Harold Bloom on why Blood Meridian's the best novel ever

One of America's greatest literary critics "Harold Bloom" loved Blood Meridian. In today's video, we are going to hear from Harold Bloom and then discuss some quotes from him on Blood Meridian.
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[@BaronV-gp1eb]

Dostoevsky describes the Russian soul, Kazatzakis describes the Greek soul, McCarthy describes the American soul

[@valuedCustomer2929]

Lol nah

[@drytung9526]

Yeh not quite

[@adriancaldwell]

I would argue Shultz describes the American Soul

[@ernestmendez5487]

And yet you've learned nothing from Dostoevsky somehow. Because you speak as though human beings are so different from one another.

[@samferguson9171]

McCarthy, God love him, wrote anti-psychological gothic cartoons. There is soul there, but it’s decidedly white, male, and blind (willfully or otherwise) to the ecstasy and torment of human thought and feeling. All in his novels is action, action, action. There are exceptions, yes, but to say he describes the American soul is to trap that poor soul in the cage of an always-moving body: fighting, fucking, drinking, cracking wise. He was and is GREAT, but the “soul” in his novels is oddly incomplete.

[@Garcia061]

I’ve read Blood Meridian about 5 times. It gets better with every read. Strangely the most powerful things for me are the dialogue and the landscape. The descriptive narrative of violence is secondary to the idea of what The Judge represents, and what he tells the reader (directly in his monologues) about the world and the human place in it. Gun violence is a minor inference. And one of many.

[@jasonuerkvitz3756]

Bloom, as brilliant as he was--sensitive, eloquent, graced with a sliver of genius--falls short of fully grasping what Judge Holden represented, and what the work of _Blood Meridian_ is describing. McCarthy's work isn't a criticism of gun violence in America, it's bigger than that, spanning further back in time. Judge Holden is indeed the avatar of war, but he is something more, he's the horrific spawn of new civilization almost encapsulating it in its inchoate state. He's described as having baby-like features, bald, strange round face, small hands and feet, but he's big, pale, and his body is hairless. He is the blood meridian, a repulsive baby, head like the skull of the freshly scalped, gore-ridden as it sounds from the mother's womb--that dark, unknown place between worlds.

[@LangleyArend]

I don't think that Bloom was claiming McCarthy's work as a criticism of gun violence in America. He was referring to a certain spirit of violence which animates those who commit gun violence, among other things.

[@jasonuerkvitz3756]

@@LangleyArend "...A terrible parable in which I think has a _deep_ implicit warning for current American society. I mean our _gun_ crazy country where Charlton Heston appears endlessly on television and amazes me. Uh, he angrily says, President Clinton why do you talk of 22 children shot here or there and you don't talk about the tens perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars the NRA is spending to educate young people how to properly handle guns. I cannot believe the madness..." Yet, in my humble opinion, McCarthy isn't writing _Blood Meridian_ as a warning at all. He's not writing it as a cry for swords to ploughshares. There is no utopian vision in the end, a summation of his hopes and dreams for how he wishes America, or human civilization, should progress. He's making a cold and _explicit_ observation, not a warning, that humanity is deeply tied, defined by, and driven by war. Humanity _is_ what it is due to our penchant for war. It's woefully myopic to limit the book to how things are in America when it comes to _gun_ violence, when it disregards all other forms of violence that takes place. It's incredibly shortsighted to limit the book to America specifically, to America in the 20th-21st centuries. The book is choosing a sliver of time and saying that there is an extreme component of humanity that will do the absolute worse to itself in order to pioneer the spread of civilization. Bloom is a deeply sensitive person who fixates on what wounds his heart. That's a good thing, because he represents what might tie people to a greater goodness--though wanton compassion without discernment isn't a virtue--but it is extraordinarily naive to think that violence will go away, that guns will go away, and people will live harmoniously. McCarthy isn't lamenting America's fixation on guns. He's claiming humanity's progeneration is part and parcel to acts of unspeakable violence. If civilization, according to _Blood Meridian_ , is a cold-died coin, then you have to consider it has two sides. Both are hideous as they wouldn't exist if not for the bloodshed and genocide that led to their creation, but one is graven as it worships the "hero" that allowed for civilization's creation, or, perhaps, its sustenance, and through it all, this coin, comes the notions of civilization--commerce, expansion, empire. Without it, we don't exist. What do you think?

