Let's discuss the best books of all time

[stlukesguild]

I doubt Bloom or his reading list has much need of defense by me. It has been attacked by endless others with far more reading under their belts than I... and yet few or none have offered a better alternative. I agree that there is an English-Language bias to the list. The first reason for this bias would seem to be found in the very title: "The Western Canon." This title, written in English, would almost immediately suggest that such offered the essential books of Western literature accessible to the English-speaking audience. He admits to having excluded most works of Eastern literature simply due to the lack of quality translations. The same must certainly be admitted of most of the "lesser" works by non-Anglo writers of the West. One might also add to this the fact that English-language literature is certainly one of the greatest bodies of literary achievements combining the efforts of writers not only from Great Britain, but also the United States, Canada, Australia, India, South Africa, etc... If one looks at the actual list one discovers that comparatively the French, Spanish, Germans, etc... are not grossly under-represented. Certainly I would admit that if such "lesser" Anglo writers as Bram Stoker, W.S. Gilbert, Coventry Patmore, Gertrude Stein, etc... can be admitted into the list of "essential" world literature then one should just as well admit Alexandre Dumas, Lautreamont, Adelbert von Chamisso, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Stefan George, Hartmann von Aue, etc... but where does the English-reading audience then turn for suitable translations of any? The reality is that only the very finest works... or rather the works that are seen as being essential to any literature are likely to be well translated. Keats, Byron, Shelley, Shakespeare, Milton... I would guess... are all likely to be far more accessible to the reader of Italian or German or French than would be George Herbert, Thomas Carew, Richard Lovelace, Michael Drayton, etc... In the end, the fact still stands that Bloom has presented one of the most inclusive lists for the English-language reader wishing to explore the essential works of Western literature. Anyone wishing for a more in-depth exploration of the literature of a specific language outside of English would surely need to develop a mastery of that language and one would expect would know where to turn to go into greater depth.

[JBI]

I agree with you on everything you said StLukes, except for Dumas. I don't think he is deserving of canonization, and I think his not being included was deliberate, and not a mere cutting to save space as you seem to suggest.

Dumas' popularity seems somewhat accidental in the world of literature. 1600 pages for The Count of Monte Cristo, which is a 250-300 page story is a little excessive. I don't even need to wonder why most people read abridgments.

[Drkshadow03]

Alexandre Dumas, Lautreamont, Adelbert von Chamisso, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Stefan George, Hartmann von Aue, etc... but where does the English-reading audience then turn for suitable translations of any?

Pssh, besides Dumas I haven't even heard of any of those authors. I'm impressed. Can you read in German?

[JCamilo]

Harold Bloom list is not bad at all, as biased it is.

Of course every critic has his or her biases. Bloom's cannon is certainly one of the broadest or most inclusive. I must also admire the fact that he includes poets such as Robert Lowell whom he really does not like, but admits that considering all the others of an opposing opinion that it may just be him.

Bloom is good. Biased, so I am. So, you probally are. My point was a critic to him but also to those who pick those bias as if he flaws are going to affect the whole concept of canon (not something that belongs to him anyways).
As someone pointing to Western canon , bloom himself apologise for it, since he does not consider himself worth to list the eastern canon. I would say he fails with african and south american as well, but this in no ways goes against the impreasive knowledge he have of european-northamerican literature.

e I am certainly of the opinion that a small work can be a great work of art, I doubt I would ever go so far as to suggest that a single "perfect" poem of Keats or Shelley or perhaps a Checkov tale can equal Don Quixote or War and Peace. J.L. Borges, himself a master of smaller literary genre, tackles this subject in an essay in which he points out that even a good many mediocre poets have achieved that single "perfect" memorable sonnet, while Don Quixote and surely any other larger work is often far from perfect.

I know Borges and you know his prejudice against longer works. The problem I considering the world perfection (it is not a Borges world, I am sure. Since it is for him something related to infinite) I can easily point that Borges himself puts in danger the romance and novel with his short stories and in his list of favored reading are short stories rights and not Tolstoi whom he disliked immensily.

s that in spite of the "perfection" of the one and the "flaws" of the other, the great work like Don Quixote can never be matched by the mere perfect lyric. I tend to agree. As much as I love Blake's Tyger or Shelley's Ozymandias, or any number of other lyrics, I don't think I could honestly dare to suggest that they are equal to Don Quixote, The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, etc...

