Bloom

Reading Harold Bloom on John Milton a second time, and found this irresistible:

"As a Gnostic Jew, in rebellion against normative Judaism and Christianity alike, I find Milton's God the principal blot upon an otherwise magnificent poem, whose strangeness makes such a God irrelevant and aesthetically inadequate, since there is nothing at all strange about the supposed God of Paradise Lost. He is self-righteous, irascible, and anxious: William Blake accurately termed him a Schoolmaster of Souls. You have to be a dogmatic Christian whose values are not aesthetic to find this God attractive."

Bloom ranks Milton, in English poetry, second only to Shakespeare, but in literary criticism Bloom is second to no one in my opinion. He's a fierce defender of the classics, which, as I understand it, earned him virtual banishment from his culturally "hipper" Yale colleagues, who rate literature according not to its aesthetic but its political value. And that's a damn shame.

Some of you have expressed interest in learning more about great literature (largely as an escape from the depressing doldrums of politics, I imagine), which I plod along at myself. My first and highest recommendation: start with a Bloom book, any Bloom book. There are many, and your local bookstore should have at least one or two.

 

Comments

[Peter G]

I can only recommend the ones I have read, The Western Canon and How to Read and Why. But they are their own recommendations to his other works I suppose. I may have mentioned Northrop Frye in the past as one of my favorite authors on literary criticism and his writings are similarly both scholarly and accessible at the same time. The only bad thing about these gentlemen is that that will frighten you about how much you do not know about Western culture but should.

[PM]

Yes as an un-added afterthought I realized I should have noted how utterly intimidating Bloom's literary knowledge is.