[@jasonuerkvitz3756]

@@LangleyArend This comment was deleted so I will re-post it as I am curious about your reply: "...A terrible parable in which I think has a deep implicit warning for current American society. I mean our gun crazy country where Charlton Heston appears endlessly on television and amazes me. Uh, he angrily says, President Clinton why do you talk of 22 children shot here or there and you don't talk about the tens perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars the NRA is spending to educate young people how to properly handle guns. I cannot believe the madness..." Yet, in my humble opinion, McCarthy isn't writing Blood Meridian as a warning at all. He's not writing it as a cry for swords to ploughshares. There is no utopian vision in the end, a summation of his hopes and dreams for how he wishes America, or human civilization, should progress. He's making a cold and explicit observation, not a warning, that humanity is deeply tied, defined by, and driven by war. Humanity is what it is due to our penchant for war. It's woefully myopic to limit the book to how things are in America when it comes to gun violence, when it disregards all other forms of violence that takes place. It's incredibly shortsighted to limit the book to America specifically, to America in the 20th-21st centuries. The book is choosing a sliver of time and saying that there is an extreme component of humanity that will do the absolute worse to itself in order to pioneer the spread of civilization. Bloom is a deeply sensitive person who fixates on what wounds his heart. That's a good thing, because he represents what might tie people to a greater goodness--though wanton compassion without discernment isn't a virtue--but it is extraordinarily naive to think that violence will go away, that guns will go away, and people will live harmoniously. McCarthy isn't lamenting America's fixation on guns. He's claiming humanity's progeneration is part and parcel to acts of unspeakable violence. If civilization, according to Blood Meridian , is a cold-died coin, then you have to consider it has two sides. Both are hideous as they wouldn't exist if not for the bloodshed and genocide that led to their creation, but one is graven as it worships the "hero" that allowed for civilization's creation, or, perhaps, its sustenance, and through it all, this coin, comes the notions of civilization--commerce, expansion, empire. Without it, we don't exist. What do you think?

[@johnsondee4100]

It’s kind of hard to downplay the shadow that his politics cast over his discussion of this topic. All of the examples that Bloom mentions are American left wing bugaboos that were making the rounds in the political news at that time. I don’t think it’s a stretch to call this a basic-bitch interpretation of the work. You could be charitable to him and say that this is simply him playing to the audience, though. Because lord knows he couldn’t be so narrow in his own internal monologue. But you could accuse the general public of that.

[@jasonuerkvitz3756]

@@johnsondee4100 Absolutely. I re-posted a reply I made to Langley Arend that mysteriously got deleted, even though I have it "hearted" by Write Conscious in my archives. KZbin straight memory-holing my replies everywhere on this platform, but it's back after some trouble. I quoted Bloom's limited take on things directly from the interview.

[@idicula1979]

The beauty of the wide open west, with the reality of the blood and brutality that set those boundaries. It is the super ego of what an unchecked people do, and it is in the reader that is left to its uneasy answer.

[@WriteConscious]

Yes!

[@TrueBlueAndrew]

I just finished Blood Meridian last week, im happy I found this Channel.

[@enriccoc7794]

Those interview clips from the 80's and 90's are enjoyable, stay on topic but also the people interviewed have time and space to express themselves completely. It's so different from modern talk TV which always degrade to people shouting at one another and "we only have one minute left" and other the other hand the modern long form podcasts where they are up to 3 hours but go on tangents...it's become so normalized for people to talk over top of one another and people who are slower thinkers can never finish a thought. I find that really grating about modern interviews.

[@mikeoglen6848]

Stop watching TV and watch more on t'internet?

[@WriteConscious]

Agreed. There are some great author interviews from the 80's and 90's with charismatic hosts who were also smart.

[@McDLT999999999999999]

Podcasts replaced these shows

[@workingtheories]

Oh baby-I’ve been waiting for this one!

[@WriteConscious]

Yeeee

[@mazolab]

As I Lay Dying is more difficult to read than Blood Meridian. I give McCarthy credit for being comprehensible after one pass and just as good.

[@WriteConscious]

Yes!

[@marknewton6984]

Both great!😮

[@nickpeitchev7763]

"Just as good" is a lie

[@mazolab]

@@nickpeitchev7763 No, it's an opinion. Other people seem to share it. If I said Blood Meridian is a book about a sadistic acupuncturist, that would be a lie. If I said it's a funny one, that would again be an opinion.

