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Harold Bloom: The Art of Criticism (The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 2)

Harold Bloom

Writer and literary critic Harold Bloom is no stranger to controversy.  No, he courts it.  Not surprisingly, I could quote parts of the Paris Review interview just to get some people -- or a lot of people -- all riled up.  Particularly some remarks on "the school of resentment," The Color Purple, and anything to do with women writers (oops, I mean "gender studies").  Instead, this is what I quote:

(On humility)

You know, I've learned something over the years, picking up copies of my books in secondhand bookstores and in libraries, off people's shelves.  I've written so much and have now looked at so many of these books that I've learned a great deal.  You also learn this from reviews and from things that are cited in other people's books and so on, or from what people say to you -- what you pride yourself on, the things that you think are your insight and contributions . . . no one ever even notices them.  It's as thought they're just for you.  What you say in passing or what you expound because you know it too well, because it really bores you, but you feel you have to get through this in order to make your grand point, that's what people pick up on.  That's what they underline.  That's what they quote.  That's what they attack or cite favorably.  That's what they can use.  What you really think you're doing may or may not be what you're doing, but it certainly isn't communicated ot others.  I've talked about this to other critics, to other writers; they haven't had quite my extensive sense of this, but it strikes an answering chord in them.  One's grand ideas are indeed one's grand ideas, but there are none that seem to be useful or even recognizable to anyone else.  It's a very strange phenomenon.  It must have something to do with our capacity for not knowing ourselves.