This reminds me of a short passage from Haruki Murkami's Norwegian Wood: “It’s not that I don’t believe in contemporary literature,” he added, “but I don’t want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short.” And later on: "If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."
Both classics and contemporary literature are important. If you focus on one and ignore the other, you'll be narrow-minded. It's like studying history without caring about current events. Why look at the past if not to better understand the present? (Sorry for the mistakes, English is not my first language)
This quote from Stoner (which I read because of this channel and is now probably my favorite book) comes to mind: "Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know."
Yeah it gets horrible, i pushed myself to reading 250 books a year (taking notes and paying attention tho, i have a lot of free time), but the more you read the more new authors you discover and the more random hidden literature you want to get into and so it's like the more i'm reading the less well-read i'm feeling lol
@@HugaHoodie95 woooo 250 that is really good ❤️❤️❤️❤️ how to absolve so much information ? When the book is really good I spend a week or more thinking about it. 😂😂😂😂😂 I have a long way to go people
its truly simple just delete your backlog and after that type down 10 titles you really want to read and just read them after you finish those try to come up with another 10 titles
@@misquotedbuffalo3757 The Crossing is Cormac's most underrated work, no question. It's a eulogy for the American Western as a literary genre, and at the same time a somber love letter to storytelling in general. The passage where Billy holds the dead wolf's head in hands is on par with anything he's written
@@efleishermedia I'd argue that it is his best work. I know Blood Meridian get all the praise, and rightfully so... it's brilliant. But The Crossing is on another level for me. It's just perfect.
I've been trying to find booktube\ book review channels that aren't pushing ya and poorly written contemporary garbage they get for free from publishers. Someone online recommended you and I am so glad. This was exactly what I was hoping to find👏 Thank you.
“who hurt you, man?”😂 well, I enjoyed Infinite jest- but I also love Bloom. He also hates Poe (my favorite author, but I forgive him). in fact I’ve been using his essays as supplementary material for my readings for some time now. How about some Camille Paglia, mr Sargent? :)
Thanks for stopping by! The Poe thing is weird, right? The Cask of Amontillado is one of my favorite short stories. Absolutely more Paglia - Thanks for the suggestion. I'd love to review Sexual Personae but I imagine it's going to take some time - It's huge.
Camille was a disciple of Bloom’s at Yale (in fact he helped her throughout the writing process of Sexual personae) - for some reason I skipped your “break, blow, burn” review; I’ll check that out :) (I also think “the pit and the pendulum” is a work of genius, but, anyway...)
I'm wondering if Bloom was full of himself. too many books i deem good to great and he labels trash. No i don't mean Harry Potter, yes that is fun and fine fiction its not literature and it doesn't pretend to be, but labeling Poe bad? WTF
In my opinion, you Cliff, also have a great ability to communicate what is so great and important about the books you review. What you do is very admirable, and I appreciate you for your hard work.
I own Bloom's book "Genius" and, being from Portugal, I was curious about what he wrote on Eça de Queiroz, and the way he hyped the book "The Relic", one his least read books here, made me buy it and currently loving it. I think Bloom's sentiment can be expressed through this excerpt from Thoreau: "Men sometimes speaks as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written, and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of men? They are the only oracles which are not decayed. To read well - that is, to read true books in a true spirit - is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written."
I read his Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, where he goes through and talks about every play by Shakespeare and what it means to him. It was a complete delight.
Pynchon, while intimidating, is definitely worth a go. "The Crying of Lot 49" is a short, fun romp that gives you a good idea of Pynchon's style. I'm about to start "Inherent Vice", which a ton of people recommended to me as the most accessible of Pynchon's works. "Gravity's Rainbow" is sitting on my shelf and staring me down every day. I'll get around to it eventually.
Don't hesitate, Gravity's Rainbow is one of my favorite books, and even if I didn't get everything the first time, I really enjoyed. I've already planned to reread.
There's definitely reasons to hate the book but if you get through the first part the rest of it has this perverse charm where you just have to sit in awe of the stuff that he manages to do.
@Jack Clare Your not even wrong, but it's not like it is depraved for no reason. Every single sadistic thing that happens in the book builds on the themes. But like I said, if thats not your thing it's a valid reason to not like it.
The biggest problem with Harold Bloom is his failure along with most literary critics to consider the best genre fiction like science fiction and fantasy alongside great literary fiction. The great book lists usually have literary classics over great sci-fi or fantasy, paradise lost and the divine comedy is like fantasy but it only counts as literary fiction. The best Philp K Dick or Ursula Le Guin is as important to me as reading Moby Dick.
