Harold Bloom with some reading material (public domain photo).
After yesterday's blog post, I wanted to share a more positive quote about reading, this time from famed literary critic Harold Bloom (1930-2019). (I discovered Bloom back in college, when I became infatuated with Percy Bysshe Shelley's poetry and bought a Shelley anthology edited by Bloom.)
Here's the quote (source):
"The great poems, plays, novels and stories teach us how to go on living, even when submerged under forty fathoms of bother and distress. If you live 90 years you will be a battered survivor. Your own mistakes, accidents, and failures at otherness beat you down. Rise up at dawn and read something that matters as soon as you can."
5 comments:
I enjoyed Bloom's "The Western Canon". Bob Wilson wrote an article on that book. I recently watched a clip on Youtube of Bloom trashing Harry Potter and Stephen King which I did not like.
Bloom - who wrote enormous tomes and seemingly had read everything - also trashed Tolkien. He just didn't care if he pissed anyone off. I find that endearing, although I personally find it difficult to diss a writer, even if I don't like them. Because I assume others DO like that writer to the extent that it maybe informs their spiritual lives.
There are some writers though...But I won't go into it.
Bloom was a huge fan of the 1920 SF novel Voyage To Arcturus, by David Lindsay, which I read just because Harold Effing Bloom thought it was great.
I did not think it all that great. Not horrid, but I think it made me "know" Bloom a little better.
I always thought it was cool how Bloom encouraged and mentored Camille Paglia and her book Sexual Personae which was her PhD thesis, cleaned up, in a similar way that RAW apparently made Prometheus Rising more palatable for a non-academic audience. Paglia called Bloom a "visionary rabbi" and she was also influenced by Leslie Fiedler and Sir James Fraser, two influences she shares with Robert Anton Wilson.
Eric, where can I read the RAW article on "The Western Canon"?
Michael, I haven't read "The Western Canon" -- it's on the list -- but the other night I went through the appendix listing all the works Bloom recommends, and I spotted a couple of SF novels -- "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula LeGuin and "On Wings of Song," by Tom Disch. I like both books, but I don't get the impression Bloom was well read in SF. No Gene Wolfe?
I guess Tolkien is not for everyone, but I sure love him. I know a guy who re-reads the LoTR every year.
The article on The Western Canon appears in either Cosmic Trigger 2 or 3.
I always really enjoyed Bloom's criticism. His "Shakespeare: The Invention of Human," "The Anxiety of Influence" and "Kabblah and Criticism" were all really valuable texts for me.
Bloom's appreciation of John Crowley always endeared me. I never got to read his one fictional book which was a rewrite of "A Voyage to Arcturus," which Michael talks about in his comment.
He did seem pretty cantankerous and mean-spirited in his lambasting oif certain writers, but that's a critic for yuh.
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