But you are not comparing long vs. short, you are comparing Quixote and Divine Comedy (Odyssey or Paradise Lost) which are the best things ever write not because of size. Keat's Ode to a Nightingale is easily comparable to any romance with 80000 pages unless you are listing 3 epic poems and a colection of short stories centered in one individual.
Remember Borges - He often said you should read only one or another chapter of longer works, where the text is better. In fact, that was his reading habit, he claimed to be unable to finish anythign written by Dostoievisky.

gest that it is unfair to compare the collected poems of Keats or Donne with the great novel or epic poem due to the fact of inconsistency in the former.

Sorry, but I didn't suggest this. I suggest they are not a unity so people won't consider "The Complete poems of xxxx" a book, and it is not, since it is just an editorial accident. I do not think romances are as consistent (and this is a particular trait of a few writers). Just your list, Quixote is not (the second part is different from the first), The odyssey certainly not and we could add that 1001 Nights, the Bible, etc all have the same trait.In my opinion, Brothers Karamazov chapter "The Great Inquisitor" is superior to the rest of the book.

I would suggest that in this they are closer the larger works or literature... almost any of which have their flaws or moments of lapse. I also find that I would be far more likely to be impressed by a writer's abilities to carry on over the long run... to show some mastery of breadth and depth and variety, be this through a collection of shorter poems or the single epic work.

It was T.S.Eliot that suggested that one is only a great poet if they write a long poem I think. Maybe, but that would make Baudelaire, Poe and Borges unable to produce immortality. (Which does not mean producing a Divine Comedy, that is something else). And those 3 stand out even when compared to Victor Hugo, Dostoievisky and E.M.Foster to list a few good romance writers.

This would be no less true of an artist in any art form. If all Chopin had composed was one of those exquisite nocturnes there is no way I could seriously place him as an equal of Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann... all of those marvelous "little" works together, however, certainly add up to a formidable artistic achievement.

Isn't in the end the two possiblities equally true and only a matter of style? I mean, Borges is imense despite not writing more than 10 pages (except his biography) because that was the solution he found for uniqueness?

I agree with you on everything you said StLukes, except for Dumas. I don't think he is deserving of canonization, and I think his not being included was deliberate, and not a mere cutting to save space as you seem to suggest.

p.S I would list Dumas as immortal, simple because He is already (cann't fight against the water flow). Why? A Certain rythim despite the excess and easy manipulation of well know traits. Invented the Best-seller market, basically, he knew how to manipulate the story

[stlukesguild]

I agree with you on everything you said StLukes, except for Dumas. I don't think he is deserving of canonization...

But is he less deserving than Stoker? I have mixed feelings on him. First of all there is his factory production method utilizing ghost writers... who included the surely canonical, Nerval. Then... as you mention... there is his excessive length. On the other hand... I have never believed that a work of art gains the status of "classic" or "canonical" solely upon the basis of the opinions of the critics. For some reason those who love to read have continued to be enthralled by his novels. Still 1600 pages for a mediocre novel is surely a bit much.

Pssh, besides Dumas I haven't even heard of any of those authors. I'm impressed. Can you read in German?

Lautreamont is French and the writer of Maldoror, a key Symbolist... almost Surrealist work. As for the German writers... I know of most of them only through the translations of a few poems in one anthology or another. I had 3 years of German years ago, but at present can only fudge my way through a few phrases and terms that I needed when I was employed as a research assistant for an art historian... art history having been "invented" by the Germans. Chamisso I am also aware of due to the use of his works by various classical composers. From what I do know I would certainly like to have access to more of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff's work.

[JCamilo]

Umberto Eco have an essay where he asks almost the samething and analyse the Count of Monte Cristo as if it was a masterwork. Anyways, I think the most reasonable thing in the world is having mixed feelings about Dumas, he is certainly a Minor Great Writer and he was not even able to hide his flaws. We can make a long list why Monte Cristo and the Muskeeter series is flawed, but the permanence of those works is certainly a proof that despite those flaws his qualities can sustain the books. He hardly create a wrong character, they are all with the right (in a very average way) traits, doing the exactly right thing. Today the best seller industry is only trying to imitate him because even crap books are not remembered by the critics.
A few works also seems to have flaws because the objective of the work, they carry inherent limitations.

