Arts: Harold Bloom's Influence | The New York Times

[@t0dd000]

Such memory is a superpower. One I wish I possessed. I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum, unfortunately. Such memory + brilliance has gifted him a perspective that few can touch. But saying he is right about everything, but his perspective has a powerful uniqueness, wisdom, and needs to be heard.

[@Monsterassassin3]

Its so minor but I love how he recognizes the interviewer

[@blackphillip564]

Rest in Peace, O thou great *Exegete!*

[@dragonsmith9012]

He's reading from the infinite canon of the Akashic Library.

[@ispislc]

He is so amazing

[@DanValRodric]

3) He thinks it is only valid if it is considering the author as author first, not as propagandist or social commentator or historical source. He very rightly says that to call the canon "a catalog of misrepresentation" is far too close to calling anything that "corrects" this gap "canonical" for the purpose of contemporary cultural criticism. He holds up Pablo Neruda as one of our greatest poets: not for his politics, but for his aesthetic power. That is the main purpose of canons and of Bloom.

[@KajiCarson]

One can't help but admire Bloom's stand against slobbering multiculturalism and PC bullying in the humanities through recent decades. It was an unwinnable battle given our cultural decline, yet he sure got his voice heard. A tremendous thinker.

[@mark-jensbarton8363]

@Qimodis Good argument, chief.

[@martinhanley9524]

Frankfurt school got into the Academy . Cultural Marxism . Unfortunate .

[@stephenjablonsky1941]

I admire Bloom's admiration for greatness. I feel the same way about music. When you have listened to the works of masters such as Bach, Mozart, or Chopin you have little room for lesser lights.

[@MeanGreene87]

What about Hayden?

[@stephenjablonsky1941]

@@MeanGreene87 Haydn was also a giant. The list of giants is not large.

[@MeanGreene87]

@@stephenjablonsky1941 I love Hayden his music speaks to me. For some reason I feel smarter after I listen to him and the other gentlemen you mentioned.

[@stephenjablonsky1941]

@@MeanGreene87 As a former trumpet player I have to thank Haydn for writing the best concerto ever.

[@jmir1992]

He is still so sharp.

[@hogsbelly63]

Astonishing mind

[@shabirmagami146]

Bloom ❤❤❤

[@harrison_williams]

5:00 greatest 20 century writers

[@gkissel1]

Today would have been his 91st birthday. Bloomsday!

[@yuanhangw]

I remeber him reading the Song of Wandering Aengus, and I will remeber him that way.

[@daveysaturn7232]

My personal idea of heaven (i shall seek when it's time for me to go) is Harold Bloom and Cormac McCarthy in some bar down in Texas, just drinking and talking and never sleeping, and dancing in light and in shadow.

[@MikeCaz]

Good luck

[@DanValRodric]

@ratcoat: you seem like a gracious critic, so I will try to respond as graciously: 1) Bloom does not say anything against who or what an author is because all that matters is their aesthetic achievement. He is only "insufferable" if you forget that and think he is completely excluding non-traditional authors. He thinks John Ashbery is the greatest American poet alive, for instance, and his writing is as post-modern as you get! He also thinks Toni Morrison has genuine talent but goes overboard...

[@trevorgreen6016]

I know this is a strange question, but in this interview with Boom, we see a creatively carved door in the background. Who is the artist of these AWESOME doors? Lol. Thanks.

[@ree9487]

You're right. That door is a masterpiece

[@TumbleweedCx]

@AAwildeone the interviewer is referring to The Anatomy of Influence, which is Bloom's latest book, not Anxiety.

[@DanValRodric]

@MissStarhopper: Naomi Wolf is the only person who complained about sexual harassment. Her story isn't even sensible. She went to him expecting a boost for herself and put herself in a private situation with him and claims he touched her thigh. It is almost comical if not absurd to suggest he has a history of sexual harassment.