[@nickpeitchev7763]

@mazolab blood meridian is a great novel but as I lay dying is one of the best things ever written so there's no comparison really

[@mattlewis5095]

Bloom didn't call it the best novel ever of course, but he did (in the late 90's I think) call it the best novel by a living American (which he included Pynchon), McCarthy's personal masterpiece, and he actually taught it in one of his courses. He even compared it to Moby Dick in quality. I'll read it one day!

[@gkft]

Bloom obviously doesn't get it, and it seems he's simply projecting his personal and political views about American history and American gun culture onto the book, which is insane considering he claimed to have read it more than 30 times and teaches classes on it (explains a lot of modern university education). Blood Meridian has more to say about man's place in the world and the nature of man as well as other philosophical and metaphysical questions about his role in it. To read it and be stuck on how America's history is soaked in blood is a perfect example of why this book could never be made a film, or at least never be made a good one.

[@WriteConscious]

Him reflecting on our history soaked in blood is fine. But, connecting that mania to contemporary citizens who respect the 2nd amendment is wild and misguided.

[@Scottishrugbyguy]

dude...thank you, i feel that way too.

[@stephencarter7266]

Bloom has some really misguided takes on Shakespeare as well. This guy wasn't as brilliant as he was made out to be. He was just a well read dude with a talent for marketing his opinions.

[@MegaFount]

I was wondering if you could do an analysis of No Country for Old Men compared to the film adaptation. Differences, improvements and changes.

[@gametheorymedia]

What a great interview here, with Bloom ⭐

[@WriteConscious]

yes!

[@johnpress]

Wow! Bloom's inability to grasp both sides of simple gun controversies greatly sullies the respect I have for him.

[@Ubicquitous]

Write Conscious, I appreciate where you're coming from. I have little faith in these comments being heard, but will throw in my two cents. I agree Bloom comes from a different generation with a different regard to violence, born in 75 I grew up watching people die, from Rambo to the Matrix, thus I read it twice through enchanted by the language. I appreciate him raising up authors. The Judge...I look forward to seeing your vids on the philosophical aspects of his character. I've read Chamberlain's text. What McCarthy did was to take this figure and embody Nietzsche's will to power or Superman. In my humble opinion. To create a character so human and so natural it terrifies us with such realism. I have not read the books of philosophy you mention in this vid. Perhaps i should to garner a more complete opinion. but here it is such as it is. I'd like to debate you more. Perhaps some day we'll talk. I'll search up your other vids for now to be more prepared should that day come. cheers.

[@WriteConscious]

cheers

[@tnreprasentog7769]

Hell man i didnt read BM until i was 26 and it deeply affected me lol if I read it and UNDERSTOOD IT in highschool I'd of been traumatized haha (btw props to you man for being able to comprehend and understand BM in HIGHSCHOOL) LOL i guess I'm dumb because i didn't have the emotional and literal intelligence to pick up such a book, bravo

[@WriteConscious]

Lol, not even man. I barely understood what was going on and had to work through it slowly. Wasn't until l was 19 or so that it really clicked. I'm unfortunately anything but a reading savant 😂 I probably was so motivated to read because people thought I was dumb because I failed so many classes (because I hated school.)

[@H.RLarson]

incredibly strong presentation, compelled to subscribe, kudos

[@kevgh3869]

What year please?

[@MelancoliaI]

Every Bloom interview he looks like somebody just got him out of bed

[@dylanmcdermott1110]

I have mixed feelings about Bloom, but I ultimately have a lot of respect for him. I didn't enjoy The Western Canon or Genius very much. Should I try to read his academic work (e.g. The Anxiety of Influence)?

[@clemfarley7257]

Great video. Subscribed. And looking into what seem to be great offerings. Thx.

[@amcsibozgor6791]

I've read All the Pretty Horses and The Road and frankly I think they're overrated. Lowering my expectaions for Blood Meridian and hope it pays off.

[@tectorgorch8698]

Hey amigo, love seeing Julian Jaynes on your shelf. And I think Bloom is 100% correct on the Border Trilogy; I made it thru 1 and 2, but bailed halfway through the third one.

[@SuperStrik9]

Harold is greatly missed. If one could teach passion for literature it was he.

[@ca-fletcher]

Keep the drive alive for Cormac!!

[@WriteConscious]

Not stopping!

[@eglspl425]

That's a misleading title. Bloom ranked BM as the best in the second half of the 20th century but he rated As I Lay Dying explicitly and, implicitly, other Faulkner novels as superior aesthetic achievements.

[@rmzo2893]

Blood Meridian is the children’s version of Book of the new sun.

