.jpg)
Mr. Harold Bloom
To call the Yale University Professor and book critic Mr. Harold Bloom a Harry Potter fan would be about as appropriate as asking the Pope to be a birth control pill spokesman.
In 2000, when Harry Potter mania was beginning its inexorable climb up the publishing record lists, Mr. Bloom said in the Wall Street Journal:
[Rowling's] prose style, heavy on cliche, makes no demands upon her readers....How to read Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone? Why, very quickly, to begin with, perhaps also to make an end. Why read it? Presumably, if you cannot be persuaded to read anything better, Rowling will have to do. Is there any redeeming education use to Rowling?
....Can more than 35 million book buyers, and their offspring, be wrong? Yes, they have been, and will continue to be for as long as they persevere with Potter.
Readers continued to persevere and Mr. Bloom continued in his unmitigated disdain of all things Potter, as well as anything else smacking of literary slumming.
When Stephen King was awarded the National Book Foundation's 2003 medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, Mr. Bloom had a fit, calling the Foundation's decision "another low in the process of dumbing down our cultural life."
He went on to call Mr. King
an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis.
and threw in a few more hits at Ms. Rowling for good measure:
Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.
.jpg)
The public -- according to Harold Bloom, anyway -- is an ass.
In Mr. Bloom's book How to Read and Why (published, ironically, the same year as Stephen King's memoir, On Writing -- more on that later), he expounds his theory of why people should read, his five principles of reading well, and lists the works that have made it past his personal litmus test of literary quality.
"To enrich mind or spirit or personality" is what Mr. Bloom believes the sole goal of reading should be, and his five principles of reading well are:
1. Clear your mind of academic cant.
2. Do not attempt to improve your neighbor or your neighborhood by what or how you read.
3. A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light.
4. One must be an inventor to read well.
5. Good reading should involve the recovery of the ironic.
Interesting? Yes. Useful to the common reader? Scarcely. 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 (I include here only the recommended novels, not the short stories, poems, or plays)
WWHBR? (What Would Harold Bloom Read?)
Don Quixote - Miguel De Cervantes
The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal
Emma - Jane Austen
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
Most of these books are read and loved by book fiends everywhere (yes, even those of us who slum about with copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) though I doubt it crosses our minds to recover the ironic or to improve our neighborhoods.
We read and enjoy these books because they are, simply, good. Mr. Bloom seems to be laboring under the strange delusion that anyone who reads for this lowbrow reason is a heathen and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. In fact, if Mr. Bloom's own prose is anything to judge by, he'd rather that everything be written as if it were an over-thick bean soup: dense and probably nutritious, but hardly a joy to consume. He would do well to crack open a copy of Strunk and White and cast an eye upon some of the rules therein. "Omit needless words," and "Write in a way that comes naturally" spring to mind.
Harold Bloom and Stephen King represent the ultimate literary face-off: those who elevate writing style above story, and those who believe the style should be subordinate to the enjoyment of the story. Like aged Capulets and Montagues, both sides -- not unlike Mr. Bloom and Mr. King -- have been hammering away at each other for decades. What better fodder for the Book Examiner?
On Wednesday, we'll look at Mr. King's anti-Bloom arguments and peruse his list of recommended readings in On Writing. Then, we'll discuss them both in a Harold Bloom vs. Stephen King fracas: Highbrow Reading versus Literary Slumming.
Have an opinion? I know every self-respecting book fiend does. Leave a comment below or direct your musings to michellekerns@surewest.net
Comments
Poor Mr. Bloom. He apparently has killed his inner child.
obviously Mr. Bloom is above all us mere mortals.
hahahaha what an idiot! like most academics...
I picked up one of bloom's books once in a bookstore... I couldnt get through it. Compaired to bloom, my nicomachean ethics textbook is engaging and light.
I happen to find more value in king and rowling, then in bloom, who belives any book not written by him, or written in the past 30-40 years is bad.
Harry Potter had its flaws, but it was a extremely complicated and engaging story with moral groundings and got readers thinking about and debating issues we rarely discuss in todays culture. over the course of seven books, rowling wove a rich tapestry of good and evil, racisem, bigottry, slavery, and the all conquring power of love.
I just cant stand him. I hated him before I started hearing about the frequent complaints from female yale students... but you will have to persue that on your own.