Man, I hope you read Miss Lonelyhearts, it’s a gem. A perfect, little masterpiece. Just read it again for the sixth time a few weeks ago. Also, hope you do another review of Blood Meridian!
I feel like Bloom is every freshman English major's favorite critic. He definitely was mine. But, at least for me, when you read some of the writers from the "school of resentment" that Bloom repeatedly derided, you find that Bloom's formalism can be quite limited and obdurate. Analyzing literary works from only an aesthetic perspective is restrictive. As much as I admire Bloom's passion, eloquence, and prodigious knowledge of literature, I disagree with his belittlement of Marxist, feminist, New Historicist, etc. literary criticism. These schools of thought certainly have their place in the field of literary studies.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. Macbeth act 5 scene 5 The last line is, perhaps, the most meaningful: Faulkner said in his Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech that people must write about things that come from the heart, "universal truths." Otherwise, they signify nothing.
Great to hear about you reading Pynchon! With you being one of my favorite reviewers and him one of my favorite writers, I'd always hoped for you two to intersect some day. I would wholeheartedly recommend the Pynchon in Public podcast as a companionpiece to GR. They do chapter by chapter commentary and discussion on his novels, one novel per season, and they are funny and entertaining as well as insightful. I could have never made sense of the last twenty-or-so pages (now my favorite part of the book) if I hadn't listened to the brilliant discussion they held about that ending. Absolutely recommended.
Weisenburger's companion to Gravity's Rainbow is immensely helpful for the little references and backtracks he does. There are so many connections made between the obscure references that no one would ever get without it being pointed out. Especially in the beginning sections where it establishes a bunch of obscure mystic and scientific symbols that pop up all the time. I'll have to check out the podcast since I've been rereading it now.
I can't get down with Bloom on this one. I think he strawmans the approaches he doesn't like and doesn't even try to understand them. Of course I see the value of canonizing but the way he wants to control how to do literary criticism is boring to me. I'd rather have the multiple approaches we have today than a one truth that everyone should follow.
Thanks for posting this. I think something that kept me from reading before I decided to read most of the classics in literature, philosophy, and poetry was because there was too much stuff out there. But now that I’ve been able to to narrow it down to about 300-350 works, my journey can begin. I agree, everytime I finish one of these works, I’m left a much more rounded person. Like I understand people and the human condition a little better, a little deeper. The knowledge, love, wisdom, beauty, and virtue in these works do stand the test of time. I’m not intimidated by the nearly infinite amount of books out there, since I’m intent on only reading the classics. Same when it comes to music and visual arts.
Love the classics. I just finished War & Peace the other day after starting it at the beginning of the pandemic and it really moved me in a deeply profound way. I feel like a different person after reading it. More grateful with what I have in life. Despite being 1200 pages I already want to reread it.
Bloom actually seemed pretty down to Earth for a literary critic. I gotta respect him for arguing that classic books should not be subjected to modern analyses and standards. Usually I tend to think that high caliber critics are just kind of full of themselves, but I actually do value some of Bloom's contributions.
I like his literary criticism on some English-speaking authors, but his whole rant on the "school of resentment" was really shallow and pretentious. although I think he is accurate in describing many young people disinterested in real theory that use mutilations of serious authors out of context to project their resentment (this is specially common in undergraduate universities), when you step out of this landscape and dive deep into the real theoretical debate you realize that there are lots of grave errors and misreading. in a sense he is like Chomsky. he made great contributions in popularizing certain concepts, authors and thoughts, and also by producing an extensive body of work; on the other hand, he made a disservice by spreading misconceptions about many things because of his stubbornness and incapability - or simple unwillingness, I don't know and don't care - to study more complex philosophies. mind you I haven't read nearly 1/3 of what he wrote, but I'm sure he has written great books on topics other than contemporary philosophy. Richard Rorty responded to this term he coined and made a similar critique. worth reading.
Nah. I think that Bloom's "school of resentment" is really lazy thinking. It's as if he was afraid of new ideas and wanted to shut down discourse he didn't like.
"Because he is able to illuminate what is so important about these books. And when you have somebody who can do that, when you have somebody that valuable.. they're worth their weight in gold." That is You, for all of us. I appreciate you.
