Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Harold Bloom (1930–2019)

The literary critic and teacher Harold Bloom has died at the age of eighty-nine. The New York Times has an obituary.

This post feels to me obligatory. I was never very much on the Bloom wavelength — partly because of my distrust of such schema as his six “revisionary ratios” of poetic influence, partly because of my distrust of his pronouncements of canonical value. I’m always suspicious of such authority.

comments: 2

Daughter Number Three said...

Plus the sexual harassment thing.

Michael Leddy said...

Yes. I did all my Bloom reading before that news broke.

On a related topic, I just tossed three books by John Searle. I didn’t want him, or them, in my house.