You’ll discover a moving memoir, a celebration of reading, and probably the most perfect book-club choice to come along in a while.

Reading Through the Night is a memoir of self-discovery through literary fiction. 

“A surprising, ambitious memoir that raises important questions about what it is that we are doing when we read. Through a series of literary adventures Tompkins shares a journey to new self-knowledge. Her story will engage all book lovers for whom reading is a lifeline.”—Nancy K. Miller, the Graduate Center, CUNY

READING THROUGH THE NIGHT

Jane Tompkins, a renowned literature professor and award-winning author, thought she knew what reading was until—struck by a debilitating illness—she found herself reading day and night because it was all she could do. A lifelong lover of books, she realized for the first time that if you pay close attention to your reactions as you read, literature can become a path of self-discovery.

In READING THROUGH THE NIGHT, Tompkins divulges how she underwent a very personal journey of transformation by finding a new way of reading. Tompkins’s inner journey begins when she becomes unexpectedly captivated by an account of friendship between two writers to whom she’d given little thought: Paul Theroux and V. S. Naipaul. Theroux’s memoir launches her on a path of introspection that stretches back to the first weeks of her life in a Bronx hospital, and then quickly forward to her relationship with her mother and the structure of her present marriage.

Her reading experience, intensified by the feelings of powerlessness and loss of self that come with chronic illness, eventually expands to include writers such as Henning Mankell and Ann Patchett, Alain de Botton, Elena Ferrante, and Anthony Trollope. As she makes her way through their books, she recognizes herself in them, stumbling across patterns of feeling and behavior that have ruled her without her knowing it—envy, a desire for fame, fear of confronting the people she loves, a longing for communion.

The reader, along with Tompkins, comes to the realization that literature can be not only a source of information and entertainment, a balm and a refuge, but also—and perhaps most importantly—a key to unlocking long-forgotten memories that lead to a new understanding of one’s life.

Jane Tompkins is a teacher and scholar known for her work on popular women’s novels of the American nineteenth century. Her book on Western novels and films, West of Everything, won a prize from the American Popular Culture Association, and her memoir of teaching and learning, A Life in School, received an award from the Association of American Colleges and Universities.