[@sicklygreyfoot]

Patrick Kurp of the LA Review of Books (& his lit blog) absolutely despises McCarthy. Not surprisingly, he isn't a Bloom fan, either.

[@WriteConscious]

lol

[@sicklygreyfoot]

@@ryanand154 "McCarthy gives every indication of hating his fellow humans, which is one of the reasons his novels are so tedious. As in much of Faulkner, McCarthy’s work has a pulpy, cartoonish core. We wait for the next outrage to occur, invariably in overheated prose." --Patrick Kurp

[@kynismos]

"The best novel ever" is obviously a very illiterate thing to say.

[@hugoblack4133]

Ridden...? (:15) Who are these people who are *riding* novels...?

[@StruggleoftheOutsider]

Agree we need better advocates tho.

[@WriteConscious]

Trying to be that!

[@joe.h-7322]

Wish he wouldn’t stop pushing the anti gun stuff and tying it to cormacs work, It’s a fair argument but It doesn’t really have any place in relation to his books in my opinion.

[@WriteConscious]

agreed!

[@RiverheadSkate]

A bald Bloom would be the Judge

[@Glassandcandy]

Blooms conception of the “school of resentment” is the most retrograde and turgid shit imaginable. It’s the literary equivalent of “old man yells at cloud”

[@TGBahr]

That's probably already *Siddhartha* and *Pet Sematary* but I'll hear him out.

[@WriteConscious]

Lol, Blood Meridian is better than Siddhartha and Pet Sematary any way you slice it. There is no subjective "we like different styles" when there is such a massive quality gap.

[@selwynr]

He never claimed it was, so why the clickbait? Oh, hang on, I got suckered in! I get it. As far as the best is concerned, he would have always said Don Quixote first, then maybe The Tale of Genji or Tolstoy or Proust - greatest novel in English is obviously Middlemarch. And yes, you qualify the clickbait in the vid, which makes it even more unnecessary - but gotta get those views! As an aside, BM's relevance is really to the fore right now, with the genocide taking place in Gaza. The odious Itamar Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and Netanyahu are like mini-me Judges but just as bloodthirsty and evil. And of course Biden is also possessed of the Judge's genocidal bloodlust.

[@WriteConscious]

"I venture that no other living American novelist, not even Pynchon, has given us a book as strong and memorable as Blood Meridian"

[@OG-giku-zb8nj]

BLOOM ok..ok..obviously a heavyweight in the ephemera of the literate' and all its vain trappings,,so we can anticipate his propagation of McCarthy as the standard for his course,,and yet I feel his failure to include "INFINITE JEST" on his most important American novels of the twentieth centuries list...I will take "DFW's INFINITE JEST" over Blood Meridian every single time.... 🤔

[@andrewwebb2241]

Harold Bloom should stick to literature.

[@mikebevibevi]

Read 400 pages 20-30 times? Who has time for that? Lol. Dont even have time to watch a movie 20-30 times lol

[@b.t.3406]

Lost me at the anti-gun sermon. Typical elites.

[@andrewmcleod1684]

I’m not saying he’s wrong in this conclusion but Bloom represents most of what is wrong with modern academia/aethetics, also do not discount his ethnic perspective in all that he says

[@MoiAussi18]

Bloom was shielded from nothing. He was Jewish. He lived through the Holocaust. The previous generation lived through the horror of the trenches. Do you imagine that he was asleep during Vietnam?

[@Mooseman327]

Bloom spent most of his life in the Yale/Upper West Side liberal ghetto. His take on America is very similar to that famous New Yorker cartoon where everything west of the GW bridge is in a distant haze. The only "gun crazy" person here is Bloom himself.

[@todesque]

Man, what an overrated novel. I put it alongside Ulysses. Difficult for the sake of being difficult. Not my cup of tea. I’ll stick with Tolstoy thank you very much.

[@felipeemanuel5790]

Tolstoy is untouchable.

[@johngammon963]

I think Harold Bloom is a gatekeeper.

[@pod9363]

Really takes a professor to think the book is about the fucking horrors of gun ownership.

[@stevejanowiak1982]

Exactly!!! Great champion of literature Bloom is. But he is injecting his own Jewish, urban, liberal proclivities into his critique. I guarantee a rancher from Wyoming would have a 180 degree opposite take on guns and violence in America than Bloom. But, unfortunately, it is only narcissistic critics from big cities that decide what is good and bad, right and wrong.