‘It’s cool when you find Someone who hyped up difficult material!’ I couldn’t agree more, everything possible, is interesting, sometimes it just takes an interesting person to gravitate you towards it. I believe there’s a phrase ‘you won’t find geology cool until you meet a cool geologist’.
I’m a new father and don’t make time to read like I used to. Your channel inspires me to pick up books, and your recommendation of Cormac McCarthy has changed the way I regard literature forever. Needless to say, another Blood Meridian review would be thoroughly enjoyed.
There is another beautiful soul as great as Bloom if not greater. George Steiner is his name and I can super recommend Tolstoy or Dostoevsky of his or you can watch some amazing material like Of Beauty & Consolation on youtube. In the age of everything-is-relevant and your merit is defined by your identity group and not your actual artistic value, Harold Bloom is more important than ever. Great video, thank you.
I'd say there's a fundemental misunderstanding in that ideology vs. aesthetics argument. For one, identity is not the same as ideology. You don't see people claiming being straight is an ideology, but you do see this conflation happen a lot when people claim there's a 'trans ideology' at work. What Bloom is correct in pointing out is that an author's identity doesn't determine the artwork's quality. But classic masterpieces require a test of time to become part of the hall of greats, so it stands to reason that if we want more diversity in that hall, we need to be made more aware of diverse authors so that we may discover masterpieces we'd otherwise overlook.
I think he explained his distinction between this when he was talking about Alice Walker and Jay Wright, both black artists. He dislikes Walker because he thinks she puts the message of the text before any aesthetic value or technique, whereas the poet, Wright, does the opposite. Both of them pull a lot from African and Black culture but it's the way they choose to do it where the distinction is drawn.
@@ItsVyy Makes more sense. I'd say a balance between the two is needed. Aesthetics without a message is like an empty glass, you can admire its design, but if it's left empty it's not fulfilling much of a purpose. And vice versa, all message and no style is going to feel like being splattered with water with nothing to hold it in xD
Eh, I dunno. I've only experienced Bloom's interviews and his perspective always irritated me. I don't doubt his passion and love for literature, but he's way too elitist for me. To say that someone is somehow spiritually or intellectually deficient due to them having not read your favorite books just kinda seems silly and out of touch. I plan on reading his books because im sure he's more nuanced but I'm still skeptical.
The education of a lifetime. Exactly! I discovered Bloom last year. I'm in my fifties and I feel in desperate need of a decent education before I cast off this mortal coil but where to turn? Who would be Virgil to my Dante? Thankfully I discovered Bloom and do not have to wander alone in dark woods. Also, what better task to set oneself during this period of increased time with only one's own company than to become great friends with some of the greatest minds of all time?
I got the book on audible( I know) . I like his interviews better but it's probably because I'm more accustomed to them than books. Even books I like, read by the author are more foe falling asleep than them talking to a crowd.
Hi, Cliff! I really appreciate what you're doing with the channel. You treat, and i believe it's the right way of doing it, literature as a starting point for a discussion. In these days that's what we need the most!
There's a middle ground between critical theory and the Canon, history will reveal it. Bloom was just as obstinate as the postmodernists, his enemies. His POV is already antiquated.
In essence I somewhat agree with this, but that's all too American anyway, and has been so. His canon for example, only Anglo would put mediocrities as Austen and Dickens among the great ones, or in general, his preference for Anglo writers. Wasn't he monolingus? Chomsky certainly is, that's to typical for American scholars. And about postmodernists, they draw a lot from French post WW2 critical thought, yet, the way American lit-crit people perceived them, is completely different from the way their work is applied in Europe. In any case, every POV is antiquated after 40-50 years, there has to be something as supra-canon, where, if you don't know about, say, Homer, Plato, Shakespeare or Kant and Descartes, you really don't know what are you talking about when it comes to Occident.
i think this book is a absolute gem. I have read 6 of the books he recommended now; Diary of a hunter, Hamlet (x5 times now, read it twice in highschool), crime and punishment, Bergtagen, Swanns Way and blood meridian. All of these are books that i could read on repeat for the rest of my life.
