How to Read and Why
by Harold Bloom
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Book Reviews of How to Read and Why
Book Review: So-So
Summary: 2 Stars
Literary critic should have titled this little guide `What to Read and Why,' seeing as he devotes only a few paragraphs to why reading might be valuable. That said, Bloom is a terrifyingly accomplished reader, but he isn't much of a thinker or a critic in the way Benjamin or Derrida were. Bloom's incessant propensity to judge all literature from the `how is this compared to Shakespeare' lens is foolish and lacking in any insight. At times his criticism seems almost amateurish and rushed. He doesn't seem to be a very good reader of Hemingway, for instance. At the outset of a review of `Hills Like White Elephants,' Bloom writes that "Hemingway's personal mystique-his bravura poses as warrior, big-game hunter, bullfighter, and boxer-is irrelevant to `Hills Like White Elephants' as its male protagonist's insistence that `You know that I love you'" (47). Yet later in Bloom's review, he writes [on `The Snows of Kilimanjaro']: The irony is at Hemingway's expense, insofar as Harry prophesies the Hemingway who, nineteen days shor of his sixty-second birthday, turned a double-barreled shotgun on himself" (49). Bloom seems to have reversed tactics here. Never the less, Bloom is an undeniably great reader of poetry; in this volume he tells you all about his personal favorites: Stevens, Whitman, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, etc. Kind of fun, but far from great criticism.Book Review: Difficult Book with Some excellent Literary Summaries
Summary: 3 Stars
After reading Harold Bloom's The Western Canon, I was interested in what this author had to say about the how and why of reading the major western literary classics. The author makes the following points; "WHY" to read, 1) to strengthen the self. Reading is a selfish act, to improve oneself as opposed to improving your neighbor or neighborhood "HOW" to read, 2) clear the mind of all the factional, and political ideas of the current time period when the reader is seeking the universality of the spirit. 3) the recovery of the ironic .
The author judges the works by looking for the unique way that certain universal human traits are treated in great works of western literature. The author explains the concept of reading by practicing "overhearing". The concept was lost upon this reader. This reader felt like he
missed some of the foundation terms and principals of the book. From the text one can tell the author has dedicated hours to reading and re-reading the classics. Harold Bloom is a Yale professor with many awards to his credit. I appreciated the quick synopsis of the text or selected poem to bring out themes and thoughts I would have otherwise missed., All in all, the author's concepts are difficult to fully absorb, but his summary of literary works has to spark some interest in some area of the literary classics.
Book Review: A valuable read
Summary: 5 Stars
Sometimes one gets so involved in thrashing one's way through life that one forgets what one's priorities are in the first place. A book like 'How to Read' is a breath of fresh air. Bloom infuses a desperate vitality into the pages of his account of what is important in the experience of reading, which sometimes reads (not at all a bad thing) more like personal essay than self-help book -- an epithet, bespattered with vapidity, which one applies to a book like this only with reluctance. Of the works and authors Bloom surveys, some were old friends to me, some I was in the tragically eternal state of planning to read but not having had the time, and some I was unfamiliar with -- but I was intrigued by his accounts of all of them. This book, as is happily characteristic of Bloom's writing, is not 'dumbed down' for those lacking erudition, but by no means should the average reader find it intimidating: it is sophisticated, not deliberately inaccessible.
Sometimes Bloom gets a little weird, as in the (thankfully short) sections he spends discoursing on Kabbalah and related subjects, but his opinions are his own and should be no deterrent to reading this delightful little book. Typographical errors and faux pas are entirely absent, except for one subtle sentence (on page 251 of my edition) where he left out an 'as'.
Book Review: "It is not necessary for you to complete the work "
Summary: 5 Stars
In the epilogue of this book Harold Bloom talks about Rabbi Tarphon's statement in ' Pirke Avot '(The Ethics of the Fathers) " It is not necessary for you to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from undertaking it". Harold Bloom has not desisted in reading and rereading the great works of Western Literature, and in so doing advocating to his readers that they too live in the 'enhanced consciousness' which great Literature gives. Here too Bloom reads and rereads some of the great works of the Tradition and provides whole new networks of insights and connections, inspirations and ideas for us to think about and make our own rereadings with. None of us Bloom laments will be able to read all the great and good books which have been written- and none of us will be able to reread as we could the great works already read by us, works which in some sense demand endless rereading- but each of us can be free to undertake the work and so far as possible know the joy and the difficulty , the pleasure and the insight , the sense of enhanced life, the love of meeting others and better knowing ourselves, which reading Literature gives.
Thank you Harold Bloom for enhancing our world with your exalted love of literature. May you go on reading and rereading for many years to come.
Book Review: thoughtful, provocative, a little arbitrary
Summary: 4 Stars
Distinguished literary scholar Harold Bloom writes of the joy of reading, which he perceives as a deeper, wider way of understanding, not limited as is our own experience, or our friendships however diverse they may be Since we are limited in space and time to read, he presents us with his selection of short stories,poems, plays, and novels which merit our careful reading. Along the way, he subtly jabs "political correctness", and its humorless polemic which has warped the literary canon as he sees it. For the most part I agree with him, that many lauded works today are simply not worth the time it takes to read them, however earnest the authors, however solemn their causes. Bloom may oversimplify when he classifies modern writers by those authors of the past who seem to influence their works, whether Shakespeare, Cervantes, or others. His selection of novels especially, seems to me to be subjective and arbitrary;
other scholars would list other works, and you will probably have a list of your own that differs from Bloom's.
Thoughtful, written with a courteous, balanced tone, "How to Read and Why" deserves a place on your shelf. Recommended.