Customer Reviews

Love and Friendship

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Are the folks at Kirkus really suggesting that good things necessarily last forever? Are the poor stewardship of following generations and the sad inevitable decay of all things, good and bad, entirely unimportant? In the same way that a dish of my favorite ice cream will surely melt, so will Rome fall eventually. But what does that have to do with anything? As Whit Stillman has indicated in "Metropolitan", ceasing to exist is not evidence of failure - we all cease to exist, but we are not all failures. Bloom's books (and the books of his fellow "Straussians") are, in this reader's opinion, the closest thing to clarity we have in books these days. Intelligent, elegant, romantic, penetrating. If Kirkus has a better suggestion for remedying the "contractual" nature of relationships (which IS out there - take a sympathetic look), I await it with anticipation. Bloom's commentaries on Tolstoy, Shakespeare et al are clear and free of abstraction - the antidote to the glut of theoretical (read: unerotic) drudgery that exists out there on the subject of love. Perhaps Bloom doesn't say it all, but he shows a filial loyalty to those who have come close, which is surely more than we expect nowadays.

Bloom uses the term eros broadly, to cover all forms of the longing for completion--from the love of a beautiful beloved to the love of wisdom. Ranging broadly over the history of Western literature and philosophy, he also goes deep. For each book he covers, he provides a detailed summary that effectively introduces the book to the new reader, along with commentary that illuminates the book's contribution to our ideas of love, friendship, and what they and we can be at our best. I have reservations about Bloom's treatment of Nietzsche, whom he discusses briefly here and there. But having read almost all of the books he covers in full-length chapters, I find those chapters faithful to their spirit. The section on Shakespeare has been published separately, but the others are equally good. The concluding chapters on Montaigne and Plato are especially striking in the clarity and force with which they present these authors' challenge to conventional notions about living well.

This book is not objective. Bloom has an axe to grind. Not that there is intrinsically wrong in this, but....Caveat Lector. Just why Bloom developed such a deeply engrained animus to the modern age is impossible to tell and the biographies that are sure to come out in the near future (I don't consider Ravelstein a biography in any sense of the word. Saul Bellow has axes to grind too.) will be interesting reads.-The basic problem I have with the book is this: The type of deep spiritual (Romantic, with a capital R) love that Bloom regards as lost in our society has always been rare. It has been confined to those who have had a cultured upbringing combined with an inborn sensitivity and spirituality. What has happened in our demotic age is that, as Bloom perfectly puts it, "Sure, you can be a romantic today if you so choose, but it is a little like being a virgin in a whorehouse. It just doesn't fit with the temper of the times and gets no support in the current atmosphere." So what? It's still Romantic love. And our age is not alone in this temper. In more or less all ages, the vast majority of the people have regarded this type of love as, well, "silly and immature." Bloom himself admits this in the chapter on Stendhal where he states, "Stendhal appears unable to depict a fully ripe man. Successful maturity is doubtful for him, and he may in this reflect a problem with the Romantic mood altogether." The most clear passage in the book, the one that comes closest to hitting at what Bloom's all about here comes in the chapter on Anna Karenina where Bloom says,"...there is an alien impression...of a gracious, semi-aristocratic civility that is now so far away from anything we can experience or hope to experience in our daily lives. The relationships of love and friendship have a delicacy and involvement with higher concerns that almost seem inauthentic. Rather than a model for our own lives, the social scene seems to be reminiscent of a lost world where people had the leisure to attempt to make works of art of their lives." It is this "lost world" that Bloom hungers for. In other words, Bloom wants us to go back to Queen Victoria and the following Belle Epoque, when the focus of society's lens was on these priveleged few. It is curious that Bloom chooses this attack on the modern world from a book in which the heroine commits suicide by laying herself in the path of an oncoming train bacause of that society's narrow conventions.-But, please don't get me wrong. I actually LIKE this book because it focuses on the most important things in life: spiritual love and friendship. It's just that Bloom expects too much and has somehow deluded himself into thinking that there was a Golden Age when it was the norm. It has always ben rare, and I don't see why Bloom is such a sourpuss about it. One gets the feeling that some deep hurt has been done to him, and now is the time for vindication. For some reason, Bloom wants us to believe that spiritual love is extinct when it is merely out of the limelight, where it is actually more authentic. After all, the most common adjective associated with the Victorian age is "hypocritical." -But the book is interesting, erudite and worth the read. Just don't get the idea that all is lost.-That part is just Bloomean bosh.