Michelle,
I have not read Bloom nor Rowling, but I think you may be misinterpreting his argument, at least from what you've included here. I don't believe he's saying readers shouldn't derive enjoyment from books, but rather they should enjoy the experience on a deeper level. I have a niece and nephew who have religiously followed the Harry Potter series for years, but often it seemed like the whole experience was to join in the Pottermania gripping many of their classmates, and to finish the books as quickly as they could consume them. Nothing wrong with that, but I wouldn't necessarily consider that a deeply literary experience, (to give myself away as a "white guy" reader) like I had when I was about 12 and read "Catcher in the Rye" and a couple of years later, "On the Road." Again, I haven't read the Potter books, so it's unfair of me to say, and maybe they do inspire the same kind of feelings that Salinger and Kerouac had on me at a formative age, but I do think it's important to draw a distinction between books purely made for entertainment purposes and those that demand a bit more of the reader. I really enjoyed Dan Brown's"Da Vinci Code," for example, and as an art history major, found some of the ideas absolutely fascinating. But it didn't leave me with the same feeling that I had on the last page of say, "Look Homeward, Angel," where you have to read the last page at least twice, just because you don't want it to end, and you have a lump in your throat as you close the back cover and place it on your nightstand before hitting the lights and lay awake for an hour thinking about it, and yes, have it maybe even change the way you think about things. I seek those kinds of experiences whenever I crack a new book, and find no cognitive dissonance in having to maybe do a little heavy lifting in order to fully enjoy the ride. Is Bloom a pompous ass? Maybe. But he might just have a point.
Bob - To be perfectly honest, YOU put the argument better than Mr. Bloom did! The whole reason I leapt into this fray was because of an article of Stephen King's that referred to Mr. Bloom as "tiresome." That intrigued me: what is so tiresome about him? I read a bunch of his columns and took in the comments he made about Ms. Rowling and Mr. King. Still, I thought, give the man his due, the number of people reading serious literature is shrinking. So maybe he's not too out there.
It wasn't until I read How to Read and Why that I was convinced he was Sauron and must be stopped at all costs. You sound like an eminently reasonable person who is capable of reading Look Homeward, Angel and The Da Vinci Code and enjoying both without having any sort of psychological dilemma about it. Mr. Bloom, on the other hand, would no doubt tell you that by reading The Da Vinci Code, you are sullying your brain. He doesn't just believe that genre literature (by this I mean mysteries, thrillers, adventures, espionage stuff, all the stuff that normal people read for fun) is for the weak-minded -- he doesn't think it should exist at all because its presence will keep people from reading the really good stuff.
Most rabid readers don't have a problem with reading both for pleasure and for intelligent discourse. And most of them don't care a bit to have anyone else tell them they are an idiot for liking something less than a literary masterpiece.
Mr. Bloom is correct in saying that some books just plain have a higher literary quality than others. However, to say that it is a BAD thing for readers to get excited about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows or the newest John Grisham or Stephen King's upcoming book, seems to me more than a little pompous. Add to that the fact that his book is as dry as the Mojave Desert.
Like I said, your argument made a hell of a lot more sense than Mr. Bloom's did. Congrats -- maybe you should be a professor at Yale.
What I find incredibly funny is that someone actually wrote a book on 'how and why' people should read, and actually developed a set a principles for it...and yet the book is so boring no one wants to read it...
What's not commonly known is that Bloom, some years ago, decided to write a children's book of his own. It fell flat on its face--nobody read it. Bloom is a big "death of the author" kind of "critic." And of course, once the author is "dead" who emerges as the center of attention--why the critic, of course. No, anything Bloom says can be instantly dismissed from your mind. He's an obnoxious gasbag--a fool. Untalented, and endlessly bitter.
Bloom is very well read. He has also written an exhaustive amount of material, comparable even to C. S. Lewis. I'm not one to admire titles and positions as these alone do not merit admiration or credibility, yet Bloom impresses. As vanguard of the critical literati, Mr. Bloom's opinion carries weight and that weight reflects on the totality of world literature throughout the ages. I believe he is applying these countercultural comments as a preserver to what he views--rightly so, with so vast a comprehensive command of the totality of literature--as the standard of quality literature. That standard has lessened and degraded in many ways over the past century. Much has been lost. He may be saying, look to the past for what was good and great, although you may still enjoy mainstream literature today, it perhaps could be so much more....
The argument that people can always read both Potter and better if they want to is simply missing Bloom’s point – he obviously recognises that people have the freedom to read both.
