor idealizing them too much to learn from what they have to say. <\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Alexi Sargeant
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Alan Jacobs craves our indulgence for dead authors. Yes, their customs might be uncouth and their manners barbaric. But when we pick up an old book, we aren\u2019t inviting these strangers into our homes\u2014we\u2019re getting a privileged peek into theirs, and it is we, not they, who stand to benefit from the encounter.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

This is the central argument of Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader\u2019s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind<\/em>. Jacobs marshals his teaching experience, his wide-ranging reading, and his winsome style to convince his readers to share a little fellowship at dead authors\u2019 tables. \u201cThe dead, being dead, speak only at our invitation,\u201d Jacobs reassures us. \u201cLike that flock of shades who gather around Odysseus when he comes as a living man to the land of Hades: they remain silent until their tongues are touched with the blood of the living. What the dead we encounter in books demand is only the blood of our attention, which we are free to withhold.\u201d<\/p>

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The book\u2019s title comes from Auden (\u201cart is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead\u201d) and its subtitle from Horace (Odes II.3, \u201cKeep a Tranquil Mind\u201d). Jacobs opens the book with a reflection on teaching Horace to college students, observing their fixation on phones that seem to bring them more anxiety than joy. He thinks they too desire the kind of escape the Roman poet mused over. \u201c[W]e wanted to know exactly what Horace wanted to know, and for many of the same reasons. We wanted tranquil minds. We wanted to escape our addiction to the adrenaline rush of connectivity.\u201d<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

How do we do that? By broadening our cultural and temporal horizons to cultivate a solidity that allows us to hold firm against fickle fads. \u201cPersonal density\u201d is how Jacobs refers to this quality, echoing Pynchon\u2019s oddball dictum \u201cpersonal density is proportional to temporal bandwidth.\u201d The experience of taking up a time-tested book provides a stark contrast to the ruthless \u201cattentional triage\u201d demanded by the information age. But an obstacle to listening to the dead is the \u201cmoral triage\u201d of our day: the need for \u201cstraightforward binary decisions about whether we admire or despise a given person.\u201d Many classic writers fall afoul of one or another moral commitment of modern readers (at least the readers who are liberal university students) and so are in danger of being consigned to the dustbin of history. Jacobs invites readers to pause and consider what they might learn even from authors with whom they don\u2019t and won\u2019t see eye-to-eye.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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The other theme of these bouts is the possibility of something like love existing between writers and readers divided by vast gulfs of time and experience.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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It might seem a modest thing Jacobs is asking, to give the dead the time of day, but his book is primarily addressing those most skeptical of the value of the so-called classics. To Jacobs\u2019s credit, he never talks down to such readers or minimizes their concerns over the bigotries and blindnesses of dead authors. He is emphatically not asking that the dead be judged by \u201cthe standards of their time.\u201d He asks rather that we judge as we\u2019d want to be judged: in accord with truth, yes, but also with compassion and an interest in the \u201cauthentic kernel\u201d beneath failings and foibles.<\/p>

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For those of us already sold on dead authors, Jacobs has a different caution: not to idealize the past or reshape it in our own image, but allow ourselves to encounter it in its strangeness. \u201cWisdom lies in discernment,\u201d reminds Jacobs, \u201cand utopianism and nostalgia alike are ways of abandoning discernment.\u201d A balancing act, one might say, but Jacobs\u2019s preferred metaphor is a wrestling match\u2014specifically the biblical Jacob\u2019s tussle with God and his subsequent demand that God bless him: \u201cI will not let you go until you bless me\u201d (Gen. 32:26). From this passage Jacobs concludes that struggle and demand are not incompatible with reverence. The classics, then, can be our sparring partners.<\/p>

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Jacobs highlights several of his favorite reader-wrestlers. He praises Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s Lavinia<\/em>, a work that grapples with the Aeneid<\/em> by giving a voice to the heroine Virgil left wordless. He marvels at Frederick Douglass\u2019s ability to both honor and critique the American Founders in his speech \u201cThe Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro.\u201d He recounts Zadie Smith\u2019s youthful encounter with the poetry of John Keats. In each case, the reader gains some insight or perspective from thoughtful contention with the words of the past. But the other theme of these bouts is the possibility of something like love existing between writers and readers divided by vast gulfs of time and experience. \u201cThere\u2019s an important sense in which we cannot use the past to love ourselves unless we also learn to love our ancestors,\u201d writes Jacobs. \u201cWe must see them not as others<\/em> but as neighbors<\/em>\u2014and then ultimately, as kin, as members of our (very) extended family.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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We might be jarred or even scarred in the encounter, but there is a blessing worth winning from our sparring partner.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Shakespeare\u2019s The Taming of the Shrew <\/em>comes up throughout the book, as an example of an old text that is particularly repugnant to a modern, feminist reader. Jacobs is impatient with directors who try to sanitize Shrew <\/em>by \u201cfind[ing] a way to undermine Petruchio\u2019s patriarchal assurance, most often by making sure that Katherine follows up her late subservient speech […] with broad winks to the audience or the other women on stage.\u201d According to Jacobs, this is a foolish attempt to pluck the sting from a misogynist text.<\/p>

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We might grant the point for the sake of argument, and read on to see how Jacobs posits Shakespeare is still worth wrestling with despite his backwards views on gender. But as a Shakespeare fan, I have a quibble with Jacobs here. He claims, \u201cThere is absolutely no reason to believe that Shakespeare\u2019s view of their conflict differs in any way from Petruchio\u2019s.\u201d No reason, perhaps, save the rest of Shakespeare\u2019s plays! Directors aren\u2019t wrong to notice the \u201ctaming\u201d of Katharina sits uneasily alongside Shakespeare\u2019s broader sympathy for women and wives, including against their controlling husbands. Witness the heroines of Much Ado About Nothing<\/em> or The Winter\u2019s Tale<\/em>, unjustly accused by men who end up kneeling to ask their forgiveness. Seeking a redemptive reading of Kate and Petruchio\u2019s marriage isn\u2019t necessarily a sop to the contemporary zeitgeist\u2014it may also stem from a wider engagement with Shakespeare as an author.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

Shakespeare isn\u2019t here to settle the matter, so Jacobs and I, like innumerable theatermakers, have to grapple as best we can with the text he\u2019s left us. As in Jacobs\u2019s recurring image of Jacob wrestling with an angel, we might be jarred or even scarred in the encounter, but there is a blessing worth winning from our sparring partner. If we seek to break bread with the dead, we might echo The Taming of the Shrew<\/em>\u2019s Tranio, and invite them to \u201cstrive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Alexi\u00a0Sargeant<\/strong> is a writer and cultural critic who works in Catholic student ministry at Princeton University. His writing on Shakespeare, superheroes, and other topics at the intersection of philosophy and popular culture has appeared in\u00a0<\/em>First Things,\u00a0the <\/em>New Atlantis, and other venues.<\/em><\/p>

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Breaking Bread with the Dead<\/strong> was released on September 8, 2020, by Penguin Random House. <\/em>Fare Forward thanks the publisher for providing our reviewer with an advance copy of this book. You can purchase a copy from the publisher’s website here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alan Jacobs’s new book advocates for engaging dead authors in a friendly contest, and treating them as we’d like to be 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