Word: bloomings
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...Bloom published his first work—Shelley’s Mythmaking—in 1959 and has continued to write and think seriously about literature ever since. His 1973 work The Anxiety of Influence earned him international acclaim for its novel contention that authors are constantly aware of their predecessors’ achievements and “misread” them in order to achieve originality. “Influence,” Bloom wrote, “is influenza—an astral disease...
That’s a big claim, and Bloom writes about it as he does virtually every other literary subject—with eagerness, erudition, and a tinge of comic self-awareness...
...years following Shakespeare, Bloom sought to write books for a more popular audience, specifically on the importance of literature in informing our lives. His 2000 publication, How to Read and Why, was an assessment of literature’s importance on life throughout the ages...
Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? exists in this vein of informed literary analysis for (quasi) popular consumption. Bloom wrote much of an original draft, but later discarded it and started anew. A life-threatening health crisis—when he was, as he said, “sliced up as so many people”—made him re-examine the work and the importance of literature to himself. After “being at the gates of death,” Bloom said, “I took one look at the book and simply wrote...
...Bloom writes in his introduction that the book “rises out of personal need, reflecting a quest for sagacity that might solace and clarify the traumas of aging, of recovery from grave illness, and of grief for the loss of beloved friends...