Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human

Rating:
Summary: RE: NEGATIVE CRITICISM
Review: I don't see why people can't look at Harold Bloom's book and just admire someone who is passionate in what he does. I fail to relate to people who attack SHAKESPEARE: THE INVENTION OF THE HUMAN as "cant", "self-serving," and "narcissistic," etc.. People who say things like that seem to me to be of the unpleasant type who drive down the street searching for people to honk their horn at. They really don't matter though. I doubt Harold gives them a moments thought.

Rating:
Summary: Flawless
Review: The opinionated review of each play serves to give the reader a clear sense of not only how human interpretation dictates how these characters are played, but how Shakespeare supposedly shaped the English language as we know it. The reviews each held insightful, thought provoking commentary regarding character motive, thematic significance and elemential significance...it also serves to explain to the reader and give a sense of significance to those characters that frequently scurry about in the many plays without direction. As a Shakespearean student, I must say that the material was not only thought provoking but idea spurring and provides much food for thought for the Literature student who takes Shakespeare as seriously as Bloom. The opinions do not confuse the reader as many criticists tend to do and his many references to the earlier Hamlet tend to explain much about his commentary regarding the Shakespeare I know. However skeptical an idea, it has decent basis. A superb work, not surprising.

Rating:
Summary: senile, rambling, maddeningly repetitive... but good!
Review: As a professor myself I know the problem... having lectured on the same topic for 30 years, you are no longer quite aware of what you are saying... or that you just said it 15 minutes before. Harold Bloom has talked about Shakespeare so long to classes that his book is as maddeningly repetitive as Chinese water torture, and as rambling and disorganized as can be. And if I see the word "rancid" (generally used several times per page, and always inappropriately) again after reading this book, I shall scream. But I know of no other book like this, a meditation on Shakespeare's plays, characters and artistic aims that brings you back to the plays with a whole new alertness. Instead of reading the book from cover to cover as I did, it is probably best just to dip into it from time to time as you want background on some specific play or character. Then the author's crotchets and mannerisms will not be so annoying. I did find some of his judgements imbecilic. For instance, saying that it is impossible to perform MERCHANT OF VENICE after WWII is like saying it is impossible to perform RICHARD III since people in the audience may have birth defects! Lordy, lordy.

Rating:
Summary: FANTASTICO
Review: SINCE BREVITY IS THE SOUL OF WIT, I WILL BE BRIEF (truly): Harold Bloom's book ascends "the brightest heaven of invention."

Rating:
Summary: Regarding the cowardly anonymous [e-mail] (?) of MD
Review: I for one imagine that Prof. Bloom finds mary janes like this amusing. He probably lives for simplistic (perhaps jealous) criticism from nobodies like this. I for one look at [e-mail]'s comment and must yield to an obviously greater knowledge of "cant."

Rating:
Summary: An 800-page tomb that loses its way completely
Review: While Harold Bloom's high state of art and his throne at the top of the critic's pile are unassailable, his "Shakespeare: the invention of the human," is a disaster of probabilities and possibilities (if a graduate student had written this he/she would fail miserably for pouring opinion upon unrelated and unsubstantiated opinion): The "early" Hamlet - which he admits was never found - becomes a metaphor for the failure of this book; Bloom refers to this play so often "in absentia" (it would have....it might have....) that it becomes an imagined cornerstone for too much of his musing. The truth is that in this book Bloom tries to create his own reality, so that the years of one-on-one discussion between himself and Shakespears characters are not seen as madness but as some kind of ongoing dinner discussion each evening at home. The (real or wished for) similarity between Bloom and Sir John Falstaff is striking, and by the end of this book my response to Bloom is much like that of Henry V to Sir John: "I know thee not old man"!

Rating:
Summary: don't listen to the nay-sayers
Review: I can't quite figure out the discontent over Bloom's book. Are they just pseudo-intellectuals who own Shakespeare's volumes without reading any? Do they think the Earl of Oxford wrote "Hamlet?"

Anyway, I found this an enjoyable book, and Bloom was often quaintly self-deprecating and candid about his analysis (even if you don't agree with it). He did not come off at all as the ivory-towered bombastic twit I was expecting from these reviews. There's certainly plenty in his book for everyone to enjoy (even if they happen to be latter-day Bard-revisionists).

Rating:
Summary: Not bad
Review: Somewhat repetitive. Hamlet-obsessed. Bloom isn't a great writer, which may explain why he's a literary critic. But, there's some useful ideas. Particularly good readings of Othello (Iago), Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Midsummer Night's Dream, and, oddly enough, Titus Andronicus. If you read Shakespeare to understand people better (this is what Shakespeare is for), I'd suggest this book.

Rating:
Summary: It is WONDERFUL!!!!
Review: I fell madly in love with Professor Bloom as I read this masterpiece. It reflects a brilliant man who has spent a lifetime studying the Bard. By the work's end, it has transcended all other Shakespearean works of the past. I love you HAROLD!!!!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: The apotheosis of academic cant
Review: While I share Bloom's enthusiasm for Shakespeare, I can't work up much for this book. Academic blather-speak of the first water. The author's rather obscure point is lost in mind-numbing cant.