There are few people who've read so widely and deeply as Harold Bloom. For all his idiosyncrasies as a critic and for whatever personal flaws he might have had, he inspired a generation of readers to read more and explore the classics of Western civilization. His books are valuable guides to the vast world of Western literature, and if they help preserve even a fraction of that heritage for the next generation of readers I think Bloom has achieved his purpose.
He only read deeply or widely when it came to the "classics" of Western Literature. He was incredibly biased towards Western literature and especially English language literature. He had an irrational hatred for anything that became "popular" such as Harry Potter, Tolkien, or Stephen King. He couldn't handle novels which (in his opinion) weren't difficult or erudite that the "average" person could understand easily.
Thats completely fine, since there are a endless number of critics who fill in the gaps in Bloom's preferences. Few take seriously his canonical approach to literature anymore, but that doesn't make his critical approach to given works, or the appreciation he communicates for literature any less valuable.
My favorite commentary from him is on 'Frankenstein' which is not a difficult read. In fact he wrote about several 20th century books like 'Catch-22' and 'Death of a Salesman'. But yes I don't think he analyzed John Grisham etc if that's what you mean.
I wrote an essay about Bloom’s conception of “the Canon” back in 2003. Was probably my favorite essay I published publicly from that period.
I still go back to it from time to time, thinking especially about Bloom’s concept of “The Anxiety of Influence”. The thread I weave starts from a piece by Walker Percy, entitled “The Loss of the Creature”. That one is somewhat esoteric and underrated, but beautifully describes the conundrum of art education by “experts”, and the contrast between truly experiencing art and merely trying to “get it”.
Anyway, I archived my essay, “Questioning the Canon”, on my personal site here:
Completely tangental, but nevertheless. Your quote of Percy brought back a memory.
Almost thirty years ago I was in Avignon. It was scorchingly hot, with temperatures reaching into the 40 degrees Celsius range. My girlfriend and I sought refuge against the heat in the neighbouring village of Villeneuve-Les-Avignon. There was going to be a festival of old music there in the remains of an old fortress that evening. We could hear someone practicing a piece on the cello.
No-one cared to guard the entrace in this impossible heat. We trespassed into the ruins and located an old tower where the music was coming from. There was actually no door and we snuck up the staircase until we were right next to a room where someone was playing a beautiful piece, flawlessly. We sat there on the stairs for fifteen minutes, transfixed by the music. We knew enough about music to know that it was late baroque, definitely not Bach, possibly French, but we never dared to expose ourselves and ask. It was a transcendental experience.
Strange side note: A friend of mine knew Bloom, and one of Bloom's favorite books was Little, Big, by John Crowley. Bloom said he saw parallels between the 2016 election and the second coming of Barbarossa.
The article confuses me. Bloom thought both that Shakespeare invented humanity, but also that literature was primarily about the aesthetic pleasure for the reader?
I am not an expert in literature or criticism, but it seems like there's something missing from the article to explain that gap.
(I'm sorry to hear of his passing, of course, and I don't mean this as disrespectful in any way.)
Bloom was of the opinion that Shakespeare invented the modern (as distinct from ancient or medieval) conception of conscious self-awareness and introspection as a new idea of what it means to be human and experience life.
That's interesting I will have to read more, when I did classical studies in the 6th form. Our teacher ( head of the sixth form) commented that some of the later Greek plays could be read in that sort of way, The Bacchae for example.
Right, agreed that that’s a conflict; the latter point—primarily about aesthetic pleasure—isn’t quite right or is at least misleading. In my reading, Bloom values deep wisdom, formal excellence, and innovation—and these things are pleasurable, but also refract our deepest understandings of ourselves and others. He values these over more ‘politicized’ or culturally specific readings.
It’s a little—just a little—like the “art for art’s sake” movements, where the slogan says less about what art is for and mostly insists that art isn’t about its conventionally understood purposes (to morally educate, to record, etc.) and also not about the next dozen theories that might occur to you.
I used to tutor math and physics near Bloom's office in Timothy Dwight. My main association with the man is that he would come on strong to every female English graduate student he could reach.