[@Mooseman327]

Yeah, no kidding. Bloom never got out of the Yale/Upper West Side intellectual ghetto. Intelligence is no protection against propaganda and Bloom is a fine case in point.

[@Ukedc259]

It’s a simply amazing novel. Breathtakingly good.

[@WriteConscious]

Yes!

[@michaelkingsbury4305]

Most beautifully written and most horrifying book I ever read.

[@TheHundredHeads]

Bloom was a great critic of style and influence. However his social and political analysis is underbaked. You could argue those themes are not as crucial to literature as aesthetics, regardless, Bloom was often onanistic with his reading prescriptions

[@WriteConscious]

Perfect insight!

[@TheHundredHeads]

@@ryanand154 you could say that the way he reads Freud is almost indistinguishable from Shakespeare

[@FoursWithin]

​@@TheHundredHeads Pretty sure Shakespeare never read Freud ...

[@782YKW]

Bloom said Cervantes' Don Quixote is the greatest novel ever, and Proust's In Search of Lost Time was Bloom's personal favorite novel.

[@MrDinghus]

Good video as always. Have to LOL though at many of the commenters lecturing Bloom on/slamming him for having a limited understanding of the novel because he draws one parallel to (relatively) contemporary American society that is a little fuzzy, when he is largely responsible for the early popularity of Blood Meridian and McCarthy-- certainly among the novel's earliest, most consistent, and most significant champions-- and basically can take credit for the Gnostic interpretation of the novel. Not saying he or anyone else is above reproach but to write arguably the most substantive literary critic in Postwar America, who was a tireless advocate for aesthetic appreciation and the merits of reading great literature, as "a limited thinker"/"of limited intellect" and "not worth listening to" as some commenters have is the height of absurdity.

[@Justpassingby204]

Thank you for this comment

[@nikkivenable73]

I didn't know Harold was so prescient about modern reading. He's impressive the more i learn of him.

[@WriteConscious]

He is great!

[@lucasartscrafts6023]

I've acquired the bad habit of getting so absorbed in Bloom's commentary that I never get around to reading the actual books he was praising.

[@WriteConscious]

Haha!

[@iuseitToo]

Dude I feel that heavy! Ha... Have such a long tbr list but find myself reading not just Bloom, but more modern criticism too. Love Lethem's piece "the ecstasy of influence"; a bit of an obvious counter to bloom's own "anxiety of influence". That's a great read. And Badass Ben Marcus' response to Franzen's "Mr. difficult" and whatever elitist type- shit he was on in that article about "the recognitions" and its difficulty and the reader/writer contract... Both relatively old, but stuff I've read in the past few months and enjoyed. Late edit: almost sure it's Lethem who wrote the piece. Get him confused with Chabon sometimes, which seems weird but they both seem to have similar underlying ideas(to me) wrt to what they're trying to accomplish. And i think that's treating 'literary' fiction, genre fiction, whatever lowbrow pop culture detritus they see as important; it's all grist for the mill. And also that piece the ecstasy of influence is full of plagiarisms from tons of recognizable padded of classics books of the past. So that's a cool part thing about the piece. Probably should be further up in this comment... mnnhh

[@lucasartscrafts6023]

Cool! I check those out.@@iuseitToo

[@Budgieboy4068]

He's hypnotic isn't he? Such an eloquent speaker.

[@jugo1944]

I don't think BM is CM's best book.

[@zoobee]

Bloom was like a character from Lord of the Rings holding off armies of orcs. Read his books about literature and ignore the mainstream of literary culture, deeply politicised and philistine and 'woke'. even if you disagree with his assessments you learn, are provoked and in the hands of a restless mind searching for artistic greatness rather than grievance and feasting on victimhood resentments

[@WriteConscious]

Yes!

[@johnhammer2982]

The book had nothing to do with being "gun crazy." Bit of personal bias creeping in there? Blood Meridian is an absolute landmark of a book. Never read anything else like it.

[@nobbynoris]

I had heard of Harold Bloom before but never seen him ir heard him speak. He is a compelling speaker.

[@WriteConscious]

Yes!

[@ty9884]

Greatest literary critic ever.

[@MicahMicahel]

sort of disappointing here. Is this an anti gun novel! Do people like it because they agree with some statement being made about guns? He's guy from New York. It sounds like he has that snobby attitude where he just hasn't given any thought that it might be his perspective that is lacking. I've heard him speak on other books better than he does here.

[@nikkivenable73]

I didn't know BM was based on actual history! Is it pretty accurate?

