How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $1.92 You Save: $13.08 (87%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.23 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of How to Read and Why
Book Review: ALL ABOUT HAROLD BLOOM AND WHO CARES?
Summary: 2 Stars
This book covers a valuable subject and parts of it are excellent, but ultimately it fails because it is not about how to read but how Harold Bloom reads and he can't move away from his favorite subject to let in some fresh air. Here is a minor example: he pulls up one of Shakespeare's sonnets to condemn the Republicans who impeached Clinton. The sonnet CAN be read to attack people who condemn sexual impropriety while engaging in it themselves, but that would apply more strongly to Clinton himself than the Republicans. It was Clinton, after all, who wrote the law which allows the courts to pry into people's bedroom secrets. That he was caught by his own neo-Puritan law is perfect justice. But in the meanwhile, Shakespeare gets lost in Bloom's bloviating. This would be a far better book if Bloom gave his ego a rest and allowed his formidable intellect to do some heavy lifting for a change.Book Review: As light and delightful as lemonaid
Summary: 5 Stars
Harold Bloom floats from poet to novelist to short story writer like a big bumble bee stopping for short spells on various flowers. I found his opinions witty, entertaining, and sometimes profound.
He lists several reasons for reading in his first chapter and then identifies other reasons throughout the text. These include: reading is a healing pleasure; reading is a difficult pleasure since it is a search for the sublime; we read because we can't ever know enough people; we read to prepare ourselves for change; to strengthen our self and learn its authentic interests; we read in quest of minds more original than our own.
All of these reasons resonated with me.
Bloom identifies a range of talented poets and other writers and usually covers one work by each of his favorites. He defines talent as prolonged patience at seeing what others tend not to see.
Bloom's virtual worship of William Shakespeare pops up in almost every essay. Bloom asserts that Shakespeare's strenghts comes from making no moral judgements about this characters but allows the reader of the play to make those assessments. Bloom considered Shakespeare to be the expert on intergenerational conflict. He quotes Borges who said that Shakespeare was "everyone and no one", meaning that his talent allowed him to reveal character without leaving any of his own finger prints.
I liked Bloom's taxonomy of short stories into two camps; either they have narrative cohension based in reality such as Chekov, James, DeMaupassant, Hemingway, Nabokov or they are unreal fantasies freed from the narrative format such as Borges, Kafka, or Calvino. He illustrates his taxonomy by reviewing at least one work by each author, including a wonderful review of Calvino's Invisible Cities.
Another section of the book covers his favorite poets including the wonderfully popular "Ulysses" by Tennyson, which is one of my favorites. I really liked his insights into Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. He regards Dickinson as one of the most cognitive unique individuals in print and thus to understand her is a 'difficult pleasure'.
Bloom argues that Jane Austen was able, like Shakespeare, to "manifest sympathy to all her characters, no matter how detestable, while detaching herself even from her favorite." He builds a case for "Emma" that I found convincing even though Elizabeth Bennett from "Pride and Prejudice" is not only one of my favorite fictional characters, she is one of my favorite people.
Bloom's praise for Dicken's "Great Expectations" matched my own high regard for this novel. Whereas so much of Dicken can be characature, in "Great Expectations" the character development reached a new height and Estella's decision NOT to marry Pip remains one of the most understated character insights in English literature. She is an enigma but in this action or lack of action she reveals a depth of character beyond the emotional crippled creature that Miss Havisham tried to make of her. If she has been reared to be a man-destroying monster, what better way to seek her revenge on her "maker" than to marry a chauvanist monster and forsake the innocent boy who has loved her since childhood but whom she knew she would break.
Many novels are briefly reviewed but I especially liked his review of Nathaniel West's "Miss Lonelyhearts" and his superb analysis of Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian". Judge Holden in this bloody saga is one of the most amazing characters in literature and Bloom defends this extremely violent novel with gusto.
The longest essay in the work is on Hamlet, which is full of fresh insight into this majestic work.
