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/lit/ - Literature

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3001964 No.3001964 [Reply] [Original]

What would be a good book to expand the horizons of a bunch of middle aged women who only reads pop-lit and who thinks Jane Austen's the only classic author worth reading.

>> No.3001970

Infinite Jest

>> No.3001975

Dickens

>> No.3001973

Proust.

Please don't make them read DFW.

>> No.3001976

>>3001964
Have them read Jane Austen.

>> No.3001978

>>3001964
Twilight.

>> No.3001979

Actually you could try give them Lorrie Moore. She's elegant, touchy feely and smart but just the bit necessary pleb to be liked by the hags.

>> No.3002020

maybe atwood.

>> No.3002028
File: 56 KB, 330x496, Jane Smiley.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3002028

George Eliot
Thomas Hardy
Flannery O'Connor
Elif Shafak
Jane Smiley
Christina Stead
Edith Wharton

>> No.3002066

Willa Cather

>> No.3002129

>>3002028

I could have sworn that was Julia Davis.

Now I am disappoint.

>> No.3002168

lol at that op pic

every picture i see of bloom it looks like he is either scowling, in pain, or terribly disappointed

>> No.3002187
File: 29 KB, 503x335, do you even read.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3002187

>> No.3002232
File: 10 KB, 226x273, bloom, harold.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3002232

>>3002168

He's been pouting all his life.

>> No.3002236

>>3002232

That's not pouting - someone just smeared shit on his top lip.

and he never washed it off

>> No.3002272

120 Days of Sodom

>> No.3002298
File: 34 KB, 361x526, Harold Bloom (Photo by Thomas Iannaccone).jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3002298

>> No.3002323
File: 59 KB, 500x631, 1346380788122.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3002323

>>3001975
Bleak House might be a good transition

um, is Alice Walker "too deep"?

>> No.3002335

>>3001973

> Please don't make them read DFW.

I don't know. Some of his nonfiction might be good.

>> No.3002369

>>3001964
Only americans could trust bloom. He's such an idiot.
I'm an italian guy, bought western canon. Read the essay about Woolf, obvious but ok.
Read the essay about Dante. No, seriously. Even the worst italian student would have written less stupid and wrong things.
Does HE even read? Stop following him, seriously.

>> No.3002387

>>3002369
So you've read two essays of his, and you disagree with one, so you dismiss him outright?

>> No.3002409

>>3002369
he's probably read more than this entire board put together, seriously.
>400 pages an hour

>> No.3002411

>>3002387

Italians are notoriously stupid.

>> No.3002417

I've never read anything by Bloom, but his name is on 75% of the books in the nonfiction section of my library. It's kind of ridiculous.

>> No.3002434

>>3002387
He puts Dante's work as one of the columns of his western canon. But he misunderstands the Comedy completely.
He not only misunderstands, he also says extremely wrong things.

>>3002409
> Quantity doesn't mean anything, well but if it's BLOOM'S quantity then is different.
lol

>>3002411
But still too clever for Bloom's understanding, or so it seems.

>> No.3002436

>>3002369

Bloom thinks motherfucken Freud is one of the best authors of all time.

Mutherfucken _Freud_!

Why not Dale Carnegie or Oprah Winfrey while you're at it, huh, Harold?

The man has all the intelligence and good sense of a lump of coal. The guy's a joke. (In fact, he's so ridiculous that I'm not quite sure that he isn't an elaborate troll act.)

>> No.3002438

>>3002369

Only an Italian would be so blindly proud.

>> No.3002437

Bloom is not a critic. He has nothing of value to say about anything he claims to have read. He's merely a braggart and a cheerleader. No one familiar with literary criticism respects that old fraud.

>> No.3002481

>>3002438
Seriously, no. For example he says that Santa Lucia, if not for Dante, would not be known at all.
He says this to prove a quite semplicistic and dumb theory of him. The fact is that Santa Lucia is not at all unknown.
She has been one of the most prayed saints for centuries among the italians. She still is.
So: or he's making things up just to prove his theories, or he really does not know a shit of what he's talking about.
A lot of other examples, and in an essay of a few pages.
>>3002437
That's the idea I got from the little I read. Maybe on American or English Literature he is interesting, but I doubt that a critic who makes such big mistakes in an essay which he considers relevant can be, in different situations, a good critic.

>> No.3002494

>>3002481
>Maybe on American or English Literature he

the only remotely decent thing he's ever done was his Wallace Stevens stuff. the rest of the time I'm not even convinced he reads the books he writes about -- I suppose if he really reads 400 pages an hour that might explain it.

>> No.3002528

>>3002494

As suspected. Now I'm even more certain that I wasted my money on him, ahah.

>> No.3002573

Yep, I'm going to have to trust a Sterling Professor of Yale over the opinion of a bunch of snotty undergrads on 4chan who will never even come close to being as well-read as Bloom.

>> No.3002587

>>3002573
do what you want, no one gives a fuck. Just know that your opinions are shit and always will be regardless of what critic's coattails you desperately cling to, faggot.

>> No.3002606

>>3002587

Grow up.

>> No.3004148
File: 12 KB, 208x308, Michael Dirda.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3004148

>this thread isn't even about literary critics

What about this guy, then?

>> No.3004152

>>3004148
go to bed michael dirdumb