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Product Review Summary: Heart in the right place, but a confused jumble all the same Harold Bloom is way smarter than I am. And he takes pains to make that fact crystal-clear to me on every single one of this monster's 450 pages--not by actually saying things like 'I am so sophisticated' (that would be silly), but by discoursing on books that, as he keeps emphasizing, everyone should know and love, in a gnarled, elevated, and impossibly obscure prose style that only the dedicated few who have studied Bloomese can understand. Do not misunderstand me: I heartily agree with most of Bloom's sentiments on books, reading, and the Canon: we as individuals should spend more time--or, to put it differently, deserve to spend more time--reading authors like Shakespeare and Dante and Joyce and less time, much less, fiddling with our screens and keyboards. But if you are wondering whether this Western Canon business is for you, 'The Western Canon' will neither convert you nor inspire you. This book is interesting in places, and contains some sparkling insights on some works of literature, but most of it is, to tell the bare, raw truth, simply boring. The sections (thankfully few) where Bloom wanders off into his odd land of Jewish mysticism are even worse: gratuitous digressions, irrelevant and perplexing. The best part of the book is the long, long, open-ended reading list at the end, though even there I have a bone to pick: Bloom as much as tells the reader not to bother with any but the most eminent classics of the ancient world, because (and I paraphrase) 'as more recent literature widens, ancient literature necessarily narrows.' Au contraire, Mr Bloom! The earliest authors are the most important of all, and wrote literature of as much purely æsthetic value (Bloom's sole discriminating factor), and more, as those of any other period including our own. The book is still worth a read, if you are familiar with Bloom's idiom and have enough experience with the field not to be flattened by his prolix mountains of critical blather.
Product Review Summary: Harold Bloom Kickin' it Old-School Harold Bloom is obsolete. He preaches a literary criticism that has no place in 21st-century society. No, Harold, Shakespeare is not the author whom all other authors must strive to surpass. He was great for his time, and his work continues to inspire us. This is true. But writers shouldn't try to be Shakespeare; they should strive to perfect their craft in their own social and artistic context. Sorry if you don't like the result, Harold. That doesn't mean they aren't as good as Shakespeare; that means you're old and out of touch.
Product Review Summary: for the love of literature I enjoyed Bloom's book because it succeeded in one of its chief aims: to inspire the reader to open or go back to the books he describes. His enthusiasm beams from every paragraph. He obviously loves literature, and this passion conveyed itself clearly to me, triggering like feelings.
However, his book also irritated me. I can overlook the constant use of his favorite words: "declined," "agon," "proleptic," and "exuberant." But the constant rantings about the "School of Resentment," which would be feminists, Marxists, Foucauldians, and multiculturalists who reduce literature to ideology, got on my nerves and struck me as its own brand of resentment. I wish Bloom would have stuffed it all into an appendix or saved it for a book I would not have had to purchase.
Product Review Summary: Words, Words, Words I knew, prior to reading this book, that I didn't like Harold Bloom.
I've encountered him over the years, primarily when he's condescended to comment on "popular literature," to inform us that we don't really know what we're about and are reading the wrong stuff.
I've always believed though that to truly have license to hate something, a fair hearing is required, and so I picked up The Western Canon. Maybe I would find my prejudice inaccurate (as has happened in the past)?
Not in this case, as it turns out.
There are things to be admired about Mr. Bloom. That he has built a career for himself; that he cares about promoting great works; that he sees through what he calls The School of Resentment, which seeks to redefine "good literature" according to the ethnicity/gender/social class of authors; that he has the integrity to fight the tide within his profession; that he is passionate.
This, however, is a poor book.
Other reviewers within these pages have already identified some of the reasons why it is poor -- Bloom's prose is nigh-unreadable, written (perhaps) for some incredibly rarefied audience, but not for any professor I've ever had, let alone a general reader. He uses effusive praise with large and impressive-sounding, but ultimately rather empty, words and phrases. He does all of this according to his own peculiar theories of "agon" and influence, which sometimes seem as cryptic and arcane as the criticism schools he dismisses.
