The key would be how well he got the basics down and whether he had the inner fortitude to stick it out. Recognizing that mainstream Western literature still looks to old Russian models, Jin embraced Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, and Chekhov, and made them his teachers.
西方主流文學界至今仍以舊俄文學為典範，托爾斯泰、杜思妥也夫斯基、果戈里、契訶夫就是哈金所擁抱的「偉大的文學老師」，他模仿、效法，藉由站在巨人的肩膀上「抬高眼界」。