[@WriteConscious]

Yeah! The Glanton Gang was a real gang that rode through most of the southwest. In my Blood Meridian Tour videos I show where they went! Judge Holden was also real (without the supernatural elements) - Outside of the supernatural elements, the Captain White Saga, and what happened with the kid at the end its pretty accurate. There is a book "My Confession" by Samuel Chamberlain that inspired McCarthy a lot. The Kid is Samuel Chamberlain. I have other videos detailing who McCarthy based White and Glanton off too.

[@nikkivenable73]

@@WriteConscious wow!!!

[@nikkivenable73]

@@maryann7619 I don’t…I’m dumb.

[@someokiedude9549]

Bloom was a snob, on the one hand. Yet, on the other he was one of the most brilliant minds of our century. He's inspired how I approach reading ever since I started watching and reading his work.

[@valuedCustomer2929]

He comes off silly in this interview. To me it seems he is trying to shoehorn Cormac into his contemporary political sensibilities

[@stephencarter7266]

"one of the most brilliant minds of our century". No...just no.

[@someokiedude9549]

@@valuedCustomer2929 Hey, I never said he was right about everything. I personally find his comments about Stephen King distasteful. He completely misses what makes King good. It's why I said he was a snob.

[@someokiedude9549]

@@stephencarter7266 He was. A brilliant literary scholar and critic. What Siskel and Ebert did for film, Bloom did for books and the art of reading. I would say he's more like Siskel in that way.

[@stephencarter7266]

@@someokiedude9549 I've written in another post and I'll repeat it here: Bloom was just a well read dude with a talent for marketing his opinions. That's it. This Emperor had no clothes. It's embarrassing that more Americans hadn't called him out on his mediocrity while he was among the living. This guy couldn't have had _this_ massive literary reputation before WW2. Scholarship in academia was much more competitive back then. H Bloom was a big fish in a depleted pond.

[@nathancooley7685]

I really like and respect Harold Bloom and I love McCarthy and Blood Meridian, but this is some low level analysis by Bloom. To say Blood Meridian is about violence, and specifically guns, is like saying The Old Man and the Sea is about fishing or There Will Be Blood is about oil. It’s extremely surface-level and really boring, frankly. Overall though, I think it really misses the point.

[@johnradovich8809]

Insightful post. Had to scroll down to find someone who saw through this. Wonder what he’d think of the endless wars and fentanyl streaming across the border.

[@WriteConscious]

Agreed!

[@gabrielbacon1175]

Just found your channel and as a huge Cormac fan was happy to have done so. I really enjoyed this first video. Harold Bloom's take on Blood Meridian being a commentary on contemporary American gun culture I found to be utterly inane. Blood Meridian is addressing something perennial not specific. I had thought that the introductory Bohme quote would have made that entirely clear. In any event I look forward to more of your videos

[@peterwhite7428]

This is a brilliant analysis of Blood Meridian. It is a book on the scale of Moby-Dick and all the other great books of Western culture.

[@WriteConscious]

Yes!

[@Princeteradeth]

The guns aren’t the problem…nor are guns or “gun cultrure” the thematic concern of that novel. It cuts much deeper. I love Harold Bloom. Blood Meridian is the great American novel…up there with Moby Dick, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,….The Sound and the Fury. I appreciate what he says here, but disagree with his take on the US’s gun crazy culture. That book, How to Read and Why is excellent. His books on the Western Canon and American Cannon are also very insightful.

[@ThumpRat]

Yeah, if you take out the Black demographic, the U.S. gun crime offense rate is similar to places like Switzerland and Czech Republic

[@acuerdox]

You can tell when a myth is good when different people see different things in it and find it revealing all the same. O think the man is proyecting his own fears, the book acts as a mirror.

[@gkft]

@@ThumpRat I wonder what a Jewish professor like Bloom who's view of the book is largely a critique of American violence and gun culture feels about say, Israel and its short and bloody history and if he feels the same. I'm going to go on a limb and say he probably doesn't, but I could be wrong. This guy Bloom managed to water down and get nothing out of 30 reads of what likely is the greatest American novel and one of the greatest novels of all time, period.

[@Garrett1240]

@@gkft American Jews are at the very least just as likely to be critics of Israel as supporters.

[@Garrett1240]

Guns and the culture surrounding them are certainly a huge problem here.

