Word: bloomings
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...tempting to dismiss all this turmoil as academic. One who decidedly does not is Harold Bloom, 64, the occupant of endowed chairs at both Yale and New York University, the author of 20 critical works and the editor of hundreds more, and a Vesuvian source of erudition and opinions. Bloom believes, among many other things, that a body of great literature of imperishable value exists, recognizable solely by its intrinsic aesthetic merits; further, that those who try to use or subvert the great works for extraliterary purposes, i.e., anything smacking of social engineering, are barbarians; and further still, that these...
...triumph of the forces of darkness need not, Bloom thinks, be total. A small band -- his publisher obviously hopes not too small -- will continue to turn to the rewards of literature as people have been doing for 3,000 years. "The Common Reader," Bloom writes, referring to a figure conjured up by Dr. Samuel Johnson and Virginia Woolf, not the contemporary Tom Clancy or Danielle Steel fan, "still exists and possibly goes on welcoming suggestions of what might be read...
...this score, the Common Reader is likely to be overwhelmed by The Western Canon. At the end of his book Bloom ticks off more than 3,000 works by some 850 authors, ranging from Gilgamesh (anonymous) to Angels in America (Tony Kushner), that merit an educated person's attention. Good grief. Even if each work could be read in a day -- and most can't -- boning up on the Western Canon as set forth by Bloom would take nearly 10 years uninterrupted by any of ^ the mundane details of life, such as jobs, friends and loved ones, and most meals...
...what are these lists there for? Chiefly, it appears, to spark controversy and sales, particularly when Bloom gets around to handing out pass-fail grades to 20th century writers (see box). But for all the prepublication hype it has aroused, Bloom's back-of-the-book grab bag of ancient and modern writers forms the least interesting part of The Western Canon...
...Bloom does not really expect his Common Readers to master 850 or so writers. He wants them to pay close attention to the 26 discussed in the bulk of his book: Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer, Cervantes, Montaigne, Moliere, Milton, Dr. Johnson, Goethe, Wordsworth, Austen, Whitman, Dickinson, Dickens, George Eliot, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Freud, Proust, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Borges, Neruda, Pessoa and Beckett. This grouping, Bloom's elite among the elite, holds few surprises: an obligatory academic obscurity (Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa), four women and a majority of D.W.E.M.s. (Bloom gives canonical status to Homer and the major Greek dramatists and philosophers...