As the Canon - I do not think the strongest bias of Bloom is pro-english. This kind of bias he controled very well (as there is two lists in his book, one of selected few Dante, Shakespeare, Moliere, Proust, Tolstoi, etc and a bigger list, this one is quite useful as guide since it is hard to find anything missing there), his bias are: When talking outside europe he is not as strong. That he said already about eastern literature but in the Borges and Neruda chapter plus in the moderm list (since Latim America is something very new, it is out of his scope) he shows to be also flawed. I mean, in the final list he excluded Guimarães Rosa (and this one have good translations).
Other is his anti-Foucault, Derrida, Barthes, etc school of analyse. He repeat it too much and forget how influential they are (and not as distant from his own view as he claims, I think it is anti-marxism thing, something he confess in the book), plus the Anti T.S.Eliot bias.
The other is the need to transform everything in a freudian competition, this for example, make him understimate Poe and Dostoievisky a little, but nothing too dramatic.
But if you ignore this, reading hm talking Emily Dickinson or Shakespeare is great.

[stlukesguild]

But you are not comparing long vs. short, you are comparing Quixote and Divine Comedy (Odyssey or Paradise Lost) which are the best things ever write not because of size. Keat's Ode to a Nightingale is easily comparable to any romance with 80000 pages unless you are listing 3 epic poems and a colection of short stories centered in one individual...

As much as I admire the wonderful, perfect artistic gem... and I am a great admirer of Borges, Kafka, Dickinson, Robert Herrick, Verlaine, Shelley's Ozymandias, etc... it is difficult to argue the artistic equality of the best epic work with the best literary gem. It's not merely the scale... but the complexity... the breadth of achievement... the manner in which one can be endlessly lost in one of the grand masterpieces in a way which I cannot imagine ever happening with the smaller work. Certainly I return to Blake's Tyger again and again... but it would seem absurd to suggest that it is the artistic equal of The Odyssey or War and Peace. I could not imagine the single lieder by Schubert being seen as an aesthetic achievement equal to Beethoven's 9th Symphony or one of Monet's wonderful paintings of Rouen Cathedral being put forth as aesthetically superior to the actual Rouen Cathedral. A collection of such gems, however, can surely add up to a most impressive achievement... and this would be true whether they were originally intended as a grouping (as in Schubert's Winterreise or Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal) or collected after the fact.

I suggest they (collected works) are not a unity so people won't consider "The Complete poems of xxxx" a book, and it is not, since it is just an editorial accident.

Of course... you are playing with the interpretation of just what counts as a "book". Surely the ideal... in our mind... is the book as a self-contained entity intended as such and published as such by the author. This largely eliminates a good deal of the "books" written before printing... or even modern publication standards. The Bible is continually spoken of as a "book" and yet it is actually a collection of writings that result from "editorial accident". The same might be said of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Spencer's Faerie Queene, neither of which was ever completed. And what does one make of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal or Whitman's Leaves of Grass... works which the authors continued to change and add to over the years... after initial publication? And then there is the very center of the literary canon... or at least that of the English-speaking world: William Shakespeare. Not a single play of his was published during his life time and as a result there are numerous editorial disputes based upon various texts. It would seem to me that if we can suggest that the Bible, the Canterbury Tales, Leaves of Grass and Hamlet are "books" then the "Collected Poems of Keats", "The Selected Non-Fictions of J.L. Borges", "The Complete Short Stories of Kafka", and the "Collected Essays of Montaigne" are equally valid for consideration as books. Surely the collected poems by Keats, for example, offers us far more breadth and depth and ability to offer aesthetic judgment than does the single, however fabulous, poem.

It was T.S.Eliot that suggested that one is only a great poet if they write a long poem I think. Maybe, but that would make Baudelaire, Poe and Borges unable to produce immortality.

I would never suggest that the inability to produce the single grand-scaled work is in any way a measure of one's artistic merit. The collected works of Keats, Yeats, Shelley, Baudelaire, etc... clearly dispels this notion. Had they only produced the single work of genius? If Shelley had only Ozymandias upon which to rest his reputation? Perhaps that poem might survive in anthologies... but I doubt Shelley would rank anywhere near where he ranks today. By way of comparison, Coleridge probably stands as the least of the "big 6" English Romantic poets. He has three works of unquestionable genius: Christabel, Kublai Khan, and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. These 3 poems surely stand comparison to nearly any lyrical poem by the other 5... but the fact of the matter is that they are but 3 poems of genius... compared to a great many... compared also to longer poems (The Prelude, Adonais, Don Juan). If it were not for Coleridge's connections with Wordsworth and his own achievements outside of poetry as a literary critic of some merit, one wonders whether just one of these poems would be enough to assure him of literary immortality?

