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How to Read and Why
Binding: Paperback
Author: Harold Bloom
Release Date: 2001-09-25
Manufacturer: Scribner
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Features:
Average Rating: 4.0
Total Customer Reviews: 59
List Price: $15.00
Our Price: $11.70
Sales Rank: 155587
Product Description
Information is endlessly available to us; where shall wisdom be found?" is the crucial question with which renowned literary critic Harold Bloom begins this impassioned book on the pleasures and benefits of reading well. For more than forty years, Bloom has transformed college students into lifelong readers with his unrivaled love for literature. Now, at a time when faster and easier electronic media threatens to eclipse the practice of reading, Bloom draws on his experience as critic, teacher, and prolific reader to plumb the great books for their sustaining wisdom. Shedding all polemic, Bloom addresses the solitary reader, who, he urges, should read for the purest of all reasons: to discover and augment the self. His ultimate faith in the restorative power of literature resonates on every page of this infinitely rewarding and important book.
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Users Product Reviews: |
Product Review Summary: A valuable read Sometimes one gets so involved in thrashing one's way through life that one forgets what one's priorities are in the first place. A book like 'How to Read' is a breath of fresh air. Bloom infuses a desperate vitality into the pages of his account of what is important in the experience of reading, which sometimes reads (not at all a bad thing) more like personal essay than self-help book -- an epithet, bespattered with vapidity, which one applies to a book like this only with reluctance. Of the works and authors Bloom surveys, some were old friends to me, some I was in the tragically eternal state of planning to read but not having had the time, and some I was unfamiliar with -- but I was intrigued by his accounts of all of them. This book, as is happily characteristic of Bloom's writing, is not 'dumbed down' for those lacking erudition, but by no means should the average reader find it intimidating: it is sophisticated, not deliberately inaccessible.
Sometimes Bloom gets a little weird, as in the (thankfully short) sections he spends discoursing on Kabbalah and related subjects, but his opinions are his own and should be no deterrent to reading this delightful little book. Typographical errors and faux pas are entirely absent, except for one subtle sentence (on page 251 of my edition) where he left out an 'as'.
Product Review Summary: The "Why" is evident, but not the "How" Harold Bloom has specific tastes he makes known throughout this book. One example: "Yet Maupassant is the best of the really "popular" story-writers, vastly superior to O. Henry (who could be quite good) and greatly preferable to the abominable Poe."
This is book of literary criticism, of "why" one should read certain authors and not others. It would greatly benefit readers to read the stories/plays/novels Mr. Bloom examines, because key plot points and endings are discussed. A theme throughout this book is how literature can improve the character of a person who reads it and grasps its meaning. This would preclude reading purely for enjoyment, which, in my opinion, can be ascribed to time-honored literature as well as popular fiction, and should be the initial step toward encouraging a fondness for reading. While this book represents "why" (and "what") to read, if you're truly interested in "how" to read, I recommend Understanding Fiction by Brooks and Warren.
Product Review Summary: Close, but not quite right. ... we all know children in today's grade schools are moving farther away from books and a whole lot closer to My Space for their reading pleasures. Bloom wrote this book to address this and one other concern, that being that universities aren't any healthier for us than My Space when it comes to reading, and reading the right way. Bloom says to read deeply, often, and for yourself without studying the how's and why's using this or that theory of criticism that we're taught in university. I can't agree more after having done a masters degree in English literature. I hated reading after graduating and it took me years to get back into reading for my own true pleasure. For that reason, I like this book. That being said, I think Bloom misses the mark somewhat on what we should read. I've read a lot of the books on his list (Western Canon my bum) and I have to say, many of them are about as interesting, engaging, and exciting as reading as those same My Space pages I mentioned earlier. There is a lot of good literature out there that isn't Shakespeare, Milton, Melville, Emerson, etc. All the good writers aren't dead, Mr Bloom. He's right about the problem but fixing it isn't going to happen by prescribing my fourteen year old a healthy dose of Ibsen, Milton and Emily Dickinson, though everyone could use a taste of Calvino once in a while.
I read somewhere that Bloom said something 'mean' about Stephen King's writing. I don't read King, but at least if my kid is reading that, she's not on the computer all day long. I wonder what Bloom thinks of JK Rowling.
Product Review Summary: Difficult Book with Some excellent Literary Summaries After reading Harold Bloom's The Western Canon, I was interested in what this author had to say about the how and why of reading the major western literary classics. The author makes the following points; "WHY" to read, 1) to strengthen the self. Reading is a selfish act, to improve oneself as opposed to improving your neighbor or neighborhood "HOW" to read, 2) clear the mind of all the factional, and political ideas of the current time period when the reader is seeking the universality of the spirit. 3) the recovery of the ironic .
The author judges the works by looking for the unique way that certain universal human traits are treated in great works of western literature. The author explains the concept of reading by practicing "overhearing". The concept was lost upon this reader. This reader felt like he
missed some of the foundation terms and principals of the book. From the text one can tell the author has dedicated hours to reading and re-reading the classics. Harold Bloom is a Yale professor with many awards to his credit. I appreciated the quick synopsis of the text or selected poem to bring out themes and thoughts I would have otherwise missed., All in all, the author's concepts are difficult to fully absorb, but his summary of literary works has to spark some interest in some area of the literary classics.
Product Review Summary: So-So Literary critic should have titled this little guide `What to Read and Why,' seeing as he devotes only a few paragraphs to why reading might be valuable. That said, Bloom is a terrifyingly accomplished reader, but he isn't much of a thinker or a critic in the way Benjamin or Derrida were. Bloom's incessant propensity to judge all literature from the `how is this compared to Shakespeare' lens is foolish and lacking in any insight. At times his criticism seems almost amateurish and rushed. He doesn't seem to be a very good reader of Hemingway, for instance. At the outset of a review of `Hills Like White Elephants,' Bloom writes that "Hemingway's personal mystique-his bravura poses as warrior, big-game hunter, bullfighter, and boxer-is irrelevant to `Hills Like White Elephants' as its male protagonist's insistence that `You know that I love you'" (47). Yet later in Bloom's review, he writes [on `The Snows of Kilimanjaro']: The irony is at Hemingway's expense, insofar as Harry prophesies the Hemingway who, nineteen days shor of his sixty-second birthday, turned a double-barreled shotgun on himself" (49). Bloom seems to have reversed tactics here. Never the less, Bloom is an undeniably great reader of poetry; in this volume he tells you all about his personal favorites: Stevens, Whitman, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, etc. Kind of fun, but far from great criticism.
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