When #MeToo first came to national consciousness about men in arts and letters who completely abused their position to take advantage of women, I thought of Harold. How could these giants of arts and letters abuse so many? Because no one spoke out.
> In 2004, Wolf wrote an article for New York magazine accusing literary scholar Harold Bloom of a "sexual encroachment" more than two decades earlier by touching her thigh. She said that what she alleged Bloom did was not harassment, either legally or emotionally, and she did not think herself a "victim", but that she had harbored this secret for 21 years. [0]
For those who have never heard of "sexual encroachment" and are wondering how it differs from "sexual harassment", Wikipedia covers it [1].
Briefly, she did not feel harassed or traumatized or victimized by it, but rather that her education was corrupted. She says: "Sexual encroachment in an educational context or a workplace is, most seriously, a corruption of meritocracy; it is in this sense parallel to bribery. I was not traumatized personally, but my educational experience was corrupted. If we rephrase sexual transgression in school and work as a civil-rights and civil-society issue, everything becomes less emotional, less personal. If we see this as a systemic corruption issue, then when people bring allegations, the focus will be on whether the institution has been damaged in its larger mission".
When you hear a phrase like "sexual encroachment", you may prepare yourself for a modern pseudo-feminist spiel about how any kind of unwanted physical contact is sexual assault, but Wolf's explanation of her use of the phrase and her emphasis on its distinctions while maintaining its corrupt nature is spot on and very appreciated.
A couple weeks ago my neighbor was drunk and kept trying to make physical contact with me, grabbing my hand, hugging, touching me, despite me incessantly asking her to stop. I didn't feel victimized or assaulted (I have actually been sexually assaulted by another male and it is different), but I was still at a loss for words to explain to her the severity of her actions and how different it would be if our genders were reversed. Sexual encroachment is probably a good phrase for it.
Perhaps I've misread and/or misunderstood your comment as well. It seems you're suggesting that she's an unreliable witness and her accusations shouldn't be given much (or any) weight because her academic and professional work is of low quality.
>>How could these giants of arts and letters abuse so many?
We tend to give people that are accomplished in a field an aura of saintliness that they don't deserve. The reality is that once people attain a bit of power many find it hard not to abuse it. And also, people around them tend to ignore the abuses. The only way to fix it is to call the abusers out on their behavior but it's hard for most people to do it because of all the trouble it brings even if it's 100% true. It's easier to give it a pass and hope someone else will do something about it.
You can do as you like, but for me it is a decent heuristic to not speak ill of the dead.
I, personally, really don’t enjoy reading about people using someone’s death or funeral as a platform for maligning their life, regardless of the accuracy and poignancy of the claims.
Would you bring up this discussion in front of a grieving family member? Do you think it impossible someone already in pain might read what is said on the internet?
There’s a concept I like that even the bitterest of enemies allow the dead to be buried in peace.
> it is a decent heuristic to not speak ill of the dead
I take somewhat the opposite view: once someone is dead they can no longer be hurt by anything bad said about them. Defamation law also follows the same principle.
Not that I want to speak ill of Harold Bloom. I only knew him through reading The Western Canon, which I found a very rewarding read, and for his disdain for the Harry Potter mania, where I felt the same way.
Writing a short call-out comment on an anonymous internet forum is easy. Thinking deeply about the appropriate time and place to bring up and challenge a person’s perceived unethical past deeds is difficult.
Your feelings are really of no consequence compared to those who were victims. If you have a personal interaction to weigh in the positive side of the scales, speak now.
I don't understand why this is worth your commenting on but you're silent on the airing of somebody's dirty laundry between their death and their funeral.
What this signals to the Hacker News community is disturbing to the extent that I'm not sure I want to spend any more time here.
It's off topic, unsubstantive, and inflammatory. It takes the thread in an extraneous flamebait direction, just what the site guidelines ask people not to. This seems obvious. Am I missing something?
The question of airing dirty laundry immediately on someone's death is more complex. I agree that accusations against Bloom should not dominate discussion over the significant things he did. But they're not off topic, and the social injunction against speaking ill of the dead isn't shared by the whole community. We can argue reasonably about how to handle all of that. From my perspective, there aren't guidelines violations in those comments, but the various other things moderators do to encourage substantive discussion are applicable.
