[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 100 KB, 853x802, bloomak.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16988289 No.16988289 [Reply] [Original]

Now that the dust has settled, what's the /lit/ consensus on Harold Bloom? What is worth reading from him, which works of his are just him wanking off?

>> No.16988557
File: 98 KB, 1280x720, maxresdefault (3).jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16988557

>>16988289
An essayist, not a critic.
Shilled by anglosaxon academy.
Extremely ignorant on Hispanic literature.

>> No.16988563

Bloom, Harold. Conspicuously Jewish.

>> No.16988590

>>16988289
How to Read and Why is nice

>> No.16988605

>>16988289
The Visionary Company
Yeats
Anxiety of Influence
The Western Canon

Those are the essential ones that I have read. Shakespeare: Invention of the Human is pretty fun but slight in terms of insight.
Avoid Shadow of a Great Rock and Genius.
I have not read his most recent works.

>> No.16988692

>>16988605
why avoid shadow of a great rock? I was gonna pick that up

>> No.16988725

>>16988692
It's just incredibly surface level. It suffers greatly from one of Bloom's weaknesses in his later years where he'll just quote huge passages of text with next to no commentary. He rarely comments on the language of the KJV (and when he does it's often to deride it in comparison to the Hebrew original). It's just too bitty and insubstantial to be worthwhile. His chapter on Revelation is only three pages long, for God's sake and half of that is taken up by a massive quote (again presented without comment).
Skim through it at a library if you still want to whet your curiosity but it's really not worth a buy.

>> No.16988726

>>16988289
His introduction "The Art of Reading Poetry" is fantastic. I often find Bloom to be a better critic on poetry than on fiction or drama. His essay on Eugene O'Neill wasn't that great and a lot of his books I often found he was making the same argument over and over again. Yeats, The Anxiety of Influence, and Shakespeare: Invention of the Human are the three books he wrote that I absolutely loved. I do plan on reading his book on Percy Shelley, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

>> No.16988738

>>16988557
No one is shilling bloom academically and nothing has killed my desire for hispanic /lit/ or to work on my spanish like Maestro posters and their half-baked theory. Try living in the real world sometime.