Harold Bloom and the American Canon: A Conversation with David Mikics

What makes a book classic? How are great American writers shaped by those who came before? Harold Bloom explored these questions with passion and insight for fifty years. Literary scholar David Mikics, editor of the Library of America collection "Harold Bloom: The American Canon: Literary Genius from Emerson to Pynchon," joins LOA's John Kulka for an intimate conversation about how he wove several decades of Bloom’s writing-much of it hard to find and long unavailable-into a compelling portrait of American literary genius. LOA President and Publisher Max Rudin introduces the Zoom conversation. (1 hr., 2 min.)
Presented in partnership with Tablet, The Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW), and The University of Houston.
Complete details about the book:
www.loa.org/books/619-the-ame...
Purchase the Library of America title "The American Canon: Literary Genius from Emerson to Pynchon," by Harold Bloom:
loa.org/books/619-the-america...
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Donate to support LOA LIVE programs: loa.org/loalive.

[@allandwyer5193]

Through youtube videos, Harold Bloom taught me how to think about literature and especially poetry. Really enjoyed this video.

[@historify.54]

I bought American Canon just after having read David Denby’s Great Books. They were both wonderful and powerful reads. As a retired public school teacher I am dismayed that so many of these authors are currently ignored or dismissed. Thank you for this very insightful video and seeing David Mikics in person.

[@paltieri11]

Excellent presentations!...his work should be required reading in all schools.

[@martinezgerard]

Thank you for posting this insightful discussion.

[@timholbrook7671]

I do indeed think that a full scale biography of the fascinating Harold Bloom is indeed, coming in the future. In, fact, someone maybe working on it at this time.

[@hakmagui9842]

Hard guy to write a biography about, since so much of his life (in his eyes) was spent in his mind. Though the same could be said of his master Emerson, who does not lack biographies.

[@martinezgerard]

Do you foresee a biography of Harold Bloom to be written anytime soon?

[@Vikingvideos50]

I would buy that book so fast!

[@Caligula138]

Bloom would dislike my small library of books... with luminaries the likes of Bukowski, John Fante and Raymond Carver

[@SantosSantos-bf5sz]

A Cool Million, lol.

[@aclark903]

As a Brit, I see Emerson as a malign influence on American letters.

[@aclark903]

@@kenscarborough3225 Whitman is certainly overrated, but free verse is still poetry, admittedly. But if you compare Whitman's loose, baggy verbal diatribes with the craft & skill of say, #Swinburne or #Tennyson, you will see what I mean. As for Emerson, yes, absolutely, for me as an #Anglican, transcendentalism is a retrograde step. He is diluting American spirituality, not strengthening it. Which is a bad thing. Much prefer Thoreau. Or the #Puritan American writers which contemporary culture mocks & sneers at, but who are actually far wiser than much modern thought.

[@aclark903]

@@kenscarborough3225 We have overrated writers in the UK too. Woolf springs to mind. I'm not against books. I'm against liars.

[@kreek22]

Secularization was inevitable. For America's first secular genius to be Emerson was a stroke of good fortune, on the whole.

[@aclark903]

@@kreek22 Genius? Really? Half baked watered down Hinduism is genius?

[@kreek22]

@@aclark903 Carlyle and Nietzsche found far more in Emerson than you. But, when an ape gazes into a book, he can't expect an apostle to gaze out.