But I see no such nuance in "I feel like coming on strongly to women is something desirable now". That doesn't mean the GP was posting in bad faith, but it's the sort of post we have to moderate if we don't want the thread to burst into flames.
You shouldn't speak ill of the dead like this. It is uncouth and crass for all sorts of reasons. It doesn't mean you need to forget or ignore it, it just means... today is not the day. More days will come.
Not OP but I've never liked the notion of "too soon" as a reason for not doing/saying things, it feels very arbitrary. And I don't know much about the person of subject but I will speak ill of anyone living or dead if they are someone worth speaking ill of.
There are two separate issues: speaking ill of the dead at all; and speaking disrespectfully too soon after a death.
Speaking ill of the dead at all is generally not good because the person is no longer able to defend their reputation, and no remedy can be made. The dead is no longer in a position of power to be removed, nor can they improve themselves out of remorse. So of something ill is to be said, saying it after death is too late, not too soon.
"Too soon" is problematic because you are using a death as an opportunity to amplify your own message, and because it can amplify the grief of those left behind.
I don't know that I consider calling people out for shitty things they've done to be "disrespectful". Calling people out for shitty things they haven't done would be be disrespectful.
What about those that were harmed by the individual in question? Does it make sense to shame them into silence when they deal with grief and pain of their own?
We should remember people as they were in totality. That means recognizing that people are human, and humans can be remarkably awful to some while putting on a good face to others.
It is not for the deceased; it is for the family of the deceased and others left behind. They are grieving and don't need to also have to deal with rumors adding to their pain. They didn't do it.
It is also a simple application of the Golden Rule; you would not care for everyone around you to take your death as an opportunity to slag you, neither should you do it to you other fellow humans, all condemned to die one day as well.
There will be more days. It doesn't have to be done today.
>It is also a simple application of the Golden Rule; you would not care for everyone around you to take your death as an opportunity to slag you
if I ever turn into someone who gets a reputation for molesting young college students drag me all you want, hell rent a billboard for all I care and chuck my remains into the trashcan.
If I ever figured out that one of my family members engaged in behaviour like this I would not mind it one single bit if their accusers spoke about it the day they died, the only thing I'd be sad about is that I didn't know sooner.
>if I ever turn into someone who gets a reputation for molesting young college students drag me all you want, hell rent a billboard for all I care and chuck my remains into the trashcan.
>If I ever figured out that one of my family members engaged in behaviour like this I would not mind it one single bit if their accusers spoke about it the day they died, the only thing I'd be sad about is that I didn't know sooner.
The family of a controversial public figure would do better not to expose themselves to public discussion of that person soon after their death but to grieve privately.
And if people are speaking ill of the dead it's highly likely that people were speaking ill of them before they died too, so any 'ill-speak' is hardly likely to be news to them.
(I'm speaking from principle here; I personally have nothing ill to say about Harold Bloom).
To me, it's more about giving someone a chance to defend themselves. If you said the same thing to their face when they were alive, then fine. Continue to say it after they pass. But to all of a sudden have an opinion, or to air a grudge that you've never thought worthy of speaking about publicly before? That's cowardice.
And yes, I'm including victims who felt they had something to lose. Those are the claims someone has the greatest interest in defending themselves against.
But then we would not have Hunter S. Thompson’s scathing take on Richard Nixon, published in Rolling Stone just after Nixon’s death:
“If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.”
I guess I’m arguing that the right words are a function of the context.
I understand your sentiment but to clarify, that is indeed ignoring the bad behavior. It's placation, even if temporary.
And it's polite. There's nothing wrong with keeping these thoughts to yourself. With rare exception, it certainly doesn't harm anyone.
But when a person leaves this world, they take all their good and all their bad with them -- I think it's acceptable to acknowledge what we are left with. To some, the striking acknowledgement is that we are one harasser less.
The conversation will naturally steer towards the good if it outweighs the bad. Perhaps I'm being too insensitive; Those are my thoughts for the moment, anyway.
Actually it's very good to speak ill of the dead when they have done bad things.
When we are all thinking about them and their legacy is an opportune time to discuss the underlying issues. How else can we accurately remember the dead, and learn from their actions?
