Any Harold Bloom Recommendations?

[JBI]

HB is an old kraut, and his opinionated arrogance is just annoying. Though I really enjoyed reading his thoughts on romantic poets, his chastising of Stephen King and J.K. Rowling is just disgustingly smug and ivory tower. I read Harry Potter as an 8-year-old and that's what got my interest in literature going, according to Bloom I should be reading King and pulp fiction only, when my favorite books are from Tolstoy and Shakespeare. Of course I couldn't care less what he thinks, I don't need his stamp of approval, I like Stephen King as well. I do like Bloom's rejection on feminist and marxist critique though, which I also find pointless.

Sorry for digging up an old thread btw...

You apologize, yet it is ironic, you need to tell us you think him arrogant , annoying, and criticize his chastising of such named authors, as well as his smugness, and eliteness. But, in the end, you wanted us to know? Is that not hypocrisy?

[hampusforev]

Hypocrisy seems a bit harsh... Inconsistency at the most, that apology was mostly for propriety's sake. I really wanted to share my annoyance with Bloom, I never claimed otherwise. I probably should have waited until after work to post because at the moment I'm peering over my shoulder trying to look busy with work and thus find it hard to concentrate. What I intended to put across was an admiration for some of Bloom's work but annoyance with his attitude, and I sort of got derailed and just attacked him. Anyway, I do think Bloom's arrogance is detrimental to "high literature" because he makes it seem really inaccessible to people below is particular wavelength.

[JBI]

Hypocrisy seems a bit harsh... Inconsistency at the most, that apology was mostly for propriety's sake. I really wanted to share my annoyance with Bloom, I never claimed otherwise. I probably should have waited until after work to post because at the moment I'm peering over my shoulder trying to look busy with work and thus find it hard to concentrate. What I intended to put across was an admiration for some of Bloom's work but annoyance with his attitude, and I sort of got derailed and just attacked him. Anyway, I do think Bloom's arrogance is detrimental to "high literature" because he makes it seem really inaccessible to people below is particular wavelength.

You misunderstood my post perhaps, I was just commenting on the way you criticize Bloom for commenting on authors you do not like, and sharing his opinion on their mediocrity, meanwhile criticizing Bloom, which is essentially what he was doing, only he is famous.

[ralfyman]

He has probably read more than most readers, and this makes his opinions more important.

[Des Essientes]

I just read David Lindsay's "A Voyage To Arcturus" which is available on librivox.com and its introduction said that Bloom loved this book so much that he actually wrote a sequel to it called "Voyage to Lucifer" or something like that, and that this is Bloom's sole work of fiction, which he has since disowned and not allowed to be reprinted. I wonder if anyone on this forum has read it, and if so, what was it like? Lindsay's novel was an interesting if somewhat bizzarre Schopenhauerian allegory.

[lawpark]

I think it has something to do with actually liking the non-fiction. Just like people in psychology read in psychology, not just case studies but theories. So do many people who like literature, not just read literature but read about literature. Have you ever wanted to read a biography of an author? It seems the same thing.

Ultimately, I think the idea is not so much the actually reading of the critical text, but the enrichment of reading fiction after the text. There is a refined pleasure in knowing more about what your reading.

I would also add that: good books generates interest just a like good movies or good music does. And instead of posters, toys, or other fan materials, analysis about fiction are satisfying in the same way as these derivative products.

[YesNo]

My favorite effort by HB is his collaboration with Rosenberg in the Book of J. He purports in it that the Pentateuch was written by a women in the son of King Soloman's court and as a work or witty and ironic fancy and very much from a sophisticated female point of view. He goes on to argue that with Dante and Shakespeare she is part of the pinnacle of the western literary tradition. Great fun. I personally prefer to take this quite seriously.

I think I read two or three books by Bloom all of which I have mostly forgotten except for the commentaries in The Book of J. Somewhere in those other books he suggests that J was Solomon's mother, Bathsheba.

Whatever anyone has to say about Bloom, his ideas about J, and the link to Bathsheba, I find valuable.

[fb0252]

I am in the middle of Bloom's Genius--Bloom's list of the top 100--written at age 71. Maybe slight fall from quality offrom Shakespeare Invention of The Human and Western Canon. still excellent and interesting. Few could write this and say they read all 100. Occasional irritation with Bloom continually rhapsodizing over this and that, and, by my account rare misses for Bloom here and there where he's yet to read, such as e.g. Walter Arndt's Goethe translation or On The Edge of Reason by Mirslav Krleza that rivals Kafka's The Trial.