Rating: 
Summary: wisdom of the ages, including our own
Review: Well I think any list of books, and this one is only 26 items long, is absurdly reductive. I also think any discussion of "the canon" would benefit from perhaps a short history of the idea of "the western canon", as well as a brief examination of how and why it has changed or stayed the same over time. I assume the idea has certain precedent. I also assume the way we approach the topic today is much different than the approaches taken in previous centuries.
The approach Bloom brings to the topic is a reactionary one. Blooms argument is responsive to current academic trends like multiculturalism and pluralism. To these trends which propose adding non-western texts as well as new approaches to the interpreting of texts new and "canonical", Bloom offers his conservative reproach. The argument isn't a simple one but it isn't hard to follow either. Bloom wants to adhere to a tradional few texts and he wants the study of these texts to be done in a traditonal way. The study of the humanities in the west has taken place with relative autonomy from the political sphere and Bloom wants the humanities to remain autonomous. The newer schools (marxist, new criticism, postcolonial)believe a text and learning in general cannot be divorced from its historical or political circumstance and thus they prefer an approach that does not grant the humanities any special privilege or autonomy from the other spheres of life. Bloom is defending the Ivory Tower approach and he is also defending, in a less obvious way, the west.
There is of course between the extremes of conservative Bloom and Edward Said(to state a well known name as an example, Bloom doesn't mention names) a middle and common ground, the pursuit of truth. To cling to a few texts does not appear to me to be a pursuit of truth but a retreat from it. The best kinds of readers/thinkers/scholars can accomadate what is new without abandoning the best that tradition has given us. I think Bloom favors the past and in so doing relegates himself to live in it. As a thinker Bloom belongs to the Aristocratic age(he divides his book up using Vico's historical stages:Aristocratic, Democratic, Chaotic). Vico, a seventeenth century Italian philosopher, is a thinker that both conservative humanist Bloom and neo-humanist Said both admire. To me and to many I imagine Bloom is overly conservative and Said, though a sometimes profound thinker, is not always on the mark. However thinkers that have followed in Saids wake have done some excellent work with literature allowing very interesting interdisciplinary issues to be brought to bear on literary texts like the question of essentialism to name just one. So I think Blooms book is overly reactionary because it does not properly comprehend what the new schools really have to offer. And what they have to offer does not steal anything away from the humanites but breathe new life into them. The canon is not in any danger of anything but new and exciting interpretation which will exist beside and be measured next to more traditional ones.
Rating: 
Summary: Refreshing and important
Review: I got a kick out of the reviewer from Texas who claims to be a writer and a former English minor in college but who can't spell the words "nonsense" and "stir." He says that Bloom babbles and fights "straw men." Well, cowboy, you have to be far away from the real world not to know that the multiculturalists (who don't know much about culture) are destroying university English departments and reading books for the ethnicity of their authors or to support their political agendas rather than to enrich the inner life. These people are the exact opposite of straw men. And Bloom brilliantly exposes them.
Rating: 
Summary: The anxiety of aesthetic influence
Review: You will see below a review which points out a perceived contradiction in Bloom's book. Apparently, according to the reviewer, Bloom's idea that the value of a work is primarily aesthetic undermines his other argument: that authors form their works based on agon, or anxiety about and misreading of previous works. In reality, Bloom's argument is incredibly consistent, but to see the consistency requires an understanding of what "aesthetics" are, an understanding lost in today's ideological deconstructionist academies. The term aesthetics, as Aristotle and all critics until about 1950 seemed to know, refers to the structure of a work. Structure includes, among other elementary categories, plot devices, figurative language, and characterization.Given this (appropriate) definition, Bloom's master argument is perfectly coherent. When he discusses the influence of Shakespeare on Milton, for instance, he compares the way the two authors paint characters. And creating characters is an aesthetic activity. When Bloom compares the figurative language between works, he again draws our attention to aesthetics. And so on. Bloom's overall point, in making his argument for aesthetics, is that authorial anxiety and misprison about previous canonical works is not based on ideology. The influence of Shakespeare on Milton was clearly not ideological, it was artistic. Shakespeare himself, as far as his works reveal, had no ideology. This is precisely why Bloom puts him at the head of the Western canon. Western authors following Shakespeare had to contend with the Bard's aesthetic mastery and not, obviously, his nonexistent ideology. The canon, then, defined as works which have had the most aesthetic influence for the longest period of time on other authors, is an organic structure, developing naturally out of Oedipal artistic jealously. Bloom's master theory consciously serves as a corrective to arguments such as one offered by Jane Smiley in recent years: that Uncle Tom's Cabin is a better book than Huckelberry Finn because it has friendlier ideas in it. Bloom shows, on the contrary, that primarily didactic works are never considered the best books by authors of proceeding generations. While some would argue that the Canon is controlled by political structures that manipulate ideology to anaesthesize the masses, I would argue, based on Bloom's work, that the contents of the Canon is controlled by nobody but other writers, most of whom prefer making beauty to making political tracts.