[@ngtvdlctcs4961]

@GTS why do you hate Mr Bloom?

[@charlesedwardandrewlincoln8181]

Where can we see the full interview?

[@M_Faraday]

Perhaps my question wasn't clear: the contrast class was not "Rather than not calling him Mr. Bloom at all", but "As opposed to calling him Dr. Bloom" (since Harold Bloom has his PhD).

[@Philoeidos]

Some may not know back in 2000 on BookTV Bloom called out the New York Times as contributing to the problem of literary degeneracy. The wincing is also evident when Bloom denounced the 'modernists' aka grief studies, which the NYT defends.

[@DavidWilson-yj3si]

You are along for the ride.

[@christophermorgan3261]

Hi Stepa 1994. Thanks for the comment. I'm always pleasantly surprised when someone has the kind of humanities based education that would lead to understanding who Harold Bloom was. But he had a renown quite exceptional for our popular, non literary times. His books were widely distributed, and not just to campus bookshops. That was in itself remarkable. Oddly enough when an academic has a large popular audience there's an inclination for other academics out of spite or jealously to ignore his work. That to an extent happened. That English department at Yale with Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman and others has certainly surpassed in prestige the New Critics, whom were their great rivals. Wouldn't you agree?

[@Lance0714]

Love wins

[@AAwildeone]

The space that Dr Bloom occupies is THIS - he is NOT a poet or close to the writer he thinks he is (not even with the books about religion), but TRIED over the years to make himself into what he never became, as we all do.....yet in the end, I truly treasure what he's left behind!

[@sergiolobato1798]

Soren Aleksander When at first reading your comment, I bristled a bit and after digesting it a little more I found it to be quite profound, kind and generous...I do so love reading his commentaries.

[@seBcopTer]

Soren Aleksander I enjoyed reading your commentary here, and agree deeply with your estimation of Bloom as a writer, but I wouldn't wish to suggest the man had any such ambitions - to become a writer of esteem, an Emerson or a Johnson? Bloom admired the writers he wrote about and had an interest in sharing them with others, not in competing with them. He has a certain humility about himself, I think.

[@Wrightley]

You're presumptuous to a point of ignorance.

[@StoriesHeard]

Ah, I misunderstood. That being said I still believe he's doing it out respect and (possibly) due to the fact that they're meeting to discuss Bloom's personal influence rather than anything academic or literary (save for the discussion on Whitman). I could very well be wrong, do interviewers generally refer to him "Dr. Bloom"?

[@brian_nirvana]

4:24

[@AAwildeone]

There is certainly no loss, so to speak. But if every poem is "simmering simmering simmering", Harold Bloom is trying to figure out from where every great Word comes....

[@DanValRodric]

2) What do you mean by "adjusted mode" of critical engagement? That the main consideration should be how an author conceives of a particular theme such as gender conflict or race relations? What professor Bloom protests is the "School of Resentment" that tries to focus on these as "values" which must be given more weight than aesthetic achievement. It's not that they can't write dissenting papers or fictions or even poetry: it's that they shouldn't be held to be as good as the canonical works...

[@gozepplin]

4:04 Harold Bloom hates identity politics too

[@jdbarraz]

gozepplin he absolutely does, but for different (and frankly, better) reasons than many of us hate it today.

[@lizardpeoplepoetry]

he hates it within the context of literary criticism. there's an important distinction between that and just hating it outright.

[@ardakolimsky7107]

That's your take away from this?

[@jboyd9062]

Harold Bloom was a readers' critic.

[@aarongluzman]

Freedom... Some things you can’t share... Some things are confined in you... To stay forever... Some things get washed away... What is left…? Serenity… That gives roots, wings.... ©...Aronne

[@AAwildeone]

Just to make a point - It is an incredible feat for a CRITIC to sympathize with an artist. As any incarnation of "artist" you struggle with what has gone before, and it becomes a nonsensical project: you CANNOT ever break from what has influenced you. This is a Freudian trope to the Nth degree. It also has its roots in Linguistics and 20th Century post-materialism, IE, once you have been called there is no point OUTSIDE of the point from whence you have been called. All theory is a bunch of concentric circles, all aimed, apparently, at keeping themselves apart, and just meeting long enough to write dissertations, convene symposiums, and ensure all the Humanities collapse in upon themselves like a star that has run out of gas.