Also, I would LOVE a re-review of Blood Meridian! I've read it 4 times and I just believe it's a book with infinite possibilities for discussion. It's cryptic without being opaque, I just love the concepts that are brought up around the campfire lol. I vote yes for a re-read and re-review :)
While the channel is called Better Than Food, I would compare books to food in this instance. Only reading the best classics is going to be like only drinking fine wine every day until you're sick of 'em 🤣 When the snobby elitist tells you something is good, it usually is damn good. Though I'd never trust an elitist to tell me what's bad, since their standards tend to be polished to the point of being narrow and hyper-specialized.
infinite jest can be tedious, but it'd be better to hear a more in-depth argument or at least a defense of this as an argument. IJ did for me what viewing any good piece of art does: taking what is right in front of you and making it unfamiliar that it can evoke feeling. this is kind of the whole point of this whole "art" thing. more than that, IJ puts into practice what he talks about in This Is Water: the value of choice and how this relates to different kinds of addiction in modern society. how many people that watch you do you think actually sit down and read a book? how often do you think they do it, relative to watching RU-vid videos about books?
Denouncing "popular literature" is probably counter-productive if Bloom's goal is to instill a love of reading. Few if any children ever got into literature by reading Shakespeare or Dostoevsky, if anything being forced to read these authors long before you're mature enough to appreciate them is a reason why a lot of people end up avoiding literature altogether. I can only speculate that Bloom might have fallen into that all too human trap of becoming too wrapped in his own bubble to understand the world outside it. One can after all scarcely imagine the gulf that separates Bloom from a child that's picking up his/her first books. The problem however comes when you have adults whose main literary interest is still Harry Potter, which is a topic in itself.
I have been trying to teach myself how to read, understand and enjoy poetry for a few years now. It has been very slow going, but I have managed to make small gains and in doing so I have opened my world up to W.B Yeats who I absolutely love. I have also learned that I'm not meant to love every poet's work. It either speaks to you or it doesn't, which makes it very special when you find a piece of poetry that does. I've had to source out a lot of supplementary material to help me along the way. Thankfully, there is no shortage of this material on the internet. I am currently struggling with T.S. Eliot which I am finding very difficult but I certainly understand more of it now then I did when I first started. I feel like it has been time well spent and I'm pretty sure that teaching myself to enjoy poetry will be something I will work on for the rest of my life. I expect it will just unfold one little bit at a time.
I’m quite interested in checking out this book, though I am already finding quite some things I don’t agree with and will have to check it out myself to determine that better! But that’s beside the point: I’m in an interesting place as a reader where I spent 4 years studying comparative literature while also working as a literacy mentor at elementary schools where I worked directly with struggling readers. I’m studying to be an English teacher now (most likely middle school) and I’m in an interesting place when it comes to pedagogy behind K-12 education. Because in my literacy methods classes we discuss how we can encourage this aesthetic love of reading in kids, especially kids who struggle. For anyone who wants to rethink who they are as readers: spend some time with a child just learning to read. It.Is.Difficult. The more i delve into learning how children read, how we teach reading, the more I have reflected on my own reading and how understandable it is that without good support children can give it up all together and become adults who refuse to read for their own. As adults when we read there are so many steps we take that children have to be taught explicitly. And teaching children to be deep readers comes from adults who teach them and model for them that reading is more than just doing it to make teachers happy or pass a standardised exam (gotta love the post No Child Left Behind era ...). I 100% think that children deserve quality books!! But I also genuinely believe that literary canons should be critiqued especially when we are pushing Eurocentric literature to children who do not relate to these experiences (I myself as a Latina who was an avid reader as a kid, found it hard to enjoy or relate to a lot of what we read in school, even if it was okay literature). Of course, we need to teach kids to be prepared for the world and the systems they’ll have to be a part of (those darn exams ...) but also, exposing kids (and ourselves) to more than just European centered narratives. I love your review of this book and I have to check it out myself, see what I can learn from it for myself mostly, but I also think back to how a lot of what I read has my students in mind and how to get them to read with intention and love reading which let me tell ya is not always easy to do especially with kids who struggle 😅 but yeah, valuing reading as adults definitely helps kids value reading as well! And I think this book will make for an interesting reflection on what we teach in schools and why. I was lucky to be raised a bookworm and writer , who went on to study literature and read some impressive, heady things. But now as an educator to very young people, it’s interesting to come back to earth for a little and think about how we read as normal people and not Uni professors , and that watching my 8th graders read graphic novels and such with joy and all the discussions we can make from new books written with diversity in mind - it makes all this work very worth it :)
Been wanting to pick this book up for a while, ever since I read the How to Read a book by Adler and Van Doren. And I agree about poetry. I just didn't understand it. Then I read Eidolans by Walt Whitman and everything changed.