Someone above has written above, "Bloom is a typical 'death of the author' type of critic". I'm writing this to say that that statement is utter rubbish. Bloom (if you can be bothered reading him) openly believes in the future of the imagination. He is simply worried to the point of pessimism that (amongst other things) rubbish like Harry Potter is so embedded in cliché (daylight robbery in fact) that people's standards are being radically lowered by its over-marketed status and overblown success. To so continually over-praise and over-sell what is clearly inadequate cannot possibly be a good thing.
Kids will take what they are given (and crave simplicity too), but do need to be stretched in some way - the way all truly classic children's literature does. We all need to learn how to speak, and don’t advance this world by simply repeating the same fairy tales in clichéd, hackneyed and plainly unoriginal ways. I don’t personally enjoy seeing such basic ideas/stories/tropes etc recycled in weaker ways. Bloom does actually acknowledge that some reading is better than none - but there is a huge choice of better children's (and adult!) literature out there.
Bloom has actually based his career on the way imaginative writers are ‘influenced’ by other/better/older/preceding writers. He describes a sense of ‘anxiety’ affecting authors when they are confronted with the pain of having to ‘borrow’ – anxiety which ideally makes them IMPROVE in some way upon the works of the writers they are forced/impelled to 'borrow' from. He is actually the world’s expert on the subject (and on literary criticism in general in many people’s opinion) – he’s not some grumpy old fuddy-duddy taking a passing dig! Fantasy and horror have existed throughout the history of literate, and we all know how well-read Bloom is. Why not listen to him?
Stephen King can be polished, but is very formulaic - he has never to my knowledge tried to advance himself as a writer in an artful/poetic sense, so why give him such an award? It seems to be simply rewarding financial/populist success, which surely lowers the standard of an otherwise important award. Again, it’s all part of the wider debate about the lowering of important societal standards, which Bloom says he has seen effect the choice of set texts in schools and universities. The better stuff gets left out – when does it stop, and why need it even start?
Bloom had real courage to continue to address the ‘Potter frothers’ (a occasionally quite venomous battalion of archers, releasing their attacks from behind a 10-foot deep wall), and is a man of immense ability. When I make a search for ‘Bloom’ and find clearly young people joining in the anti-intellectual fray (“Blooms a fat this or that” etc) I find it really disheartening. People should know how many millions of reasonable and imaginative non-fuddy duddy people are fully on Blooms side!
Wow, I'm so "shocked" Harold Bloom, of all people, would say such a thing!...tell me something I don't know.
F--k him. He has for years missed the essential point: good storytelling pulls in far more people than good writing. The ability to tell a great story, a story like the kinds they told in the olden days around camp fires when the oral tradition was all we had as human beings, is what makes a writer truly successful. The ability to write well doesn't mean much if you don't have anything to write about that people actually want to read.
How can a male recommend Jane Austen. How??!??!
I'm sticking with Stephen King's list.
Bloom strikes me as just another intellectual elitist for whom literature consists only of those works that require word-by-word and line-by-line analysis to comprehend. What he's missing is that, for most people, reading is a step-by-step, gradual process.
Just as babies must gradually work their way up to adult food, so must most readers work their way up to the literature Bloom so loves. As such, every book has its place. Ten years ago, for example, I wouldn't have enjoyed Blood Meridian or have comprehended it nearly as much as I can now. In other words, I've grown and matured as a person and, consequently, as a reader. Any book or article or blog has its place no matter how low or high brow--as long as there's someone who enjoys reading it and who takes something from the text.
Your comment is stupid. If you have ever read a Bloom's book that is exactly what he is trying to do.
Mr. Bloom is an old man who has read more in his lifetime than scores of others combined. I think sloppy, cliche`d writing tires him endlessly. Personally, when I was younger I could read things that I wouldn't now (and I'm only 33) because they seem, umh... tired, cliche`d, and predictable. Truly great writing is never any of these, no matter how many times you read it; in fact, you get more out of it the more you read it.
I believe Mr. Bloom is trying to emphasize that the maturation of an individual requires them to challenge themselves constantly and trash such as the Harry Potter series does nothing of the kind.
