Harold Bloom is a Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University and a former Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. His more than thirty books include The Best Poems of the English Language, The Art of Reading Poetry, and The Book of J. He is a MacArthur Prize Fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, including the Academy's Gold Medal for Belles Lettres and Criticism, the International Prize of Catalonia, and the Alfonso Reyes Prize of Mexico.
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28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Madness With Method,
By
This review is from: Novelists and Novels (Bloom's Literary Criticism 20th Anniversary Collection) (Paperback)
Bloom has always been a bit hard to come at, to evaluate in a meaningful way - In one of my (5 star) reviews of one of his books I denominated him "insane," in a very brilliant way, of course - So, let's stick to the text, shall we: Bloom is continually reminding us in these critiques of authors from Cervantes to Amy Tan of what he calls the "Nietzshean question": "Who is the interpreter, and what power does he seek to gain over the text?" An excellent question to bear in mind with regard to Bloom, as one reads this book of interpretations. What Bloom tells us he is, at any rate, is provided by a rhetorical question on p.464: "For what am I but one of the last Defenders of the Old Aesthetic Faith, the trust in the Covenant between the writers of genius and the discerning reader?" (Capitals are Bloom's.). All very well, but Bloom has an approach, a method to his madness (a Shakespearian description he would fancy, no doubt), described on p.49: "Historical changes in psychology are very real, and eighteenth-century men and women (of the same social class) have more in common with one another than say eighteenth-century intellectuals have in common with our current feminist critics." This assertion is no doubt true to a certain extent but it puts him at odds with Tolstoy's famous quote from War and Peace (not covered herein) that only people with small minds think human nature changes from one generation to the next. This brings me to my final introductory point: Bloom is a disciple of Vico, of which the only thing I shall say is that his theory of history indulges in what I would call the Philological Fallacy, a very seductive notion for those who love words and books, which maintains, to encapsulate, that etymology is fate. Modern readers might be familiar with this notion from Heidegger's Being and Time. ---It's a very lovely theory with much depth that logophiles can spend endless hours in delight in plumbing, and to which I personally have no objection, save that it is not true.
Background behind us, I must say that this book is a striking read. Bloom has something interesting to say about every writer covered herein, something which will stay with you, haunt you, long after you finish reading it. Even if he disses your favourite writer, it will be in a thought-provoking way that will make you at least entertain the notion that there might be something between the covers of a beloved book that escaped your mind's eye altogether. And, of course, Bloom has his favourites. I can't possibly cover all here in an Amazon review, so I'll just mention two of his favourites and one whom he doesn't care for so much. Favourites include: Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights - Bloom seems at a loss with this book - as he is with no other book - in attempting to put it in some literary tradition, save the obvious Byronic influence on the character of Heathcliff. He resorts to quoting Dante Gabriel Rossetti's admiration of it: "It is a fiend of a book, an incredible monster, combining all the stronger female tendencies....The action is laid in Hell, ----only it seems places and people have English names there." For Bloom, Emily Bronte is a "Gnostic original", high praise indeed from one who considers himself a Gnostic original. William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying - This book, it would seem, is Bloom's favourite 20th Century novel, certainly the most influential. He says he is surprised anew every time he rereads it. His Gnostic-critic judgment on it: "What matters in major Faulkner is that the people have gone back, not to nature but to some abyss before the Creation-Fall." Very well put, I should say. This place seems as good as any to point out that Bloom frequently quotes at length disagreeing critics and leaves one to sort it all out on one's own, by reading the book. All very much as it should be, say I. A not so great, much-overrated author: Ernest Hemingway - I've never seen the allure in Hemingway myself either, and thus love Bloom's final sentence on "Papa": "We are not shown "grace under pressure" but something closer to Narcissus observing himself in the mirror of the sea." P.338 Again though, it must be stressed that Bloom allows for other takes on Hemingway, though he makes it clear how shallow he thinks them to be. So, altogether a fascinating book for any deep reader of literature; this selection makes you yearn to read (or reread) these books and authors again, to embark again on the grandest quest of all, which I'll let Bloom have the last word in describing (from the section on Jose Saramago): "Beware a God who is at once truth and time, Saramago warns us, and abandon such a God to sail out in search of yourself."
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Harold's Bloom,
By Hande Z (Singapore) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Novelists and Novels (Bloom's Literary Criticism 20th Anniversary Collection) (Paperback)
Why do we read books about books and their writers? Such books at the basic level provide a synopsis of the books under study; the books are usually about classics (for example, "The Book of Great Books", ed. W John Campbell, 1977 Metro Books). So, a young reader or someone who has recently found joy in reading will be grateful for books that help him choose his next book. Years later, the more matured reader will like to see what others think of the books he reads. So he looks to books about books at a higher level - those that provide some analysis or even just some extra information even though that may only be the literary equivalent of "The Making of" genre in films and the telemedia. At the apex, the writers of books about books write only about one book. Northrop Frye's "The Great Code" (1982 Harvest Book) a treatise with the Bible and literature as its theme and subject is a splendid example. In fact, Frye wrote not one but two books about the same book; his second was "Words with Power" (1990 Harvest Books).
"Novelists and Novels" ("N & N") is an in-between kind of book about books. The cynic may at once think that this is the kind of book that neither the novice nor mature reader will bother with. On the contrary, N and N is a beautiful bridge that crosses from the basic to the sublime. The friendship of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, an essence of Miguel Cervantes's epic, was analysed in just over a page. Dickens' various works were discussed in 15. N & N invites a mature and experienced reader who has read some, if not most or all, of the books discussed. It is also a book for the reader who has views of his own; and for him to see what sort of mirror N & N is to him. Would it be a clear and identical reflection or a misshapen one contorting the reader's image? Bloom did not choose only the conventionally accepted "best" or "greatest" work of the writers under study (an exercise that is bound to be controversial anyway). When he wrote "Hesse" he wrote about "The Glass Bead Game", not "Steppenwolf" or "Siddhartha". His 21 pages of Kafka devoted only four to "The Trial", arguably Kafka's best known work. Bloom's bias shows through in many ways. It is obvious he lavishes Faulkner and patronizes Hemingway. It is a vast collection of essays on some of the finest writers and their works. In that regard, Philip Roth might have found himself a stranger in a strange land, but Bloom saved him that embarrassment with a splendid essay on Roth's "Zukerman Bound". Finally, reverting to my earlier point, would I recommend this to the novice or young reader? Absolutely - one cannot dream of flying without gazing at the sky.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
FUN INTERESTING STRANGE GUY,
By
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This review is from: Novelists and Novels (Bloom's Literary Criticism 20th Anniversary Collection) (Paperback)
Cranky and eccentric, and more or less of a personal selection, but always fun, & -- maybe more important -- I find that I always learn something reading Bloom, even if in arguing with him. I said a personal selection, which is true, but also the weights accorded each writer page-wise are all over the place, more for Nathanial West, for example, a private passion of Bloom's, than for Mark Twain.
Note that a few of these reviews are marred by Bloom's effort to link his politics to his subject, almost always unsuccessfully (I said "almost" to be charitable).
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