How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of How to Read and Why
Book Review: Literacy Guide
Summary: 4 Stars
Bloom's title could not help but appeal to a typical Language Arts teacher in a typical high school. I am facing a school with a history of poor literacy skills in a district with a similiar history. Most literacy programs use a 5th and 6th grade approach with high school students who have scored at that level, and wonder why they are not very successful. Bloom writes for adults, and his approach could well undergird an introduction to remedial readers in high school.Book Review: Modeling Personal Reading
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is not geared toward the academic, rather it is a popular book on reading quality literature. What this means is that Bloom does not spend time discussing the theory and techniques of literary scholarship and criticism, but instead models a very personal, pleasurable style of attentive reading. The length of the book precludes a thorough examination of any specific work. Instead it is a survey to whet the appetite, an aperitif. It is quite like an interesting few days spent with a lively and passionate professor who is able to draw out just enough of the subtleties of the works discussed to be an inspiration to the student. On this level, the book succeeds wonderfully, and will no doubt lead to more thorough works, such as Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.Book Review: More a motivation for reading....
Summary: 4 Stars
Most bibliophiles will pick up this exegesis from the renowned literary critic, Harold Bloom, simply on the inherent challenge in the title. For those of us who profess as much a desire and self-improving drive through the written word as Bloom does then this book will either confirm our own decisive belief in how to read and the reasons why we do it, or irritatingly deny and confound them. In some respects it can be seen as a marker, an attempt for the avid reader to classify how we should read the great texts and confirm to ourselves that `yes, we do understand them'. What Bloom, therefore, must hold himself up to, by publishing his theory, is whether his own form of literature accurately describes how the populace should read any great literary work. By the end I found it ended up with an answer to a rather different question.Without going through the entire text there are three sections that leap out: Short stories, Novels Part I and Poetry.
Bloom opens his critical work with short story specialists. His own work reflects the genre, with short one-two pages discussions on each, their salient work(s) and the contribution to the art form. We move from Turganev and Chekov to Maupassant and Hemingway, touching through Nabokov, Borges and Calvino, all the while relating them back to Bloom's idolised literary figurehead, Shakespeare. Of particular interest is the note on Landolfi, highlighting as it does a great work, inspired by another great author, Gogol, that parodies its inspiration. Indeed, the entire concept of `Gogol's wife' takes the real and criticizes it with the absurd, yet an oddly perceptive absurd that echoes Ionesco.
In Bloom's section on poetry he is forced to follow the well-trodden path that any literary critic must do with this format: quote large tracts of various poems in order to get his meaning across, in sharp contrast to those sections ion the short story and novel. He does acknowledge this when he realises that each single word in a poem comprises far more imagery and emotion than is worth explaining or describing. Whereas the novel dictates the scene precisely, the poem offers a tantalisingly liminal nudge to the senses that the reader can allow to bloom in their own mind. As such, the section on poetry becomes more a classification of which of the great poets are in each poetical sub-genre. More a reason on why to read these poets, than how to read them. The section itself deals with Dickinson, Coleridge, Blake, Browning, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and the inevitable Shakespearian sonnets, amongst many others. The most interesting detail is perhaps on the Ballard of Sir Patrick Spence with its "tragic comedy almost unique in its stoic heroism", the most exhilarating the seventeenth century ballard, `Tom O'Bedlam'
Bloom's section on the novels (in two parts) opens with Cervantes' `Don'Quixote' which he professes the greatest of all novels, swiftly moving onto the incomparable Austen who's novels rely so much on society but never a justification for them and Dickens, picking firstly, Emma, then Great Expectations as their benchmarks. There is an interesting comparison between the first and revised versions of James' `Portrait' which serves to emphasize the growth of the author's vast (as Bloom would have us believe) consciousness.
So, by the end we don't feel that Bloom has given us satisfactory explanation of `how' to read and `why', more that his precis of what he considers the greatest of our literary artists suggests why we must read them specifically and (in an even more limited attempt) some pointers as to how to read them. For example, his explanation of Shakespearian vernacular does attempt to satisfy the `how to read' as it imparts different and more clear meaning to the poetry . By the end, we are left not with an answer to his titular concept, but a rather disparate reason for our `motives' to read, best given in his summation on poetry:
"Poetry...does...startle us out of our sleep-of-death into a more capricious sense of life. There is no better motive for reading...."
Book Review: Passionate and Comprehensive
Summary: 5 Stars
Bloom once again informs the American public on the importance of a reading aesthetic. With passion and incredible insight America's foremost literary scholar will take the avid reader to new heights in how they approch literature. If you consider yourself one who searches for more in lit than mere plot this book will give you new perspectives on what many consider to be some of history's greatest literary works. I highly recommend itBook Review: Rewarding, but not essential Bloom
Summary: 3 Stars
Other reveiwers have pointed out the inaccuracy of the title, and I state my agreement with their judgement. However, the book stands well upon the merits it does offer as a casual toned discussion of Bloom's encounters with the works he examines. Because Bloom is widely read, subtle, and grand, his personal insights can function as markers of the depth and profundity literary works can attain, but he puts forth no theory or system designed to make his audience better readers. What we have is a book of encouragement, not instruction. Furthermore, readers of Bloom will find the book repetitive of his later, popular works. Bloom continues his invective against current critical trends (justifiably, I think) and continues his idiosyncratic exaltation of Shakespeare within the context of the Anxiety of Influence. I recommend reading The Western Canon first since this book reads almost like lost chapters of that earlier and very worthwhile book, although some of the material is repeated.