[@captainnolan5062]

Harold Bloom must know the purpose of the second amendment (as a bulwark against tyranny...which is strangely parallel to his position as a bulwark against the assault on Western Culture), so I found his comments on Americans and guns a bit off-putting. I wish he had kept away from his 'apparent' leftist political leanings (at least as it relates to arms) and focused his comments more on the book. I do appreciate his promotion of the Western Canon and attempting to hold off the attacks on Western Culture (and literature in particular). I also found his comment regarding the Judge and the White Whale insightful. I will have to take a look at your other videos (I went ahead and subscribed based on this video and your comments, not Bloom's).

[@WriteConscious]

Thanks brotha! I also disliked those comments and forgot to talk about them in the video. The slight Idaho reference he made was about Ruby Ridge I think, and I thought he was going to throw Waco in there. Both events were some of our lowest points where the ATF and FBI went way too crazy

[@johnradovich8809]

I really admire Bloom but you are spot on. As I mentioned in another post here, wonder what his thoughts would be on our endless wars and fentanyl streaming across our open border.

[@WriteConscious]

Probably wouldn't talk about it lol

[@robwarren4425]

Sorry I missed your name but do you know how many copies were printed for the first edition of BM? I don’t think There was a second printing. I do know many copies were remaindered.

[@WriteConscious]

I know somewhere between 1,500-1600 copies sold between 85-92 and there wasn't a second reprinting until 1992.

[@robwarren4425]

@@WriteConscious Thanks

[@jorgesuarez7073]

The great American novel has been written: Blood Meridian.

[@mightydorchux]

I don't agree with Bloom's political views, but I agree that it's good that he is promoting great literature. Having read both Blood Meridian and Moby Dick I appreciate the comparison of Judge Holden to the Whale. They are both destructive, diabolical forces that interfere with the fates and destinies of the men who encounter them.

[@austinquick6285]

Bloom is overrated imo. is opinion of himself is overrated.. I just dont like him.Or.. his opinion is not sacred in that of my own.

[@AntinomyAnonymous]

A great primer for reading BM.

[@WriteConscious]

Agreed!

[@DavidOdegard-z4v]

Bloom said Hadji Murat was the best book ever. He was wrong of course, but nobody tells Bloom he is wrong.

[@fabiosobrin6648]

Harold Bloom embodies the deconstruction and destruction of literature

[@Anna-rs4mx]

What Bloom misses is every novel he names as the greatest in .American Literature is that they are entirely based on male aggression. Sheer carnage, gun culture… he only relates to men.

[@blakechildress944]

I think what you're doing on this channel and with these videos is a worthy endeavor and super valuable to the people who listen. Please, don't stop making these amazing videos!

[@WriteConscious]

Thanks for the support brotha! Not planning on stopping any time soon. Trying to get six videos out today lol

[@docjaramillo]

Agreed. I’m a science guy but blood meridian opened my eyes to the power of literature. Appreciate your efforts and dedication.

[@Wordsareprayers]

Alice Walker…Toni Morrison…? U guys love Urselves in a way that is pathological.🤓

[@johnsondee4100]

Harold’s imposition of his own sensibilities onto BM allows him to maintain his own limited worldview and he misses the bigger picture. But he certainly catches a slice of what CM is getting at. He’s correct to feel an alarm bell through the pages and into the air around him, but his politics are no defense of what will always come.

[@brezlin-hamill]

" Kick him honey...! "

[@AleksandarBloom]

He wrote a novel once. So did James Wood. I wonder how bad it is.

[@WriteConscious]

The reviews look bad. Creative writing is a whole different beast. You could read a couple good novels and become a great author with thousands of hours of work. However, being a bad creative writer doesn't mean you can't be a great theorist. The novel is the most complicated art-form and I don't think it's possible anymore to function at a high level of theory and creative writing skills simultaneously.

[@AleksandarBloom]

​@@WriteConscious Forster, Gass and occasionally Borges, were quite accomplished in both fields. But it is a rare occurrence. As for poetry, famously, and deservedly so, Coleridge and T.S.E.

[@FrancisGo.]

I have 'The Flight to Lucifer'. It's the one thing Bloom wrote that I could actually improve, but he's my favorite critic. I like the critics he models himself after too.

[@FrancisGo.]

Bloom's book would have been better if he had used an actual plot and then discarded it in subsequent drafts. The book is bad, but it's kind of cool.

[@markforthemortgage]

This guy is just being eaten alive by acid reflux

[@NondescriptMammal]

Yes, because there's such a thing as "best novel ever".

[@mainmanmainlining7575]

His description of the book is incredible but he reaches with a lot of the subtext.

