Professor Bloom, Professor Bloom, Professor Bloom.

[rymenhild]

Oh dear, Harold Bloom is on his soapbox again. This is never a good thing. (Italicized passages are quotations from Bloom's Wall Street Journal article on Hans Christian Andersen. If you click, you might discover that Bloom has two different spellings for "Andersen". You might also find smoke coming out of your ears. Be warned.)

I myself see no distinction between children's literature and good or great writing for extremely intelligent children of all ages.

So far, so good.

J.K. Rowling and Stephen King are equally bad writers, appropriate titans of our new Dark Age of the Screens: computer, motion pictures, TV.

...I admit that there are many better writers out there in the universe than J.K. Rowling, but Professor Bloom, sir, does the phrase "Dark Tower" mean anything to you?

Outside of Browning and Shakespeare, that is?

Also, Dark Age of the Screens? Professor Bloom, I sit at the computer for hours to read Middle English poetry. I am sure you would not be quite so pleased by some of the other things I read when I sit at the computer for hours, but really, now! Think of the vast quantity of text we are lucky enough to have in this century. Certainly, not all of it is high-quality. Nevertheless, there is quantitatively more high-quality literature, film and drama available today to the average person than there ever was in any other time in the history of the world. Much of this literature, film and drama appears on the Internet. I can't imagine what you mean by "Dark Age."

One goes on urging children of all ages to read and reread Andersen and Dickens, Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, rather than Ms. Rowling and Mr. King. Sometimes when I say that in public I am asked: Is it not better to read Ms. Rowling and Mr. King, and then go on to Andersen, Dickens, Carroll and Lear? The answer is pragmatic: Our time here is limited. You necessarily read and reread at the expense of other books.

I have read works by Andersen, Dickens, Carroll, Lear, Rowling and King. All but Carroll and Lear I have read in the last two years. I do not feel that I have sacrificed precious Dickens reading time by devouring all seven Dark Tower novels within a month.

That said, I have sacrificed a precious ten minutes of my life reading your appreciation of Hans Christian Andersen today. Our time here on Earth is too limited to waste it on an article containing a few ill-conceived rants about popular entertainment and quite a long discussion of Andersen's sex life. With comparisons to Michael Jackson, G-d help us.

Thank you, Professor Bloom.

Comments

[agonistes]

J.K. Rowling and Stephen King are equally bad writers, appropriate titans of our new Dark Age of the Screens: computer, motion pictures, TV.

...I admit that there are many better writers out there in the universe than J.K. Rowling, but Professor Bloom, sir, does the phrase "Dark Tower" mean anything to you?

Outside of Browning and Shakespeare, that is?

I love you.

No, really. This made me cackle.

See...I wonder if Harold Bloom has bothered reading anything King has written post-The Green Mile. I really do. Somehow I doubt it.

And I'd like to see what Bloom thinks about other highly allusive writers like Dorothy Sayers. As far as I'm concerned the only real difference between them is time period, and that King doesn't write about aristocracy.

Also? If I recall, Dickens was a wildly popular novelist in his day, and critics really weren't fans. And I'd like to see Harold Bloom and Terry Eagleton get in a fight.

That is all. :D

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

In one corner, EAGLETON, the Marxist Defender of Theory (1). Opposite him, BLOOM, the Self-Imposed Arbiter of Literature. Who will win? I would bet on Eagleton, for the simple reason that Eagleton probably has an Oxbridge accent.

(1) So long as the theory's more than thirty years old, that is.

Sayers is highly underappreciated, so I suspect Bloom wouldn't appreciate her. Gaudy Night and The Nine Tailors ought to be on college reading lists; I don't actually know why they're not. (I just had the mental vision of a course on Gender in Early Twentieth-Century Representations of Academia. The students would read A Room of One's Own (1929) next to Gaudy Night (1936). Wouldn't it be beautiful?) Digression aside, Sayers writes mysteries. Mysteries are genre fiction. Genre fiction is... never mind, won't finish that sentence, too much smoke emerging from ears.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

I stopped paying attention to Bloom once I realized that he was entirely unaware of the works of 95% of all children's authors postdating 1920. Even if you accept his premise that a diet consisting exclusively of books written with sublimely beautiful prose is the only way to prevent dangerous and permanent brain-rot, which I don't, he simply has not the slightest grounds by which to judge any children's literature because he knows so little about the field.