I don't know about Bloom, but it has become abundantly clear of late that many sexual predators and generally nasty people were very good at covering up their misdeeds, and enabled in so doing by institutions and silent conspirators. I'm completely over this idea 'yes he may have abused X, but he made great thing Y, let's remember him as a great fellow'. It's time for complex appraisals, and to say 'yes, he was a shit' if that was the reality, even if some illusions are shattered.
We've already asked you more than once to stop posting unsubstantive comments here. "FUCK $object" is the ultimate unsubstantive comment. That's going the wrong way down a one-way street.
We'd appreciate it if you'd please take a step back and review
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post more in the spirit of this site. That doesn't require you to change your views—just be more thoughtful when you post, which includes not posting when you don't have anything thoughtful to say.
You might also find these links helpful regarding the intended spirit of the site:
In my opinion here is Bloom at his boldest and finest.
He is looking for wisdom, not just in literature, but also in philosophy, religion....
While in some ways breezy, a bit of an airplane read, and sometimes provocative of little more than a chuckle, or a facepalm, it is, taken as a whole, a liberal and generous conception of the humanities and human life. That's Bloom for you.
Thanks for that. I hadn't heard of Harold Bloom before today, but what I've read about his scholarship and writing today, leads me to think that I could use one or more of his books as a guide to reading books from the western canon.
We live in an era where great art has so little power that it requires defending, and that doing so is considered to be controversial. Our time is a spiritual dark age.
One of the most erudite academics of the past century. It is truly a loss for those who have a respect and admiration for the great minds of the past.
If you’re a Bloom fan, or are interested in history and literature generally, I recommend looking into Lewis Lapham and his magazine, Lapham’s Quarterly. Lapham is also an exceptionally well-read, classically-trained writer and the magazine operates in the same areas as Bloom’s work.
I'm familiar with classical training for music (conservatories) and painting (ateliers, master/apprentice systems). I've never heard of classical training for writing. What does it entail? Where can I learn more about the methods?
Well perhaps I was using “classically-trained” incorrectly. I meant that he is deeply educated in the classics of western and world literature. If you’re looking for information about the classics, I recommend any of Bloom’s books.
Ah thanks. You had me excited for a moment: classical methods for drawing were tedious, but rewarded my patience by improving my ability exponentially faster than other forms of practice. I had hoped for something similar WRT writing.
Well, hitting on women (for men), hitting on men (for women), drinking, taking drugs, being tightwad, being lavish, being easily angered, and tons of other things, never stopped anybody from being a giant of letters or the arts, a great politician, a good scientist, a great athlete, a great actor, a great humanitarian, a great businessperson or any other thing...
In fact it's probably more common in the great men and women, than in the puny average moralists who never achieved greatness, but also never dared go into any excess as people, and had far far less chances to indulge in such things...
People are entitled to like sex and to approach people for relationships that may become sexual.
If female grad students were inviting him over for booty calls I think the tone of the conversation would be much different.
But the claim is that he was making advances on people who didn't welcome them. This is especially a problem since he was an influential professor with power over their careers.
Even for professors, where the natural state for many is social awkwardness, you have some obligation to read the signs of when your behavior is unwanted.
>But the claim is that he was making advances on people who didn't welcome them.
That was part of my point. One can be crash or sexist like that and still a great writer/thinker/etc.
The other ("If female grad students were inviting him over for booty calls I think the tone of the conversation would be much different") of course goes without saying!
Sure I don't disagree that people with significant failings can do good creative work. My go-to example is always Teichmuller, who produced beautiful mathematics and was a literal Nazi.
I see that you are employing the rhetorical device of diluting rather serious allegations by putting them in a list that also contains things of no importance, but nevertheless, I am in favor of judging a person's contributions independently from their personal attributes. I will not, however, accept that the contributions either justify or excuse harmful behavior.
>I see that you are employing the rhetorical device of diluting rather serious allegations by putting them in a list that also contains things of no importance,
Let me add somethings of importance then: one can be thief and/or murderer (like e.g. Caravaggio, François Villon, Burroughs, Jean Genet, Cellini, etc.) and still be a great writer, poet, painter, sculptor, etc.