Bloom covers 57 poems, short stories, plays, and novels in this 279 page book, thus giving each literary work around 4 to 5 pages of analysis. I found this to be just enough for Bloom to make his point and to stimulate my appetite to re-read many of these wonderful masterpieces.
Book Review: Bloom: To Know How Is To Know Why
Summary: 4 Stars
For those who purchase Harold Bloom's HOW TO READ AND WHY, they probably expect a companion piece to HOW TO READ A BOOK by Mortimer Adler. With Adler, there is truth in advertising; his focus is indeed on the how. He emphasizes the more traditional skills of main idea, inference, conclusion, and details, all of which must be used to come to terms with the author. Bloom, however, starts where Adler leaves off. Bloom assumes that the reader knows how to meld his mind with that of the author. His focus on the how is really quite simple: the reader should read slowly, reread often and aloud, and allow his own ears to hear and overhear what words of wisdom fall from the lips of literature's most immortal characters. When Hamlet laments the common fate of man in any of his seven soliloquies, Bloom urges the reader to do more than just read; the reader should become Hamlet and speak as the troubled Dane does. It is only when the reader intones along with Hamlet, as opposed to passively listening to Olivier or Brannagh, that this reader becomes Hamlet and insinuates himself into a world of irony that Bloom relentlessly insists forms the philosophical underpinning of Shakespeare's moral vision. The great poems deserve no less. Bloom claims that poetry, like drama, is best appreciated in solitude and when spoken aloud by the reader.
The why of reading is also uncomplicated. The purpose of reading immortal literature, to Bloom, has little to do with ideology or any other attempt to view that work through a critical lens of one 'ism' or another. The why of reading is more personal, more selfish than that. The reader reads to improve himself, to become a better person. The wisdom that infuses any classical piece of writing is useful only insofar as it contributes to the moral growth of the reader. Since most of Bloom's book resembles a digressive tour through a sampling of his favorite works and authors, the novice reader might walk away with the idea that HOW TO READ AND WHY is little more than a folksy rehash of Intro to Lit 101. The truth is more illusive. In his discourses, Bloom does more than simply analyze what makes one character act the way that he does. Bloom humanizes that character by taking that character's words, thoughts, and deeds and making them his own. To become that character, then, in Bloom's vision quest, is, in Adler's terms, to come to terms with that author. The metamorphosis of self is a process of slow accretion, possibly granting that each tick on the clock of rereading brings the reader ever closer to union with the author. The end, of course, to Bloom, to Adler, to anyone who wishes to know and grow is to witness the birth of a new reader, one who is infinitely wiser and happier than his predecessor.
Book Review: Close, but not quite right.
Summary: 4 Stars
... we all know children in today's grade schools are moving farther away from books and a whole lot closer to My Space for their reading pleasures. Bloom wrote this book to address this and one other concern, that being that universities aren't any healthier for us than My Space when it comes to reading, and reading the right way. Bloom says to read deeply, often, and for yourself without studying the how's and why's using this or that theory of criticism that we're taught in university. I can't agree more after having done a masters degree in English literature. I hated reading after graduating and it took me years to get back into reading for my own true pleasure. For that reason, I like this book. That being said, I think Bloom misses the mark somewhat on what we should read. I've read a lot of the books on his list (Western Canon my bum) and I have to say, many of them are about as interesting, engaging, and exciting as reading as those same My Space pages I mentioned earlier. There is a lot of good literature out there that isn't Shakespeare, Milton, Melville, Emerson, etc. All the good writers aren't dead, Mr Bloom. He's right about the problem but fixing it isn't going to happen by prescribing my fourteen year old a healthy dose of Ibsen, Milton and Emily Dickinson, though everyone could use a taste of Calvino once in a while.
I read somewhere that Bloom said something 'mean' about Stephen King's writing. I don't read King, but at least if my kid is reading that, she's not on the computer all day long. I wonder what Bloom thinks of JK Rowling.
Book Review: Delightful
Summary: 4 Stars
I thoroughly enjoyed, great insight. I found myself at times reading parts to others who love good literature.This is an intriguing and thoughtful book. Writing about books comes naturally to him with humility and wit.