[@nancymohass4891]

If we do not understand a poetry , how could we call it powerful?

[@alpacario336]

I've read Waiting for Godot and didn't understand what it meant at all. But the words and characters still made me feel in ways I couldn't understand... it gave me one of the best experiences I've had reading a book.

[@bart-v]

4:56 oh yes he was a modernist; he was not a postmodernist!

[@M_Faraday]

Why does he say "Mr." Bloom?

[@lorenlugosch3203]

Yeah, especially weird given that he was his grad student; shouldn't he know better?

[@harmonium8198]

New York Times style.

[@benjaminoverby3151]

I can tell you as a journalism student that AP Style says you only give someone the title Dr. in print if they are a medical doctor. I assume NYT was/is keeping this style in video productions.

[@M_Faraday]

@@benjaminoverby3151 interesting

[@fighting5706]

Which poem is he reading out?

[@fighting5706]

In the last part of the video?

[@andybelt603]

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d by Walt Whitman

[@paulbunch8388]

He's in Heaven with Gore Vidal and Paul Bowles now.

[@ВалентинФролов-ю8й]

and George Steiner

[@AAwildeone]

He's a great man and more able to talk tangents about our literature than anyone who's written and taught in 100 years! Of course he expects to be disagreed with, and engaged, on the terms of a duel of equals though. I disembark from his opinion of Plath as a "minor" American poet; I never gave up my assertion of her as a MAJOR American poet. It also pains me that a conversation can NEVER be had about the identity of Shakespeare, as there are so many connections between He and the secular saint, that he MUST see their biographies as somewhat interlinked, even though he knows Shakespeare had no access to the NYC Public Library System of the 40s&50s. But our Great Man MUST believe that some illiterate peasant conman in the 16th century made it against the odds and wrote the greatest stories ever told. In THAT sense, he's NOT so old-fashioned....

[@detouredbriefly9426]

moving

[@littlebird8346]

aronne you are fucking omnipresent

[@BenNCM]

Bloom and Steve Buscemi must be related.

[@mehndiart7105]

+Ben NCM Italians ... are not Jews!

[@Bobotv1000]

@@mehndiart7105 alot of Italians actually married Jewish girls back in the day

[@Lance0714]

I too simplify complex ideas

[@english792]

This is dated 2011. I wonder why.

[@encarsiaformosa]

I never understood this boundless reverence for Whitman. Admirers always show me his poetry and say, "isn't it great!", but exactly *what* is so great about it, they never seem to divulge. Sure, it was new, but so was Duchamp's ridiculous urinal.

[@PaginasLetea]

Following Bloom's interpretation Walt Whitman it's actually a really hermetic poet and the simplicity of his poems it's just an appearance, his greater poems show that Whitman distinguish between the soul, the 'myself' and the 'I' and it's because this original way of seeing himself (and hence the world) people praises him so much, plus he influenced a lot of great 20th century writers (Borges, Neruda, Pessoa, Stevens, Lorca, etc.) and at the time his simple style was very different from the excessive rethoric poetry that was being written. The Duchamp's ridiculous urinal it's just a ridiculous urinal.

[@joelfry4982]

Read "Whoever You are Holding Me Now in Hand." That's his best somewhat-short poem.

