The Western Canon by Harold Bloom (2011)
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Re: The Western Canon by Harold Bloom (2011)
#2I can't imagine anyone having read everything in this list. It would take more than a lifetime for me at my reading speed.
Re: The Western Canon by Harold Bloom (2011)
#3I just got a copy of The Western Canon by Bloom from the library, and I think it is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read in my life. He is a very convoluted writer that goes for as much high emotional impact as possible, because his theories are generally ridiculous and only make sense when you're lost in his fog of anger and disdain for everything. He also has a weird tendency of using "Western Civilization" and "America" as synonyms, even though most of his pet authors died before the US existed. It's like reading a book by a cartoon parody of an English professor, and it's hard to believe that he was even a real person. It all seems like an elaborate joke.
If you want the actual story of the Western Canon - which includes things like Euclid, Fourier, Darwin, etc., not just the fiction that American English professors like - try "Great Books Of The Western World":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_Wor...
Re: The Western Canon by Harold Bloom (2011)
#4For what it's worth, he disavows this list, which was in the appendix of his book [1]
Bloom: But can we make an agreement? Let’s forget that damned list.
Interviewer: Ha. Do you mean the appendix in the back of the book that lists all the canonical works?
Bloom: The list was not my idea. It was the idea of the publisher, the editor, and my agents. I fought it. I finally gave up. I hated it. I did it off the top of my head. I left out a lot of things that should be there and I probably put in a couple of things that I now would like to kick out. I kept it out of the Italian and the Swedish translations, but it’s in all the other translations—about 15 or 18 of them. I’m sick of the whole thing. All over the world, including here, people reviewed and attacked the list and didn’t read the book. So let’s agree right now, my dear. We will not mention the list.
[1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4w4dk3/harold-bloom-431-v...
Re: The Western Canon by Harold Bloom (2011)
#5He died recently and I found that the new york times did a pretty good job of not making him out to be some sort of god in his obit: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/books/harold-bloom-dead.h...
Re: The Western Canon by Harold Bloom (2011)
#6The parent category from the original posting is a list of Great Books lists.
http://sonic.net/~rteeter/greatbks.html
I like Clifton Fadiman's _New Lifetime Reading Plan_. This has a larger number of selections, each with a shorter (two or three pages) context and review. Teeter's list from Fadiman is here:
http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtfad3.html
Fadiman's book:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249186.The_New_Lifetime_...
Re: The Western Canon by Harold Bloom (2011)
#7I just got a copy of The Western Canon by Bloom from the library, and I think it is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read in my life. He is a very convoluted writer that goes for as much high emotional impact as possible, because his theories are generally ridiculous and only make sense when you're lost in his fog of anger and disdain for everything. He also has a weird tendency of using "Western Civilization" and…
>He also has a weird tendency of using "Western Civilization" and "America" as synonyms
This is definitely not unique to Harold Bloom.
Re: The Western Canon by Harold Bloom (2011)
#8For what it's worth, he disavows this list, which was in the appendix of his book [1] Bloom : But can we make an agreement? Let’s forget that damned list. Interviewer : Ha. Do you mean the appendix in the back of the book that lists all the canonical works? Bloom : The list was not my idea. It was the idea of the publisher, the editor, and my agents. I fought it. I finally gave up. I hated it. I did it off the top of…
“Disavowed” is a misleading word to use. He had criticisms of his list, but what the quote doesn’t mention is that Bloom was involved in a decades-long battle on the value of the idea of a canon. I think he was just tired of talking about it with people that hadn’t read the book in the first place.
Re: The Western Canon by Harold Bloom (2011)
#9Re: The Western Canon by Harold Bloom (2011)
#10For what it's worth, he disavows this list, which was in the appendix of his book [1] Bloom : But can we make an agreement? Let’s forget that damned list. Interviewer : Ha. Do you mean the appendix in the back of the book that lists all the canonical works? Bloom : The list was not my idea. It was the idea of the publisher, the editor, and my agents. I fought it. I finally gave up. I hated it. I did it off the top of…
“Disavowed” is a misleading word to use. He had criticisms of his list, but what the quote doesn’t mention is that Bloom was involved in a decades-long battle on the value of the idea of a canon. I think he was just tired of talking about it with people that hadn’t read the book in the first place.
Well, disavowed was my word, not his, but I stand by it. It seems pretty clearly to be a disavowal to me.