Why is the lofty, "illustrious" critic Mr. Bloom bothering - or, to employ a cliche - "lowering himself" to criticize Rowling's series, which was written for a target audience of pre-teens? Does he regularly evaluate fiction written for children? Does he rue that the Harry Potter success has persuaded millions of young video-game-addicted children to turn to books again, and induced their parents to read them as well? Oh the shame of it. What a cranky old crank Bloom has become.
>>How can a male recommend Jane Austen. How??!??!<<
It depends on the maturity of the man.
"Reading... for the joy of getting caught up in a good story? Bah"
But Bloom is arguing that the Potter books are not good stories... He's not saying that you can't read for 'fun', he's saying that you shouldn't read crap. And more power to him.
Those critics who claim that Harry Potter is 'crap' in any way have failed to grasp the omnipresent theme of the series: "Love Conquers All." Your statement is grossly elitist and ridiculous on the whole. Rowling elucidates her theme more successfully than many of the greats of our English literary tradition.
Bloom is just angry because Rowling and King are two extraordinarily gifted and influential writers who are not Jewish.
Jean: That's a canard. Bloom appreciates a huge range of authors, many of whom are extraodinarily gifted, influential, and not Jewish. Rowling and King are neither extraordinarily gifted nor particularly influential.
Jason: I agree with you entirely. Being an adult and a thoughtful person is about *not* settling for cliches, either in literary style or in moral and critical thought.
Lucian: Yes, absolutely.
Halolled Broom is right. Bloom wants us to engage deeply, critically, and thoroughly with literature--for pleasure and for the insight it gives us into our lives. He believes in the incredible power of books to offer us solace, but he thinks crap books don't serve this purpose and aren't worth the time it takes to read them.
Kryle: Bloom thinks the literature we hand to kids is mostly appalling tripe, and that there is much better material available: Lewis Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, AA Milne, Kenneth Graham, etc. He doesn't think we should be handing Blood Meridian (terrific book, in all the sense of the word, by the way) to ten year-olds--heaven forfend. He just doesn't think we should be handing them Eragon and Harry Potter either.
I think Bloom wouldn't really object to an adult's reading Grisham or King now and then, as long as they realised they were reading junk. Sometimes people want to read crap, just as sometimes we want a Hostess snack cake or some chips. We should never lose sight of the fact that we're reading junk, though--it might be entertaining and diverting, but it's not something that contributes to our way of looking at the world or understanding ourselves. It's not spiritually nourishing.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for that replay!
reply*
Important literature is not limited to the narrow spectrum of novels, which challenge us to "to enrich mind or spirit or personality." In fact, that segment of the literary community owes much of its readership to the authors who cultivate love of reading by telling an enthralling story--just as Rowling and King regularly do.
I feel a deep need to defend Rowling against such stupidity. Firstly Potter was written as a children's book. Sorry Bloom but eight year olds aren't going to be reading Don Quixote. King, he's clever but a bit windy. If Bloom decided to remark upon the deplorable writing of Stephanie Meyer, than I would have been the first to applause.
It is amazing that people actually think that "it's a children's book" is a good defense for literary inadequacy. Authors like A. A. Milne, and Norton Juster are children's authors, but they are also amazing authors.
Did you read the actual article? He lists Kipling, Carroll, Thurber, and Grahame as authors children should read. Childrens novels that have literary value and complicated themes. At no time does he say "children should be reading Don Quixote."
I agree with Harold Bloom. And with some of the other comments here. The fact is neither Stephen King nor J.K. Rowling are good writings, what they know how to do is write something people want to read, and that generally seems to be whats easy and exciting. Good literature is being thrown off the shelves, nobody realizes how amazing it is to write something truly good anymore, look at all the best sellers! Most of the writing is horrible writing! Its important for people to use their intellectual side and actually learn something from the writing, and the reason some people cant read Harold Bloom is because his writing is full of information, its like education, you need to try to understand it, it takes work, its not for a night you don't want to think about anything. But when you delve into writing that's rich and interests you, its unlike anything.
Quote: "It's not spiritually nourishing."
You couldn't be more wrong.
Do you eat for nourishment only? Don't you pick something tasty? Do you- pardon me- have sex with your wife just for reproduction?
Harry Potter is written to entertain. People expect that and find that. It is Rowling's mastery of story-telling that attracted those many people.
Is fun wrong in itself, Mr. Gradgrind?
And I so far supposed that Harry Potter is just fun. It is not a Dostoyevsky's but as the series grows, it gets deeper and more complex in both its construction and its examination of the complicated emotions of the characters and their relationships.
