"What Do You Think Of The Death of Harold Bloom?"

Oh, he was still alive? 

There was a time I could waste my time on people who wanted to pull up the ladder after everyone they wanted to allow into "the canon" had gotten in but I don't care anymore.  I'm not that gone on the concept of "the canon" having wondered why anyone would consider someone who hadn't read the items on their canon to be uncouth when no one in the world has read all of the worthwhile books that have been written.  I'm not bothered that younger people seem to get out of high school and into college not having read the books I was assigned in high school, some of which were great works, some lesser works. I looked at Harold Bloom's "canon" and, while I have nothing against any or the works on it, it's kind of both absurdly expansive (I doubt  .001 percent of people with doctorates in lit have read all of those books) and oddly inadequate.  And weird, I mean, John Barth but not Karl Barth?  

It's bizarre to think anyone could be considered adequately educated as defined by familiarity with a reading list if whole areas of important thinking are left out.  I'd have to say that I couldn't consider anyone adequately educated if they left out the sciences in the way Bloom did, though those books are hardly ever read even by scientists.  I cracked Laplace open a bit and am wondering how I ever got by without having read his essay on probability before, I doubt .000001 percent of those who cite Laplace have ever actually read anything he wrote instead of that one quote which is not even known to be accurate, it being a second hand or third hand report what was supposed to have been said by him.   Eddington on the philosophy of physical science has been indispensable to me as has, oddly, Darwin, but not for the reasons his fans would read him.   I think you have to consider anyone who hasn't read James Shapiro's essay about bacteria being small but not stupid to be seriously out of touch with the current state of knowledge.   

I will give Bloom this, he included one book which I looked for but was not expecting to see on such a list, Winesburg Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, a book that was extremely important to me when I was a gay teenager in early 60s rural America.   But if someone told me they'd never read it I wouldn't consider them uneducated.  I would if they told me they'd never read Eddington or Gwendolyn Brooks.   Or Marie Sandoz - my nominee for the most underrated writer of her generation.  Or, make that "most underrated American writer".   For all I know there's a brilliant novelist who wrote in a language I don't read or may never have heard of who hasn't been recognized.  I had Under The Yoke by the Bulgarian writer Ivan Vazov recommended to me but was warned off of the English translation, in favor of the one in Esperanto (Sub la Jugo).   I haven't read it yet in either because I can't get hold of the one on E-o.  

Harold Bloom was culturally conservative, even reactionary but he was apparently a moderately liberal Democrat who was deeply distressed at the direction the country was headed in.  He liked jazz and kept a foothold in New York so he could hear live jazz.   That's to his favor.  He apparently mentored Camille Paglia (hadn't known that before) which is nothing anyone should want to take credit for.   I wonder what he really thought of her nonsense. But not enough to go looking for it.

I doubt I will think much about Harold Bloom in the future.