This is essentially a self-help book but Bloom tries to get us to look to the philosophers and poets, who have thought seriously about romantic love and friendship, for guidance rather than a psychology professor.

The Kirkus review is pretty far off the mark-- I dont think reviewer read more than 50 pages of the book.

While it is true that Bloom rails against our modern culture of "hook-ups" and one night stands (his main complaint is that sex without love and passion is kind of boring and not really worthy of human capacity)-- he only spends thirty pages on the subject. But the heart of the book are chapters on Rousseau and Romanticism (Stendhal, Jane Austen, Flaubert, Tolstoy); Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet, Anthony Cleopatra, Measure for Measure, The Winter's Tale); and a chapter called "The Ladder of Love" that focuses on Plato's "Symposium."

The thesis of the book is pretty clear (despite what the Kirkus reviewer thinks): erotic love and friendship are two human endeavors that are among our most important undertakings. And their importance compels us to spend some time thinking about them with the some of humanities great thinkers.

One would need to go back to this book aqain and again, in order to fully appreciate its depth and thoughfulness. Ideally, one would have read all the books Bloom refers to, in order to have a real grasp of what he is saying, but it is not essential. Bloom stays close to the various author's intent, in describing their thoughts, and so reading this book is not only an inspiriation, it is an education in itself. I cannot recommend it highly enough!!!

"Eros" is commonly misinterpreted today as the physical and psychological longing associated the sexual act. Bloom argues that this post-Freudian notion of eros is a dilapidated and impoverished one. "Eros" was not killed merely by Freud, but by his lineage of social scientists, who attempted to de-eroticize "eros" by placing it in the context of meaningless statistics and power-conflict. "Eros" was no longer a romantic notion; it rather became the victim of flakey postmodern and feminist theory that attempted to deconstruct and politicize it. What could be more unromantic than that?

Since it is impoverished from its original Greek meaning, how is it possible to capture the the historical breadth, the romantic essence and the philosophical depth of "eros"? This question represents Bloom's project in 'Love and Friendship.'

'Love and Friendship' analyzes pre-freudian authors of literature who can shed light on the nature of "eros:" Rousseau, Plato, Stendahl, Austen, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Flaubert. Bloom eschews questionable postmodern hermeneutics (queer theory, feminism, etc.) of these works. Instead, he employs textualist (or literalist) hermeneutics in unfolding the true meaning of these works. To be sure, just as no one photograph can tell us what a table truly looks like, no one author reveals the true essence of "eros." However, many different photographs shed light on the various dimensions of a table, just as a textual analysis of great literature gives us a truer philosophical understanding of romantic love.

This book is a gem. Bloom, who lashes out at the animalism of postmodernity in his seminal 'Closing', extends his project by engaging politicized literary theory on their own turf. However, unlike 'Closing,' this book is not aimed at the ill-read. It would be more prudent for one to read first some of the works analyzed in this book. (e.g. Red and Black, Anna Karenina, Emile, Symposium, Pride and Prejudice, Antony and Cleopatra, etc.) Such background reading is requisite to appreciate and criticize Bloom's analysis.

A brilliant writer and social critic, and known as one of the best Greek scholars of the twentieth century, the author gives in this book his insights and concerns regarding the status of love and friendship as humanity moved closer to the 21st century. As in his earlier writings, the author sometimes is right on target, and at other times dead wrong. Indeed, in the latter case, the author's claims are surprising considering his sometimes considerable insight into American culture.

