How to Read and Why
by Harold Bloom
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Book Reviews of How to Read and Why
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: interesting but unsatisfying
Summary: 3 Stars
Much of Bloom's recent--that is, post-The Western Canon--fare has the flavor of being written for the sake simply of publishing another book or for broadcasting his literary affinities. Having some familiarity with Bloom's ideas and passions, I know this not to be the case; there's always something more to his books. Still, How to Read and Why possesses that written-on-the-fly quality, and while Bloom's assembly of diverse and interesting pieces of literature is excellent as always, I ultimately found the book to be unsatisfying.Aside from some introductory hows and whys, the book never really explains, satisfactorily, how we should read and, more importantly, why. He speaks of reading to re-capturing irony, of reading to accustom ourselves to change (and especially to the final and universal change), of reading because we cannot hope to meet all people. This is all true, of course, and the book might have been more successful had he pursued those threads and others throughout the text. After the introduction, however, Bloom begins his analysis of literature, broken down into sections on short stories, poetry, plays, and novels. The analyses are often interesting, sometimes wrong (just my opinion...for example, his opinions of Flannery O'Connor and Dostoevsky are severely limited here, as they were in Bloom's more recent Genius; in How to Read and Why, both writers receive similar treatment from Bloom, in the form of D.H. Lawrence's admonition, "Trust the tale but not the teller"), but they are his; they show only one "how" of reading; they are not readily generalized.
Yes, literature is enriching and enlightening; it enhances the experience of being alive. The insights it offers are diverse and often debatable. That's all part of reading's allure. But too often Bloom allows his analyses of works to speak for themselves, to show by their simple existence how and why to read. Perhaps this is mildly justifiable, since most folks who pick up a Bloom book are likely bibliophiles themselves. Nevertheless, and even to a bibliophile like myself, the book proved interesting but not entirely enriching.
Book Review: How to Reread a Book
Summary: 5 Stars
I love book talk. This is an interesting title for a book. We know Bloom has read a lot of books because he has written so many. Furthermore, we know he is a book fan, sort of like the customer reviewer except that he has more credentials. The question is would this book make a person excited about reading. Using the word praxis is off-putting, but then Professor Bloom probably does spend most of his time in an academic environment. The experience of reading Turgenev and Chekhov, masters of the short story, is considered. Bloom holds, appropriately, that Chekhov was the main influence on all short story writers coming after him. Chekhov has the great writer's wisdom. His "The Lady with the Dog" is worldly laconic in its universalism according to Bloom.
Hemingway's short stories surpass his novels. I agree with Bloom that Hemingway achieves tragedy in "The Hills of Kilimanjaro." Short stories may be divided into fantasy and not fantasy. Short story writers refrain from moral judgment.
The portion of the book on reading poetry presents ideas on poetry very clearly. A reader might start with William Savage Landor or A.E. Housman and move through others such as Browning, Tennyson, Wordsworth, (we have all read Wordsworth even if we haven't read him since his influence was so immense), Coleridge, Eliot, Stevens, Lawrence, Hardy. Emily Dickinson, as Shakespeare, seems to be impossible to categorize. Comparing Emily Dickinson to Emily Bronte is apt, it is very revealing of the oddness of each writer.
Milton was a sect of one. He believed that the soul and body died together. PARADISE LOST identifies energy as equal to spirit. Even the presence of others cannot transform reading from a solitary to a social act.
THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN calls to mind German high culture. HAMLET is about theatricality, not revenge. In HEDDA GABLER there is the horror of losing social respectibility. Bloom notes that in the case of an enlightened and fervent young reader, the first experience of love is toward a literary character.
Book Review: A perspective
Summary: 4 Stars
Since this book has already garnered quite a few reviews here, I will only briefly give my impression of it for others like me who are interested in "the classics" but have not studied them at any length. I like this book mainly for two reasons. The first is that Bloom awakens interest in us to discover (or rediscover) some of the great short stories, plays, poems and novels of Western literature. I had read some of these works in English lit courses or on my own but Bloom's discussion of them brings them a bit back to life and urges me to read them again with perhaps a different perspective. The second reason is that the book is a good introduction for someone already at least slightly familiar with literature and poetry, in that it covers the literary genres giving short reviews and interpretations of major works in each. Bloom's comments on how to read and why, mostly at the beginning of the book, concluding that we read to strengthen the self, seem only to state the obvious for anyone inclined to read classic literature and do not add too much to the book's value. My biggest complaint, however, concerns Bloom's incessant references to Shakespeare, how nothing in the universe can compare to him, the measure of all things human and devine, yada yada yada. Occasional comparisons to Shakespeare are appropriate and insightful (for instance with Cervantes), and of course Shakespeare hugely influenced all literature after him, but constant comparison is too much! Practically every work treated in this book is measured against Shakespeare. At times it actually annoyed me and I thought a truer title of the book could be: "How I worship Shakespeare and compare him to every other literary masterpiece rather than fully appreciating them for their own unique contributions." Perhaps this suggested title is a bit harsh, but in my opinion Bloom's habit of continually interrupting the merits of a work in order to drag the reader (scratching and kicking) once again back to Shakespeare detracts from an otherwise worthy little book.