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Unread 10-14-2019, 04:25 PM
John Riley John Riley is offline
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Default Harold Bloom

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/b...core-ios-share
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Unread 10-23-2019, 07:12 AM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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RIP Professor Bloom

I know of him, but have never read him. He sounds like the sort of figure for whom the word 'towering' and 'divisive' were invented. Better-read Spherians than me: which of his books, if any, should I add to my 'I'll get round to that one day' list? My personal canon, if you will...

John, what do you think?
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Unread 10-23-2019, 07:26 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Here's a different John. So, Harold Bloom was well-read. The Anxiety of Influence made him famous and is quite short - a fairly easy read. I finally got to it years after hearing of it, and found it a let-down. The basic premise is great - writers have a sort of Oedipal struggle with their overwhelming forebears - and is I think fundamentally true. The execution is less impressive than the premise IMO, heavily opinionated and circling back repeatedly to writers Bloom thinks everyone should go on about - Shakespeare, natch. Wordsworth IIRC. He then wrote a much longer work, The Western Canon, in which he announces who people ought to read and who they don't need to bother reading. I found his list of folks to read somewhat inane and unimaginative - if you read Daniel Boorstin, who has similar interests, his reference points are a tad more unexpected.
Anyway: Bloom was a major player in academia for decades. I never heard anything unpleasant about him - he was at Yale as I recall - and he had certainly read a lot, whatever the disappointments I may find in his thinking. RIP.

Cheers,
John
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Unread 10-23-2019, 04:16 PM
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Quincy Lehr Quincy Lehr is offline
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Never heard anything upleasant about him? How about THIS?
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Unread 10-23-2019, 04:22 PM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Thanks, Quincy. No, I’d not heard that story. It’s good to be informed.

Cheers,
John

Update: BTW. Not sure if I have any Naomi Wolf on my shelves at present, but I do seem to remember finding her thinking rather more interesting than his is. Oh yes: The Beauty Myth. Good book, I thought.

Last edited by John Isbell; 10-23-2019 at 04:48 PM.
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