Word: bloomed
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Harold Bloom's earlier studies of William Blake and W.B. Yeats, both impressive works of literary criticism, should have taught him to beware these dangers. But in The Flight to Lucifer. Bloom's latest work, the author's zeal to communicate an obscure but not inherently tedious theory of religion overwhelms him, and he does not live up to his chosen role of myth-maker. Bloom clothes his doctrinal argument in a flimsy mantle of epic fantasy. He would probably have done better to write an essay than this dreary mess...
...Bloom's troubles begin with his characters. The protagonist is a human being named Perscors, whom we follow from earth to the planet Lucifer. Unfortunately, the hero has no personality to begin with, and picks up none along the way--Bloom just seems to forget to give him one. He rampages across Lucifer, a sword in each hand, splattering limbs and skulls across the countryside, but earns less sympathy from the reader than even such legendary softies as Conan the Barbarian...
...Bloom could hide behind the label of allegory easily enough, and claim that his novel is only meant to illustrate a Gnostic view of the universe. But the book is ill-argued and difficult to finish reading, and will not make too many converts...
Whatever fascination The Flight to Lucifer holds lies in the historical and philosophical interest in Gnosticism itself, not in Bloom's bankrupt dramatization of it. The Gnostics envision a complete reversal of Biblical myths on the order of Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell. In their version, the Old Testament's creator-God becomes the evil Demiurge, who created the physical world to imprison man and estrange him from the true God--who is not part of Creation at all, but an alien being to whom men with true knowledge, or gnosis, seek to return. The doctrines make provocative...
...Want You, I Need You, I Love You is a stylishly intelligent and deceptively lighthearted evocation of a woman's fantasies about Elvis Presley. Hecht strikes the right balance of irony, nostalgia and affection for a time when Presley and the short story itself were still in full bloom...