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Sunday, March 04, 2007
I’m almost tempted to believe him
From Newsweek‘s “A Life in Books” interview with Harold Bloom:
Newsweek: [Name] an Important Book that you admit you haven’t read.
Bloom: I cannot think of a major work I have not ingested.
I’m not shocked.
Comments
What a egotistical blow-hard. But I’m not shocked either.
I’ve finally started reading Bloom, which I’d been intending to do for a while. I don’t agree with a lot of what he writes, but he’s interested in many of the same questions that I’m interested in. Specifically, in this case, the central problem of literariness in our time—for readers, writers, or critics—is, I think, the problem of abundance, and a good deal of what Bloom writes about is implicitly about that. Of course, he has a basically conservative viewpoint, as I continue to insist, and therefore he deals with abundance through a narrative of decline. For instance, from the introduction to The Anxiety of Influence: “In the contemporary poems that most move me, like the Corsons Inlet and Saliences of A. R. Ammons and the Fragment and Soonest Mended of John Ashbery, I can recognize a strength that battles against the death of poetry, yet also the exhaustions of being a late-comer.” It’s not the stereotype of conservatism as liking only centuries-dead authors and styles, but it is a narrative of a huge contribution of Shakespeare that can only be reworked and eventually used up—which provides the same hidden consolations that any narrative of decline does; in this case, the feeling that abundance is self-limiting.
I’m not shocked either - and indeed I believe him (have a look at the Western Canon list for a tiny sampling of what he’s read). His job is to read and write; he apparently does little besides his job. And he’s allegedly possessed of an eidetic memory. Egotistical, sure, but he’s had the time to do the reading, and he appears to take pleasure in only that activity. Seems tacky to hold the claim against him. (The question was about Important Works after all - surely it isn’t that hard to read the major English-language literature in fifty years, if you’re a fast reader with a good memory?)
...none of which excuses the dull pomposity of his Harry Potter bitching. Though that raises an important question - he’s only read the first Harry volume; I consider it (very) minor literature but a major cultural artifact. Which shows up the limitations of the question. A followup about popularity would have been worthwhile. Then again, so would a magazine other than Newsweek. :)
Bloom’s failure to read much of anything by contemporary avant-garde poets suggests to me that he’s a liar or a moron or both.
I think that’s pretty bad-ass. My list of non-reads is still so long, seeing as I’m a slow reader with very little time to devote to reading, that I can’t bear to pick just one. But I have heard stories, which may well be shaggy dogs, including one of a Cambridge prof who drunkenly revealed he had never read Hamlet and was shortly afterward relieved of his duties.
"What I don’t know isn’t knowledge.”
In full:
My name is Benjamin Jowett.
I’m master of Baliol College.
I know everything that there is to know
and what I don’t know isn’t knowledge.
Variant
My name is Benjamin Jowett;
I’m master of Balliol College.
If there’s aught to know, I know it,
And what I don’t know isn’t knowledge.
Thomas, I think you’re thinking of David Lodge’s humiliation game. Not sure in which novel he concocted it, though.
LB, how do you know that’s he’s failed to read much of anything by contemporary avant-garde poets?
He hasn’t had any interesting new ideas about what he’s read for a very long time. Probably since about 1980. Being Funes el memorioso doesn’t impress me all that much. It’s what you do with it, not just having read it.
I guess it wouldn’t make sense to follow up with a question like, name all the books that went right over your Shelley-addled head.
Rich, back when I was a Bloom fan, I remember reading interviews in which he distinguished between Ashbery and the avant-garde, and his ignorance of the latter shined through.
(He also admitted to not having read all the books he included in his canon list in *The Western Canon*, which would suggest that there *are* in fact major works he hasn’t read.)
This thread seems to be an example of the anxiety of abundance, so to speak. I mean, it’s clearly impossible to contradict Bloom’s statement, based as it is on “ingested” and a self-set definition of the word “major”. Bloom said that he read the books, or swallowed them, not that he necessarily fully appreciated them (something which is probably impossible). And if you’re going to argue that some books are inherently major and some aren’t, you’re arguing on Bloom’s terms. He may or may not have had much to say lately, but he’s said a lot about canon formation.
The feeling that it’s impossible to read everything is a sort of proxy for the fear of death (since that’s what makes lives finite). Sure, Bloom’s statement is egotistical or whatever, but what makes it threatening is that it involves taking on the mantle of the reader-immortal (as Bloom’s “strong poets” are writer-immortals) and thereby threatens us as readers or critics in an analogous way.
When I wrote “clearly impossible to contradict” I hadn’t yet read LB’s statement that Bloom said that he hadn’t read all the books on his canon list. Well, yes, Bloom can contradict himself. Unless he finished reading the works on his list in between the interview that LB read and this one.
Considering everything said here, I think that we can safely conclude that in this interview, Bloom was fucking with our heads. And that’s A Good Thing.
Okay, I think I know of a “major work” this guy hasn’t read. There’s this unwieldly looking tome that I’ve passed numerous times in my local Borders. On the cover, the word “GENIUS” appears in enlarged, bold font, and I’ve never been sure whether it refers to the author or his subject. Bloom, like me, has probably considered “ingesting” this one, but has possibly been put off by its excessive length and unsubtle title.
In full
Variant
The entire collectio is here.
But in this case:
Now come I, my name is Bloom
Smarter than any in this room
I’ve read many a page o’er
What I ain’t read isn’t major
Is this Leopold or Harold, Jim?
"I cannot think of a major work I have not ingested.”
So that’s how he got so damn big.
The greatest of bibliophages he is.
There once was a critic named Bloom,
tacked on ‘cogito’ - ‘ergo consume’.
The great bibliophage
misdigested a page
and anxieted three whole volumes.
I have a certain amount of sympathy for Bloom if only because enough fame and longevity will make anybody come across as a phony. The Sam Johnson bit is tedious, but it would have been rather unfair to insist that he just shut up after the Anxiety of Influence.
I’m always shocked at the viciousness of the attacks on Bloom. I suspect mostly these attacks issue from folks who know at best two or three of his works, and then only his most popular. Isn’t judging a critic by interviews and op-eds, a bit like judging a painter by letters? Or a philosopher by her CD collection? Bloom’s sense of humor bouys his criticism time and again, and his range of comment is impressive. If one has read his work, then one notices it encompasses such topics as African American religious practice, science fiction, Jewish identity and even New Age mysticism. The Bloom who is not a media caricature has worked with an admirable range of materials. Hardly conservative--as some critics have pointed out he advocates contemporary writers of the radical left--Bloom’s stances on classical writers could hardly be termed orthodox--Dante and Milton are egotistical heretics, Vico prevails over Descartes as the chief intellectual model, the so-called Pseudographia are often as spiritually rich as the Bible.
To be provocative: I suspect most of the really vicious stuff said about Bloom grows out of his insufficient observation of bourgeois protocols of humility. Furthermore it testifies, to a lingering tendency toward gossip-inspired prejudice (e.g. at least he reads those he criticizes). To close with a relevant tip of my hat to rap slang in this venerable forum: Stop sipping the Haterade when you talk about Bloom.