I do not think the strongest bias of Bloom is pro-english. This kind of bias he controled very well (as there is two lists in his book, one of selected few Dante, Shakespeare, Moliere, Proust, Tolstoi, etc and a bigger list, this one is quite useful as guide since it is hard to find anything missing there), his bias are: When talking outside europe he is not as strong. That he said already about eastern literature but in the Borges and Neruda chapter plus in the moderm list (since Latim America is something very new, it is out of his scope) he shows to be also flawed. I mean, in the final list he excluded Guimarães Rosa (and this one have good translations).

But might not your feeling that Latin American literature has been under-rated by Bloom be no more or less factual than the assumption that French or German writers have been under-represented? Again it probably comes down to accessibility. You suggest Guimarães Rosa, but the only works I can find in English translations on Amazon are dated from the 1960s and cost between $48.00 and $250.00 US. Quite an outlay for any book. Personally, I am quite entranced by a good deal of Latin American literature and so I would add a number of other books to the list, starting with Augusto Monterroso... but I must credit Bloom with having initially led me to Machado de Assis, Octavio Paz' prose, Carpentier, and several others of real genius.

Other is his anti-Foucault, Derrida, Barthes, etc school of analyse. He repeat it too much and forget how influential they are (and not as distant from his own view as he claims, I think it is anti-marxism thing, something he confess in the book), plus the Anti T.S.Eliot bias.

That only raises his critical acumen in my eyes. The Foucault/Derrida (etc...) school of criticism, no matter how influential, has added nothing but a Franco-flavored pseudo-intellectual babel and mental Onanism to literary... and unfortunately art criticism. His response to Eliot is somewhat to be expected coming from a self-proclaimed Romantic and an agnostic Jew. Eliot's anti-Romantic criticism was dominant during the years of Bloom's schooling, and while he certainly might be credited for the "rediscovery" of such poets as Donne, Eliot far underestimated others such as Blake and Shelley. Add to this Eliot's conversion to Anglicism and the Christian theology behind a great deal of his later poems and criticism, as well as the accusations of antisemitism and one must admire Bloom's admission that he continued to argue with Eliot (and prefer Hart Crane) in spite of re-reading and memorizing almost everything Eliot wrote.

[Erichtho]

I doubt Bloom or his reading list has much need of defense by me. It has been attacked by endless others with far more reading under their belts than I... and yet few or none have offered a better alternative. I agree that there is an English-Language bias to the list. The first reason for this bias would seem to be found in the very title: "The Western Canon." This title, written in English, would almost immediately suggest that such offered the essential books of Western literature accessible to the English-speaking audience.

Perhaps you don't know, but many of his books happen to be translated, and if one sees a book called El Canon Occidental or Западный канон one doesn't assume a total anglophone bias.

He admits to having excluded most works of Eastern literature simply due to the lack of quality translations. The same must certainly be admitted of most of the "lesser" works by non-Anglo writers of the West.

I don't expect to find any Eastern literature in a Western canon, but he is neglecting a great part of European literature (and maybe even more non-European literature, as JCamilo pointed out), e.g. before the section The Chaotic Age, the 20th century, not a single author from Poland or Hungary is mentioned! Polish literature has at least 500 years of history and doesn't start with Schulz and Lem, but rather with Rej and Kochanowsky.

You admit that he excluded "lesser" works by non-Anglo writers, but doesn't that imply that you admit that there have been included lesser works by anglophone authors? And what decides whether an author will only be read on a national level or whether he will be included in an international canon? I can't say for sure, but one of the main criterias is certainly the ability to translate his works - poetry is generally very difficult to translate, and some styles that include a lot of word creations, dialects, slang etc. are also pretty much intranslatable. Hölderlin is one of my favourite authors whom I constantly recommend to other readers, but when a person who doesn't speak German asks me for recommendations on German literature I never mention him - I think it's hardly more than a waste of time to read him in translation.

To conclude: that an author is only known within the borders of his country/language area says very little if not nothing about the quality of his work - and when I suggest to cut 90% of the anglophone authors from that list it is not because I deem them "unworthy" in any way (and most of them I haven't read anyway, so I can't comment on that).

One might also add to this the fact that English-language literature is certainly one of the greatest bodies of literary achievements combining the efforts of writers not only from Great Britain, but also the United States, Canada, Australia, India, South Africa, etc...