I would love to see you review Hamlet, Macbeth or King Lear! Also, if you want to get into poetry more, check out the original 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass! There's a great Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of it with an intro by Bloom. I'll send it to you if I have to!
Very interesting and well handled, given Bloom's rather sour reputation. I am only aware to a modest degree of the Bloom controversy, but I believe what you are taking from him is the general idea as opposed, partly, to the specific lists. The lists must matter, of course, as too many have still not read Moby Dick, for one (and I haven't read Milton). I'm sure you know, too, that many great readers go broke after reading Steven Moore's Back Pages. The problem that does arise, though, with a book that in effect eschews most of the contemporary (I gather you don't feel sheepish reading so many books in translation so I'll leave that complication aside), is that living writers, particularly writing in English, need all the encouragement they can get, and those who fail to obtain, say, Faulknerian heights, do not necessarily fail to add something to life, even their own lives. Through an odd set of circumstances I just came to receive and read a book called White Mythology (2 novellas--the first over 300 pages)--by the Canadian WD Clarke, that odds were severely against me ever coming across, and the author was not at Faulkner's level, but certainly worthy of attention, witty, intelligent, and, in his second novel surprising and powerful. So I guess my point is we do need Bloom, but we also need to do all we can to promote a contemporary vibrant writing culture. (Sorry about the length of comment 120 something and thanks for, pardon me, the food for thought.) Shit, I have to add that I have entered Infinite Jest twice and failed to become enthralled in time to become engaged, planned to try again this summer and will not...I think there is something of an Updikian concentration on the purely US, mostly middle class surface maladies, a failure to capture humanity at large that repels me.
I love reading classics but man, listening to Bloom makes me want pick my next book outside of the western canon. His elitism has the opposite effect on me, haha. I think he gets a lot wrong when he's that strict and that's a pity.
One realizes instantly when they are reading a great work...somehow great readers do instinctively seem to love great authors...it isn’t about reading inside or outside or being strict...
Since you appreciated this book, you should at least acquire Harold Bloom's book on the "Western Canon." More books from more countries and an *astounding* list of his Canon. A LOT more than Shakespeare!
I have found with stubborn friends that Tennyson is often a gateway drug to poetry. I recommend spending time with a work. "Ulysses" is powerful, especially when he begins to comment on old age. "Break, Break, Break" likewise is very thought provoking. The barrier to entry with poetry, I am convinced, is work. Multiple readings. Reading it out loud. Wrestling with it. Finally, mastering it. It is worth the effort. Thanks for the video. Because of you, I've read both "Stoner" and "The Peregrine" in the last month.
I like Harold Bloom but I admit I prefer DFWallace to Pynchon. Gravity’s Rainbow felt just unreadable whereas Foster Wallace’s footnotes reminded me I was in a book; but the sadism was funny to me-perhaps I’m a masochist. Perhaps Pynchon people are dominants.
One needs patience for poetry, perhaps even imagination. The best and worst part about it, is that it rarely ever reveals everything it paints a picture of.
I think I agree with this. Every poem is like a half-built or decaying structure where the visitor has to project what is missing into the context, thus providing room for a stronger identification with the piece than art forms where all the details are provided by the creator. Nicely put! I think I'll re-read some Auden now!
Hey! Love the review, I am definitely looking for this book. I great poet to change your mind about poetry is Carlos Drummond de Andrade. He is the best in this gender in Brazil and I know he was translated to English ;)
Bloom has always praised the Western canon of literature. Very little mention of Japanese or Chinese writing, or South American writing, or anything else.
Now I am reading Suttree. McCarthy is really intense to read. I burst out laughing when you made that voice, man. Regarding mentors who inspire, you make the list. Great insights, as always
You don’t like poetry, that’s okay, but try and read ANYTHING by Gerard Manley Hopkins. He would’ve been friends with Pesoa, had they ever met. Hopefully that’ll tickle your interest
Shakespeare, Shakespeare, shakesapre....it all starts with Homer apparently. This is a very pedestrian review of an otherwise lofty topic. This is why people have such difficulty with millennials.
i appreciate your comments - but it would be interesting to understand, say, what are the various ways that Bloom would grade papers. what are teachers looking for in these English Lit papers? I hear a bit about aesthetics from Bloom -- is that the appropriate focus? Which aesthetics? There's a lot there - but so little is explained to the average, neophyte, student. It's all pretty ethereal. that's why most students don't study this stuff: they can't figure out what they are supposed to do. What is good English lit paper, what is not.
