The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

by Alan Jacobs

if you turn upstream to see where your favorite authors came from, intellectually speaking, you may discover all sorts of works that are fascinating, illuminating—but also, yes, challenging. “Challenging” is precisely what the (downstream) imitators usually are not, but that means that they’re not all that rewarding either. They tend to be mere shadows of the originals they strive to copy. Austen and Tolkien weren’t trying to copy anything, but they were drawing on the power of earlier writers and thinkers, and deepening their own sensibilities by doing so. If you imitate them in that sense—not by trying to write what they wrote but to read what they read—you’ll find your horizons expanding, your mind stretching, your resources of knowledge coming near their limits. But all this will draw you closer in powerful ways to the writers you most love. That at first will be your incentive, though perhaps as you continue the pursuit will come to have its own fascination.