There is Great Britain, and later also North America, but for how long has there been quality anglophone literature from India or South Africa?
English literature is very rich, you are right, but I don't think it has a greater body of literature than e.g. French or Spanish, both of which also happen to be spoken in many ex-colonies.

If one looks at the actual list one discovers that comparatively the French, Spanish, Germans, etc... are not grossly under-represented. Certainly I would admit that if such "lesser" Anglo writers as Bram Stoker, W.S. Gilbert, Coventry Patmore, Gertrude Stein, etc... can be admitted into the list of "essential" world literature then one should just as well admit Alexandre Dumas, Lautreamont, Adelbert von Chamisso, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Stefan George, Hartmann von Aue, etc... but where does the English-reading audience then turn for suitable translations of any?

In an international canon, which is every possible Western Canon, only the most essential authors should be admitted. It would be the least common denominator, which excludes all of the authors you mentioned. A canon is always education through strong selection.

The reality is that only the very finest works... or rather the works that are seen as being essential to any literature are likely to be well translated.

Keats, Byron, Shelley, Shakespeare, Milton... I would guess... are all likely to be far more accessible to the reader of Italian or German or French than would be George Herbert, Thomas Carew, Richard Lovelace, Michael Drayton, etc...

I agree with you to say that it is more likely for essential works to be well translated, but there are certain authors, e.g. James Joyce, who can be as essential as they want - there still will be no proper translation that does justice to them.

In the end, the fact still stands that Bloom has presented one of the most inclusive lists for the English-language reader wishing to explore the essential works of Western literature.

A list that is only very inclusive when it comes to anglophone literature, yes.

Anyone wishing for a more in-depth exploration of the literature of a specific language outside of English would surely need to develop a mastery of that language and one would expect would know where to turn to go into greater depth.

Of course.

[JBI]

It is an English list. You seem to be ranting that one man is not capable to read every European work in their original. He is one man, and an English professor. Not only does he need familiarity with the major English works, he must teach them. Naturally English is going to be the most important language to him on a Canon, as it is the language he is most comfortable with, and it is the language in which the most volumes are available to him (if something isn't published in the U.S., how is he even supposed to no about it. The canon itself should include works that are available, and not ones that have been out of print since their time). The language bias is to be accepted.

Even if one acknowledges that it really is limited to English and works that influenced English/influenced Bloom directly, such as Dante whose influence in English is enormous. The truth of the matter is that people reading books do not have the time to search out quality translations, and therefore the canon itself needs to reflect an availability.

Either way, the point which seems to be unacknowledged, is the fact that this isn't even the book. This is merely a nice list he made of his favorites as suggestions to the reader who wishes to break away from the so called "School of Resentment", and get back to "canonical standards". It is a tip for people needing recommendations without having to worry that their choices are bad, since, if one is to believe Bloom's thesis, the reviewers and critics in the U.S. have totally separated from the canon, and are praising so called "inferior works."

The Appendices where the list is taken from are even less important, given that they aren't even the bulk of the book. It is a mere suggestion that he threw in to perhaps get better sales, or to be useful to readers. The idea that it be cut up so terribly, because of his limitation as a reader, is somewhat harsh, considering no one living could write a better one for an English audience.

The fact with that list is, it is meant to be books that are all excellent, not books that will definitely last the centuries. He hopes they last the centuries, but I am sure even Bloom knows that half his list is going to be cut from the system.

[stlukesguild]

JBI... Enjoy your trip to Italy... and know I am envying you 'til the day you return.

[JBI]

I get back the day before my birthday - how depressing. I'll talk to you when I get back, thanks for the tips on those art books by the way - they helped a lot.

[stlukesguild]

Hölderlin is one of my favourite authors whom I constantly recommend to other readers, but when a person who doesn't speak German asks me for recommendations on German literature I never mention him - I think it's hardly more than a waste of time to read him in translation.

That is unfortunate. Hölderlin has been one of the German poets best served by tranlation... at least into English. Richard Sieburth, Christopher Middleton, and Michael Hamburger, all excellent translators, have given translations of a solid portion of Hölderlin's oeuvre. Hamburger has especially devoted much of his career to the translation of the majority of Hölderlin's work. In many ways he translates better than the more lyrical poems of Goethe... or perhaps he has merely been better serviced by his translators. Having read him only in translation I have had no qualms about including him among the great Romantic poets (although may surely be more of a classicist... and in many ways looks forward to Modernism... but that's just arguing over terminology).