>I will not, however, accept that the contributions either justify or excuse harmful behavior.
Could be the worse, the harmful behavior could inform the contributions.
Good people can still make great art (Bach for one), but they don't make great art of the kind bad people make, nor do they have the same access as bad people to express those impulses and that side of humanity.
Is it possible that extreme greatness in certain talents comes with unavoidable flaws in others? Creativity, depression, wit, temper, outbursts, humor, affection. Would banishing some also eliminate the others?
Lots of amazing writers, poets, scientists, are terribly flawed, depressed, tortured souls. Hell, even we here on HN debate every day the ridiculous company founders and VCs whose behavior creates interesting enterprises but leads to inevitable problems later.
We seem to want saints who pique our attention, stimulate our fancy, and amuse/entertain us. But as some witty person said, living in heaven with the saints would be worse than hell.
well, i don't know if either of you have been paying attention to anything that's been happening the past several decades, but there's an inherent problem with the codification of offensiveness. if everything's just a bunch of offensive meaningless shit (mormon amusement parks and dragon dildos or whatever), then you run into problems with the the moral relativism of offensiveness (or, in your case, sexual assault) itself becoming some kind of heroic righteous category.
so which is it? should sexual assault be condemned, or should it be celebrated, like you're doing here? to be clear, i care less about where you stand than i care that you pick a fucking stance.
I wasn't commenting about those allegations, I was replying to the parent comment about creative types who have extremes of personality.
I personally have no knowledge of those serious claims. I don't read in any reports here or elsewhere that Harold Bloom came close to perpetrating sexual assault. Do you, or do you have personal knowledge? If not maybe you should think about your own relativism as you try to turn every possible act by a person you don't know into a rallying cry to fuel your righteous indignation?
I was commenting that the people who have the most creativity often display severe personality flaws. I wasn't excusing anything. Seems like you're quite angry?
People in power are the only ones who have opportunities to abuse power. People who are given power and abuse that power should have that power taken away from them. There’s plenty of other people who will fill their role.
And what if they people who "are given power and abuse that power" are still by far the best for the role?
One can imagine a politician who is a thief for example, stealing public money or who uses the state to harm his personal enemies, but is still a genius of public policy, great for steering the economy, a great leader at war, and so on. In the end, the amount of money they stole e.g. (in the case of the embezzler) is insignificant compared to the good he hid for the country as a leader.
You'd replace them with some "good person" if said good person's weren't as good?
And here's the catch, history accounts are filled with such people.
The case at hand is an older man who interacts with younger students. Half of them don’t feel safe around him. He’s going to have to do an astounding job with the remaining 50% to make up for that.
It’s not about declaring some people “good” before hand. It’s more about spotting when power is being abused and giving someone else a go.
A government area very close to here recently arrested a politician who was also the most popular politician in the country (by % votes). He’s now been found guilty of some crimes the scale of which is quite small compared to the absolute scale of the area he ran. But all of his decisions and appointments will now be examined. There are definitely plus and minuses to his downfall. But on balance I’m glad that people didn’t continue to turn a blind eye to his corruption, even if some of it “got the job done” faster.
I don't think they're in any way contradictory. I think he was a genuinely great critic, and that can't be taken away from him. But that doesn't mean I can't be disappointed to learn he made female graduate students uncomfortable.
Similarly I fully support Handke winning the Nobel this year, but it doesn't mean I can't deplore his support of Milosevic.
I think this sense of cancel culture is overhyped. Harold Bloom’s importance will not be lessened due to his abuse (except perhaps of topical relevance). There is simply a dual importance like we both recognize.
Sure it's sad when anyone dies but I never agreed with Bloom's view of literature. He was unbearably snobby about his tastes and thought anything popular was shit and the coming of the end of literature. See his thoughts on Harry Potter, Stephen King, Tolkien, etc. Basically he was living in the past.
He was also incredibly biased towards English language books and had barely read any Eastern or African literature. Not to mention his general bias against anything written in the last 20 years, I seem to remember him saying that there were only three authors in the last 20 years who wrote a good book...
We've lost a great mind today. RIP