Ahem. Well, that was my soapbox...

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Also, what does he think the non-extremely-intelligent children ought to be reading? Elitist crap. I despise this guy.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I agree with you on all counts. Why can't the man just talk about Shakespeare and stay out of That Which He Does Not Know?

[cryptoquip.livejournal.com]

We did a unit on Andersen in my Word and Image class last year...let us remember, before elevating him to too high a pedestal, that the three things he drew most frequently were towers, grottoes, and volcanic eruptions. I kid you not.

He was also apparently quite a whiney bastard.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Sexist git as well, wasn't he?

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I certainly wouldn't want to be friends with Andersen myself. That said, I don't know what great writers I would want to be friends with.

...Sayers, perhaps.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

This should be a meme.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Yes, it should, shouldn't it?

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Yes, and what is up with those red shoes?

[obopolsk.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's infuriating. But your response made me laugh. :)

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Glad to amuse you. :)

[yuki-onna.livejournal.com]

Well, I hated DT, but I'll admit to enjoying SK when I was a kid.

[yuki-onna.livejournal.com]

Though it does seem odd to imply that King is a children's writer.

[yuki-onna.livejournal.com]

*has now read article*

But...but...this article is about Andersen. It's practically a love letter. So there are a few digs at modern writers. It wouldn't be Bloom if there weren't. But Andersen deserves love letters, and as someone whose family is distantly related to his, I can't fault devotion to old Uncle Hans.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I can't either. That said, my major argument with the article is that it doesn't spend enough time and thought on Andersen's writing itself, as distinct from other authors' writings and from Andersen's life.

[lynnoxford.livejournal.com]

I think I was done with Bloom the day I read his Yeats book- to say that Yeats is a bad poet because Yeats doesn't write like Shelley is, well, let's call it "unproductive."

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Watch Rymenhild's jaw fall off.

Did Bloom really say that?!

[silveraspen]

...

Excuse me while I pick myself up off the floor. You're kidding, right? Right? Please?

Dear heaven, what idiocy.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I really thought Harold Bloom would like Yeats. After all, Yeats is a dead white man who used rhyme and meter in his poetry.

[lynnoxford.livejournal.com]

Yes, but he didn't use them as effectively as Shelley, apparently. Sad to say that my summary is only a bit reductive of a big chunk of Bloom's analysis. Blah.

[sovay]

I'm not responsible for him! I don't even take classes in the English Department!

*flees to hide among the comforting cuneiform of the Babylonian Collection*

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I didn't blame you. Does he teach any more anyhow?

[sovay]

I think he must; there's a young man in one of my classes who cites him like the [insert holy book of your choice here]. Either that or his influence extends beyond the classroom . . .

[sovay]

(I did not think you had blamed me, by the way. I just felt guilty by academic association. I think I'm genetically predisposed to it.)

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

Roger Ebert's review of the new Hitchhiker movie, while otherwise unremarkable, describes the Vogons as "an alien race that looks like a cross between Jabba the Hutt and Harold Bloom. The Vogons are not a cruel race, apart from the fact that they insist on reading their poetry, which is so bad it has driven people to catatonia." I'm not sure whether that's totally in line with Hitchhiker cannon, and I don't even know what Bloom looks like. But it made me laugh pretty hard.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Google Images is a wonderful thing, if you happen to want large numbers of pictures about one fairly ugly self-identified public intellectual. I do like the idea of Bloomian freddled gruntbugglies.

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

Oh hey, there really IS a resemblance...