Word: bloom
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Make sure, no matter where your plan to spend the afternoon, that you walk a little ways down Commonwealth Ave., just off the far end of the Public Garden, where the magnolia trees will be in bloom this weekend...
...Bloom is obviously over-learned. Perhaps if you studied The Flight to Lucifer with the care the author devoted to Blake and others, it might yield allusions, internal consistency, and lots of symbolic geometry. But Bloom doesn't make the effort attractive enough; his book lacks any felicities of description, characterization or narrative. For one thing, its 52 chapters, each four to six pages long, leave no room for any sort of rhythm in the plot. Even worse, the book's brevity makes a mockery of its epic pretensions...
...great crisis, whether a battle, a speech, or a quest fulfilled. When Perscors realizes the power his humanity has over all the abstractions on Lucifer--not a bad way in itself to work out the novel--he shouts "My epiphany is here!" So much for simple human dignity in Bloom's over-intellectualized wasteland...
...writing this sort of book, Bloom begs to be compared to C.S. Lewis. The comparison does not flatter him in any way. Lewis could get away with gross reliance on unalloyed religious faith because he also possessed an H.G. Wellsian flair for description of other worlds. Lewis never lost sight of the individuality of his characters, nor the need to entertain his readers. Bloom misses both Lewis's faith and his skill...
...Bloom's failure must be diagnosed as one of the heart, not the head. His agile mind latches onto a bit of esoterica and clearly delights in its possibilities, but cannot communicate any enthusiasm. It is indeed a shame that Bloom cannot join the visionary company of his betters in myth-making--but too much criticism has apparently blinded his imagination...