[@jamesroach8841]

All great poetry measures its readers, not vice-versa, in exactly the same way that music measures the listener's taste. Whitman is never new in the sense of "newfangled", but only in his overall tone's freshness: His poetry conveys the feeling of a very young heart through a mind much older, and more advanced in skepticism. That is to say that his irony is not to be underestimated. As for Duchamp's bitter "I fart in your general direction" kind of comedy, that is another matter. Either you like that kind of humor or you don't. Sometimes I'm in the mood for it, sometimes not. But at least I always get the joke, whatever my mood happens to be at the time. As it happens, I do not "revere" Whitman as a person or as an artist. I do "admire" him as an artist, which is something quite different from reverence. And as a person I find him "lovable", a term which is not at all reverential. But he is awesomely forgiving of his own and others' frailties, and as such a healing influence, and a true hero. I suppose it depends on what it is in your nature to venerate and emulate--kindness or cruelty. Sorry for you detractors out there, I'll continue to prefer the kindly, and shy, Whitman--for reasons sound as those that made Yorick Hamlet's lifetime favorite.

[@joelfry4982]

James Roach No, poetry does much more than "measure" the reader. It deepens him, broadens him, enriches him. Measuring would be the least it could do.

[@detouredbriefly9426]

well put

[@SuperHoldenC]

BLOOM BRONTOSAURUS

[@christophermorgan3261]

Despairs over emphasis on sexual identity, gender politics in the academy etc. . yet his greatest exemplars are Joyce, Beckett, Kafka and Proust, such were the contradictions of H. Bloom.

[@STEPA1994]

I don’t see a contradiction there, for yes, these are authors who have had some of these characteristics, and yet their value is in achieving brilliance in writing. Not in being defined by a struggle bestowed upon them by an inherent quality.

[@WEIRDED_BEARDO]

Harold Bloom has spoke poorly of The New York Times many times lol

[@Life_Through_Galleries]

Liquid smooth remember my name

[@aarondavis4765]

misha hardwick

[@meddmawamm]

Although T.S. Eliot had some miserable theories about literature, I don't think there can be any doubt that much of Bloom's hatred of him stems from the likelihood of Eliot's anit-semitism. While Bloom recognizes the talent of many racists, he seems unlikely to accept a modern one. I like Bloom as an ambassador for great works of art, but he seems a mediocre writer. I can recall attempting to read "Poems of Our Climate", but its highmindedness was a great insult to Wallace Stevens.

[@StoriesHeard]

Out of respect?

[@In-N-Out333]

Those who can't write, teach.

[@joedelilo5608]

In-N-Out Harold Bloom is an extraordinary writer. You are a mournerless suicide

[@nmaurok]

@GTS well, T. S. Eliot did both and very well indeed

[@Pantano63]

He did write, though.

[@ZombieLincoln666]

I mean he taught at Yale..

[@paddymourinho]

well obviously I disagree. but yo seem to have given that a lot of thought lol.

[@joeyboikly]

I love all the pompous words on these comments. They are truly befitting this overrated, out of touch elitist. I agree with him that people should read more let's say challenging stuff, but that's about it.

[@nishanthk5306]

Aw hater, go away

[@josephbuccati2369]

“Befitting this overrated, out of touch elitist” What kind of pedantic, stilted comment is that?

[@joeyboikly]

@@josephbuccati2369 exactly

[@paddymourinho]

it is completely irrelevant to his work.

[@monaedoyle3631]

The New York Times were idiots to have Harold Bloom as a critic write anything for their paper. Any man who would call the Harry Potter books“slop” should not have any place in the New York Times. He said millions and millions of readers of the books stupid. How he could have been a teacher in a classroom is wrong.

[@serban8298]

Well, he was great as a literary critic as far as I can say!But I agree with what you say, when it came to modern literature, he was a snob!But times are changing!I'm a scholar in philology and my main field is literature and I love the books of Harry Potter's kind!

[@josephbuccati2369]

What kind of ignorant comment is this?

[@serban8298]

@@josephbuccati2369 What kind of snobbery is this?

[@jamestiburon443]

SEARCHING COUNTS, KARMICALLY. NO DOUBT