His worship of Shakespeare, in particular, is just bizarre. I'm very fond of Shakespeare, but reading Bloom one gets the sense that, had Shakespeare not come about we wouldn't have a Canon to discuss at all. Indeed, Bloom seems to suggest that our very conscious lives -- yours and mine -- are somehow defined by Shakespeare's writings; that Shakespeare, somehow, "invented" us. I agree that Hamlet is a great character, but I believe that I could exist without him. Bloom apparently disagrees.
This book will not demonstrate to most or many why they truly ought to read the books Bloom mentions -- I find Bloom's aesthetic metric of influence to be cold, and very far removed from the joys I find in reading. However, I will take it from Bloom that there is *something* to be gained in the writers he cites, and will take value in the appendices he includes as a starting point for a deeper education.
Apart from the appendices, I believe that a prospective reader's time would be far better served reading Shakespeare, or Dante, or Milton, or any of the great writers that Bloom mentions, instead of reading Bloom himself. In short, The Western Canon does not make the western canon.
I find myself, at last, wondering what Shakespeare would have made of Bloom's Western Canon. I somehow suspect that he would decide that it really didn't have much to do with the plays he was writing, dismiss it, and get back to work.
Product Review Summary: One of our greatest living critics Harold Bloom is one of the best living critics. There, I said it. He's controversial, he's sometimes infuriating, but by God, he's right, and he never ceases to illuminate.
I was first exposed to the idea of the Western Canon about four years ago, in my 11th grade English class, where we compared the ideas of Harold Bloom and Henry Louis Gate, Jr. on the (actually nonexistent) canon. I didn't make much of it then, as I wasn't quite the literature junkie I am now, but it gave me a taste of the academic battle that is raging right now.
Gates, whose criticism I have no read, but who seems an admirable man, is a proponent of a more inclusive canon, that gives weight to works based on their writers. Bloom is much more of a purist, and I agree with him far more, in that he demands works be included strictly on the basis of the work alone. The author is almost nonexistent in the question of inclusion; all that matters is the quality of the work. Ever the controversialist, Bloom points out that the current "canon" is being watered-down by what he terms the "School of Resentment"; namely, the multiculturalist, feminist, Marxist, deconstructionist, etc. literary theorists. He is sensationalist at times, declaring in his `Elegy for the Canon' that he doesn't believe literature will ever return to its previous, exalted state, but for the most part he hits the nail on the head.
As an English majour forced to take many classes expounding the "School of Resentment" theories, I admit I have a bias toward Bloom and probably see it as more of a crisis than most. However, there is a sense in which literature is in danger. The number of readers of great literature seems to be decreasing, and when compared with the number of TV viewers and partakers of other, cheaper forms of entertainment, reading is all but disappeared. The "School of Resentment" is yet another undermining factor to the already endangered art of reading great literature, seeking to supplant the Wordsworths and Miltons with sub-par writers, simply because these sub-par writers happen(ed) to belong to a particular group. This is flat-out wrong, and makes English departments nationwide a laughingstock, in many cases.
But enough of my English majour's complaining: the criticism in THE WESTERN CANON is what matters most for many, and it tends to be good. I have had a general issue with Bloom in his at times anachronistic comparisons of authors, or application of ideas that don't always belong (Gnosticism seems to be his favourite, but I'm not sure it applies as widely as Bloom believes it does), but he is unparalleled in the land of general critics. One will not get anything extremely in-depth, as this is a book of general criticism, but many of the connections and erudite ideas Bloom expounds are stimulating, and encourage reading or re-readings of the great authors.
And perhaps, as some other reviewers have noted, that is what matters most about Bloom. His enthusiasm for reading, his religious devotion to literature, his unparalleled sense for the importance of the great authors--these are the factors that make him great. Reading Dr. Bloom--I call him that with intentional reference to Dr. Johnson!--is like finding an especially enthusiastic (and yes, opinionated) friend, with whom one can sit and share a cup of tea and discuss literature. He inspires you to read, and to think, and to think about what you read. All the complaints about the "School of Resentment" are right, though hyperbolic, but it is his unabashed love of literature that makes Dr. Bloom a critic of the ages.
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