[@tectorgorch8698]

FWIW, I'd vote for Stone's Dog Soldiers over Blood Meridian as the #2 Great American Novel. Moby Dick is #1 forever.

[@WriteConscious]

Great pick! Stone is very underrated.

[@morningsidedrive]

Wridden...

[@petercheney8316]

yeah This guy knows what time it is.

[@WriteConscious]

lol

[@linjicakonikon7666]

😂😂😂 yeah right😂😂😂

[@romans8024]

Eva readen 😊

[@theecharmingbilly]

lmfao.

[@alohm]

Read good books well. Bloom. Life is too short tp read bad books. Schopenhauer. There will be no need to ban books, they will not want to read them. Huxley. We need to learn to read and listen. It is engagement not entertainment. Focus on fluency not literacy.

[@cambodianz]

“Gun crazy” is quite a useful term for someone to use. Once I hear them say such a phrase, I can pretty much dismiss most, if not all of their worldview.

[@bej6190]

You are very narrow-minded then

[@cambodianz]

@@bej6190 Nah, it's people who unironically use that term who are limited in their own thought.

[@alohm]

I didnt find blood Meridian hard to read. Im a gen x and have read some Sade... Lolita disturbed me, and even more so was heqring from you tubers who do not see lolita as difficult to read, but will not read blood Meridian for rhe violence. Hmm?

[@davidpaulweaver7792]

Hey! I have a quick, maybe silly question. Would you recommend trying to read Blood Meridian as quickly as possible? Is it the kind of book where if you are reading it over a longer period of time you’ll forget key details brought up in earlier chapters? I read Outer Dark and Child of God in a month just to give you an idea of my pace

[@WriteConscious]

You shoulnd't forget if its been shorter than a month.

[@geordiejones5618]

I read about 250 pages of Blood Meridian in a week. Greatest reading experience of my life.

[@jamessavery276]

First time I read it key details went over my head but the quality of the prose held me spellbound all the way through. I read it a second time and filled in most of the details. (I may have read it 3 times). Next reading I will use a computer to look up the plants and other references. I'll not stop re-reading this book and his other great books.

[@selwynr]

Yeah but you wrote "best novel ever", see. I agree with Bloom's judgement, and presumably yours, and have since 1987, when I first read it. It is a colossal jaw-dropping nightmarish masterpiece, worthy, perhaps, of late Goya.

[@Justpassingby204]

This interview aged very well. Violence had endured.

[@MisterChris1978]

reading it now. my first CM book. it is....a lot. heavy, graphic, and now on chapter 10, seems to just go, but not in any direction. and (not necessarily a bad thing) the book seems to be more about how it is written, not what is being written. His poetry can be distracting .

[@mikeberman9270]

I think Bloom's lectures promoting Rex Stout's books are much more lucid. Nero Wolfe truly represents the American ideal of joining the eating instinct with the thinking one. Not to mention his relying on Archie Goodwin, the prototype of the subtle wisecracking man of action.

[@daiwalters]

One of best novels I have ever read. Starting the book was difficult, I had to reread various times because of its minimal textual and punctuational style. I had a similar experience reading "Blood Meridian" to "Lolita." Prose masters at their peak.

[@marcpadilla1094]

Shot gun Messiah always left a ringin in my ear. Heavy metal in tongues,spit,and gore. Only horror makes us accustomed to fear and wet an apetite for more.

[@theemptyatom]

Interesting statement at around the 12:05 minute mark: "German Idealism is built off of gnosticism". Really? Or is it just some shared themes and concepts?

[@julianmangan9752]

Just starting to get back into reading and ordered this book. I don't think I'm ready. Also, interesting books you have showcased. Baudrillard is fascinating for sure, but that Julian Jaynes book will have you lose your soul lol!

[@Garcia061]

Cormac didn’t approach the Cohen brothers. I think Brolin left Cormac about 5 voicemails and eventually Cormac answered… 😂

[@hilariousname6826]

I just don't get why anyone would want a movie of this novel.

[@Ianjames1066]

Dr. Bloom an unfettered and brilliant genius of the English language.

[@Vgallo]

I wish you didn’t cut it short

[@TrueBlueAndrew]

Hey! I have that Version of Dune behind you.

[@JayDee-Plantnosher]

Is Harold Bloom the alter ego of Kenny Shopsin?

[@mrJohnDesiderio]

I felt the same way on my first reading

[@shaneharms1895]

Could you post that Bloom book list, please?