...that an author is only known within the borders of his country/language area says very little if not nothing about the quality of his work -

Perhaps. It all comes down to reputation, accessibility and influence within the second language. Goethe, Hölderlin, Dante, Virgil, Montaigne, Homer, etc... all have such a reputation and influence upon English-speaking writers and their audience so as to have motivated enough writers of real ability so that solid translations have been made. Others less so. I'd be very wary of suggesting that every nation or language has a body of untold masterpieces and that unless a reader is well versed in each and every tongue they cannot begin to comment upon the notion of world literature. That is no less absurd than to suggest that one cannot speak well on the literature of one's own native tongue unless one has read each and every book written therein.
Whether the English language has provided a greater or richer body of literature than French or Spanish (or Chinese or Arabic for that matter) is a discussion we have already had. The fact of the matter is that some cultures have simply made greater contributions to one form of the arts of another. This may have a great deal to do with wealth and to influx of outside influences through trade and other means... but it is reality. My own personal field of the visual arts is not limited by translation. As such I can freely compare the achievements of British, French, Italian, American, Chinese, Persian, African, etc... Every culture has something to offer... but some cultures have achieved more than others. Again... this is not an form of chauvinism on my part. I would be the first to admit that with the possible exception of film the American contributions to the visual arts are minor in comparison to those of France, China, Persia, Italy. Again the reasons the arts thrive more in one culture than another are multi-fold, and primary among these one would assume that a culture that still struggles to meet the necessities of everyday living is less likely to have the free time and the resources to expend upon art.

[Drkshadow03]

[COLOR="DarkRed"]

That only raises his critical acumen in my eyes. The Foucault/Derrida (etc...) school of criticism, no matter how influential, has added nothing but a Franco-flavored pseudo-intellectual babel and mental Onanism to literary... and unfortunately art criticism.

Hahahahaha! This made my day! Foucault/Derrida sniping! There are so many flaws in Foucault's work (I'm more familiar with his work than Derrida's) it isn't even funny, yet all my fellow grad students fall for this crap as if they were hearing the divine word of G-d Himself.

[Kafka's Crow]

Hahahahaha! This made my day! Foucault/Derrida sniping! There are so many flaws in Foucault's work (I'm more familiar with his work than Derrida's) it isn't even funny, yet all my fellow grad students fall for this crap as if they were hearing the divine word of G-d Himself.

How very American!

(I always suspected the presence of a huge number of Bloom-worshipers on this forum. He helped me a lot in my college days- you look for simple and simplistic stuff to start with- but then I grew out of it.)

[JBI]

How very... French? Foucault leads to nothing. The point is Foucault acts as a fusion between Poli-science and literature. It is poli-science and pesudo-philosophy crossed into literature, where quite frankly, it does not belong. Foucault has his moments, but he really has no place in understanding or appreciating literature.

Derrida on the other hand is a different matter. His methodology is revolutionary in its context, but for the most part is taken as standard now. In the early 70s his stuff broke new ground, but now, lets be honest, he has been replaced with a newer form of criticism. Deconstruction has become part of everything to such a degree that it has actually been replaced by that which it started off to overthrow. The post-Derrida scholars now, instead of reading to understand the assumptions and underlying assumed elements, rather add their own to the assumed, and see if they fit. The method doesn't cut the work anymore as context, but adds its own context to the work, and then cuts at it from what doesn't match up.

Neither scholar really offers much, in terms of enjoyment in literature, or really even enjoyment in life. They both have different points, and ways to view texts. But deconstruction itself has become one of the underlying assumptions it sought to understand.

Either way, all these sorts of methods fail, for the simple fact that all books are different (some to higher degrees than others) and therefore it is better to read without a set method, rather than with one, as with one you always will derive a similar answer, which never will be worthwhile.

I guess that is why after The Anxiety of Influence Bloom shifted out of theory to what he writes now, catalogs. He realized that theoretical reading only goes so far, until it is usurped by a better theory. It is the works themselves that really matter, as the theoretical processes won't last forever.

Even then though, as the Paul de Man - Nazi incident showed, the so called theorists are always going to be subjected their own histories and politics. The theory is but a theory, since it cannot exist in practice to a perfect point. It is better to just read, and see what you discover from the text itself, than to add something to the text, and see what sticks to it.