And the claim that this will divert people from classic literature is baseless. Most of those who read Harry Potter probably wouldn't have read anything worthy if it weren't there. Quite the contrary; Harry Potter may have opened the way for them to read.
Harry Potter charmed me as did "Crime and Punishment" from its first two pages. I enjoy both, and what you do is defiance of the innocent pleasures of the child in you that I hope is not dead yet.
Correction: maybe not "most", but you get the idea.
You had me until Strunk and White. If there's any writing more useless than Bloom's it's S&W.
There are things to admire about Melville. And there are things to admire about King. I read both. I find both very enjoyable. They're both good at the art of writing, only in different ways. The former is noted to have pushed convention even to the distaste of his fan-base, which ultimately made him famous on one scale, while the latter didn't, which made him famous on another.
Stephenie Meyer, on the other hand, is awful (content over art). But that's neither here nor there.
Bloom's a great reader. But he's become too far removed from the general public. You read two or three novels every night and decades later you're a much different reader than when you started. He's forgotten what reading was like before he finished his first 1,000 books. That was ages ago for him, but for people whose lives aren't spent as book critics, that's the here and now for them. He's light-years ahead, sure, but most of the time I'd rather play the puzzle-games in the newspaper than fiddle with advanced physics. For me the former is far more fun than the latter... for Einstein, perhaps not.
How else to put it?
King is like running a mile... Melville's like running a marathon... Meyer's like half-stretching then going back to sleep.
Harold Bloom reads over 1000 pages per hour, he's been reading since the age of three...he is a genius, which is why he is head of literature at YALE!!! Most people commenting on this post wouldn't even be accepted to Yale, myself included, much less be a professor there.
When Einstein tells the rest of the world that E=MC squared and over 30 million say he's wrong, does that make him wrong? And yes, I am equating Bloom to literature as Einstein to science, the man has read over 10,000 books...yes, you read that right 10,000. Once you read over 10,000 books you can tell the man he's wrong. Until then, I'm sticking with Blooms assessment and will read Shakespeare instead of Harry Potter.
P.S. - In 100 years people won't be reading Harry Potter to learn about literature of our time, they'll read Catcher in the Rye, or Kushner's Angel in America, something that has entertainment value, depth and brevity!
So you're saying Harry Potter doesn't have entertainment value, or depth? That's rich. You're right about one thing though. You wouldn't be accepted to Yale... ;)
I love Moby Dick, and JL Borges, and Garcia Marquez. But I like the Potter series too, am I a traitor?
Can't I have some ice cream or should I eat broccoli only?
To all you stupids that don't understand: What Bloom is trying to say is that what we should do is read good books and read in order to become better for ourselves not "to be caught in the joy of reading". There is no such thing as the joy of reading. Every story in itself is good(aesthetically) and can give you the joy of reading as long as you have the strength and the power to substitute the characters with yourself.
Yes, in fact Bloom's book "How to Read and why" is boring, but there is nothing more boring than reading a story that expose any sort of true value. If you read that groups of novels Bloom has listed you will find yourself a better man because you have already undergone a process of self-examination. Please leave Rowling and her world-insulting stories aside, and start reading Shakespeare, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Keats, Shelley etc etc.
I find most of these comments ridiculous. I love Harry Potter, and I love most of the books that Bloom listed. There is more to Harry Potter once you look past the cliches, so I'm assuming anyone who says otherwise isn't familiar with the books. I'm not going to bother defending the series because they're a work of genius by a truly talented author, and if you can't see that, there's no point in trying. What one person takes away from a book is entirely different from what another person takes away. You're all wasting your time trying to force your opinions down another person's throat.
Hi Michelle,
We all love Harry Potter, we all respect Harold Bloom. You apparently have thought through all these. But your article just makes it even harder for people who are still struggling on what to think and what to conclude. If you are evil person, then what you are doing is taking advantage of people who are still struggling. You are not to speak on this subject. Leave it to people themselves to figure it out. There was no conflicts and drama until you made one.
My major problem with Bloom and those like him is that he suggests reading for entertainment is somehow wrong or unworthy. If we find value in reading for escape, entertainment, or inspiration--as millions do--why shouldn't we do so?
If you want to read in order to mine for scholarly insights, no problem. But don't lord that over the rest of us as if we should be spending our time more wisely.
Your article was well-put, by the way.
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!