The author expresses deep regret at the current status of "eros". Science, he says, has reduced love to sex, and the word "love" has been applied to most everything except for the overwhelming attraction of one individual to another. People are too open about sex, he complains, and have lost their "puritanical shame" when discussing it in public. But, he does not substantiate his assertions with any amount of statistics. If he did this, it would make this book a scientific study, and the author believes clearly has a negative attitude about science. It is responsible for getting us into this trouble, e.g. the Kinsey report.

All the talk about "relationships" is not any good either, according to the author. Egalitarianism and individualism have reduced romantic relationships to contractual matters. In addition, the last one hundred years has not seen any great "novelists of love". The current romantic novel is "cheap" and suitable only for housewives. To be a romantic today, he says, is like being a "virgin in a whorehouse", and does not conform to the times. Again though, no statistical support is given. The author shouts loud, and carries a small stick of evidence.

The many unsubstantiated claims in the book are balanced by some of its virtues. The author's use of Rousseau is clever, and his analysis of Julien Sorel, the individualistic rogue of Stendahl's "Red and the Black" is brilliant. In fact, all who love (love?) this novel would benefit greatly from reading the author's opinions of it. He sees correctly that there is a fight between the ancients and the moderns. But what he does not see is that the moderns are clearly winning, but only because of what they have inherited from the ancients.

Far from science demeaning the value of love and sex, it has enhanced it. It has taught us that the imagination is not some uncaused force that comes from outside us, but instead is part of who we are. We in large measure, via our ideas and thoughts, determine its contents. But our brains can shuffle these ideas and thoughts and create ones more interesting, fun, and erotic than what perhaps we intended. The more sophisticated our understanding of our brains, the more we appreciate their workings, and the more intoxicated we become in the free play of our imagination.

Contrary to what the author claims, romance has not been reduced to a contract. Certainly views of marriage have changed as compared to what they were centuries ago. Marriage at that time was typically arranged or thought of as an economic contract, and, most importantly, those kinds of marital arrangements were not frowned upon by those who participated in them. But now love is thought of as more precious, as something not to be tainted by economic considerations. If one is "marrying for money" that is something to be kept hidden, and brings shame to those who admit to it. Indeed, how very different are the views now on marriage! We are now marrying for love, and when compared with the marriages of the 16th century, this is a radical notion.

Friendship is a skill. It takes skill to meet and get to know someone, to solve disagreements and problems, to understand and communicate. It is possible to have friends in far-off places, like my pen pal, Carlos Ubach, in Sabadell (near Barcelona), Spain and those fellows I adore out in Los Angeles. Also a couple in Denver. There is such a thing as long distance friendship where you learn to care for that person as much as your own children (sometimes more so), and it is possible to love someone you've never met in person in today's world of the Internet. Just be careful who you trust. Caring is usually contagious, but it takes two to become real (even incidental) friends.

Part of the final play, as in a game of football, in friendship mending (when things go sour), must be forgiveness. First, you must learn to forgive yourself; after all, you are not God -- you're only human, and humans make mistakes. Boy, do they! Failing to forgive keeps the anger and hurt right in the middle of friendship. Forgiveness does not mean that you forget. If we were perfect, we could use this mistake as a stepping stone to not ever do the same thing again. But, alas, we tend to make the same mistakes over and over. I know that I do.

To conquer friendship problems, this book gives a good strategy to follow: Help your friend solve his problem himself. Emphathize and understand his thoughts and worries. Listen and ask questions. Put yourself in your friend's situation. Focus on the reasons behind the problems and change what is causing the tension and abhorrence. Realize that problems come to all friendships. Find and use information to change matters for the better. Notice feelings, yours and your friend's. What is making them act the way they do and to continue when it is way past time to correct the differences. Discuss! Discuss the problems directly.

A childhood song goes: "Make new friends and keep the old. One is silver, the other gold." It is exciting to meet and get to know new friends. This excitement is called "the romance of newness" But it eventually wears off. All relationships have this exciting beginning and then settle down. Don't ever give up on the people you value. I don't. Last words are lasting words. Something to ponder and not ever forget.