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With over twenty-five books to his name, as well as fellowships, honorary degrees and innumerable articles, Harold Bloom is arguably the nation’s premier literary thinker today.
Pushed to make more-unusual choices, Yale prof Harold Bloom was willing to dispense with the Bible ("since it's gotten all mixed up with questions of belief" in what is now an "insanely religious" country), but would not budge on Shakespeare, whom he called "the beginning, the middle and the end."
MY FIVE MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS
- Shakespeare, The Complete Works
"I won't say he "invented" us, because journalists perpetually misunderstand me on that. I'll put it more simply: he contains us. Our ways of thinking and feeling—about ourselves, those we love, those we hate, those we realize are hopelessly "other" to us—are more shaped by Shakespeare than they are by the experience of our own lives." - The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
(literature and fiction)
"He gives us human beings in the round; human beings that are more than simply names upon the page. With almost every contemporary novel, the characters are names upon the page." - La Divina Commedia by Dante Alighieri
(literature and fiction)
"La Divina Commedia" by Dante, preferably in the original. He had the visionary power of a poet who deals with unearthly things, fused with the capacity for rendering what we call reality." - Don Quixote By Miguel De Cervantes
(literature and fiction)
"He changes the whole nature of narrative and gives birth to the modern novel—and that has been the dominant form for several hundred years now, though it is perhaps dying at this very moment." - The Iliad By Homer
(literature and fiction, writing)
"Whether we like it or not—and I don't always like it—we are the children of classical culture."
Source:
http://www.newsweek.com
The book you cared most about sharing with your kids
- Alice's Adventures In Wonderland And Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
(literature and fiction)
"The two Alice books by Lewis Carroll are the finest literary fantasies ever written. They will last forever, and the Harry Potter books are going to wind up in the rubbish bin. The first six volumes have sold, I am told, 350 million copies. I know of no larger indictment of the world's descent into subliteracy."
Source:
http://www.newsweek.com
The primary answer has to be Shakespeare. Even if I did not teach Shakespeare all the time, I would always be re-reading Shakespeare, reciting Shakespeare to myself, brooding about the great plays. I tend personally to re-read the major lyric poets of the English language from Shakespeare's sonnets through Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane. That's what most vivifies and pleases me. I re-read Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub twice a year, but that's to punish myself. It is, I think, the most powerful, nonfictive prose in the English language, but it's a kind of vehement satire upon visionary projectors as it were, like myself, and so I figure it is a good tonic and corrective for me. I re-read Proust every year because In Search of Lost Time is just about my favorite novel, except maybe for Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, which I also tend to re-read every year or so. I re-read Dickens all the time, especially my peculiar favorite which I've loved since I was a child, The Pickwick Papers. I re-read Oscar Wilde nearly every day of my life, or I recite Oscar to myself, but that's a personal enthusiasm which perhaps surpasses his literary worth, very large as that indeed is. I read Dr. Samuel Johnson all the time because he is my great hero as a literary critic and I have tried to model myself upon him all my life. But this answer would be endless, since I do very little besides teach and read and write.
- A Tale Of A Tub by Jonathan Swift
(literature and fiction)
"I re-read Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub twice a year, but that's to punish myself. It is, I think, the most powerful, nonfictive prose in the English language, but it's a kind of vehement satire upon visionary projectors as it were, like myself, and so I figure it is a good tonic and corrective for me." - In Search Of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
(literature and fiction)
"I re-read Proust every year because In Search of Lost Time is just about my favorite novel, except maybe for Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, which I also tend to re-read every year or so." - The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
(literature and fiction)
"I re-read Dickens all the time, especially my peculiar favorite which I've loved since I was a child, The Pickwick Papers" - Complete Works Of Oscar Wilde by Oscar Wilde
(literature and fiction)
"I re-read Oscar Wilde nearly every day of my life, or I recite Oscar to myself, but that's a personal enthusiasm which perhaps surpasses his literary worth, very large as that indeed is."
Source:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com
What is your favorite book to teach?
Oh, most certainly, Shakespeare. Teaching either the high tragedies, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, or the greatest of the comedies, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream, or what may be, I think, the finest, most representative instance of what Shakespeare can do, the two parts of King Henry IV, taken together, considered as one play, in which, of course, the central figure is my particular literary hero, Sir John Falstaff. And the so-called late romances, which are really tragi-comedies, particularly The Tempest and The Winter's Tale.
Mr. Bloom appears to believe that reading should be damn hard work. Reading for fun? For the joy of getting caught up in a good story? To escape the cares of this life? Bah, humbug.What is truly amusing about all of this, however, are the novels that Mr. Bloom recommends readers clear their minds of cant and light scholarly candles with and whatnot; take a look
What Would Harold Bloom Read?
Source:
http://www.examiner.com
Why should you listen to him?
Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. He has published more than thirty books, has been the editor of a myriad of others, and has received numerous awards and honorary degrees, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Gold Medal for Belles Lettres and Criticism. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, and New York City.
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