Rating: 
Summary: What's he talking about?
Review: I have a test I like to use. I call it the 100 page test. When a book comes highly recommended to me I'll usually get it and read it-- or I'll read the first 100 pages of it anyway, before I'll give it up as not worth my time. Thus the 100 page test. Harold Bloom's book, The Western Canon, was recommended by Amazon.com as something their computer told them I might like. I read the reviews of it, many of which were well written and sounded very interesting, and I ordered it. And it did pass my 100 page test. But just barely. The first very few pages of this book are quite beautiful in their way and I began reading with a rush of excitement, but in short order I found myself reading academic mumbo jumbo, and before long I could hardly wait till page 100 so that I could feel good about putting the thing down. In the long run, however, I surprised myself. I didn't put it down. The author's ideas were just interesting enough to keep me going. Or at least as well as I was able to understand them I mean-- and to be perfectly honest I'm not sure how well that was. Quite often he doesn't make sense. Some of this is simply because he uses words he needn't use, and a lot of them. I found my self going to the dictionary a full 39 times. A lot of it too is because the author drops names of obscure writers as if we'd all gone to high school together. Yet most of it is simply because there was just no sense to be made from what he was saying. Look at this. I'll open the book at random now. Really. Page 259. "Emerson is a wisdom writer, like Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Freud, and his precursor, Montaigne. Prudentially shrewd, Whitman has no wisdom to impart, and we do not miss it. He gives us his torment and his division and the weird faculty of a self that is both the knower and the known. You cannot distinguish between the ontological and the empirical selves in his best poetry. By the standards of continental dialectics, that ought to render even his best poems incoherent, to make them forerunners of Pound's Cantos." Whatever that means. Stephen Pinker in his own great book, The Language Instinct, tells us (and I'm paraphrasing here) that in terms of descriptive grammar our university professors are the least comprehensible of language users and Harold Bloom I suspect is exactly the kind of fellow he's talking about. And it's a shame because Bloom, in all of his florid but vapid prose, does his own cause no good that I can see. If indeed it is wise in this day and age to read Shakespeare as opposed to Joseph Heller for example-- and I'm not entirely sure that it is-- then that argument almost demands to be made by somebody who is himself more readable. Bloom, it seems to me, can do no more than preach to the choir. His book is strictly for academics, and foolish, pompous ones primarily, I would think. There are some good ideas in this book, especially about the sad bastardization of our literary tradition in favor of political and social appeal over aesthetic appeal. They have not unfortunately been presented in a clear and lucid way and in the end, of course, this only means they may just as well not have been presented at all. In closing let me go back to what I said above-- I'm not entirely sure that it is wise in this day and age to read Shakespeare as opposed to Joseph Heller. Neither am I sure that it isn't. What I am sure of however is that those of us who value education should be familiar with both Shakespeare whom Bloom idolizes as the cornerstone of the western canon and Joseph Heller whom Bloom ignores entirely, if only for an historical understanding of literature and what it has done for mankind. A book I think can go a long way to giving us that historical understanding is Jaques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence which is, by the way, both accessible and well written. Read that book and leave the bloomin' Bloom thing alone.
Rating:
Summary: Educate yourself
Review: Ever suspected that there really are standards in the world? Sick of bland relativism? Want to revel in and celebrate literary excellence? Then buy this and become a richer person.
Rating:
Summary: A provocative argument or the last gasp of the DWEMs?
Review: I was rereading parts of "The Western Canon," brainstorming about an "Introduction to the Novel" course, and it dawned on me that Harold Bloom's biggest problem is that he is making his case for canonical writings in the Postmodern era. Bloom wants to establish the canonical writers, those whose writing "is born of an originality fused with tradition." However, Postmodernism specifically challenges the very idea of a unilinear history, which means that being "first" is ultimately unimportant. William Shakespeare is not important because, in Bloom's estimation, he invents the "human," but because "Shakespeare in Love" won a bunch of Oscars. This could explain, in part, while Bloom's critics focus on what they consider glaring omissions in his canon. For example, after Shakespeare Bloom finds only three other dramatists to add to the canon: Moliere, Ibsen and Beckett. Granted, we can trace "modern" drama back to Ibsen, who was clearly an innovative dramatist. But I doubt that most teachers are going to want to teach "A Doll's House" and "Hedda Gabbler" instead of Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller, which is still going back pretty far given the Postmodernist perspective. Buying into Bloom's assumptions also cuts against the grain for teachers who are trying to show students how great literature relates to them in the real world. Bloom is interested in the creation of forms because other writers have followed in their footsteps and not because of how they impact on readers. When Bloom introduces the last of his eight canonical novelists, Virginia Woolf, he does so more because of "her extraordinary love for and defense of reading" as the one element of Woolf's feminist writing that he feels competent commenting upon. Surely this will be less than satisfying to those who are even more interested in what the writers who followed Woolf have accomplished in walking through the door she opened than the argument Woolf deserves the specific credit for opening the door. Certainly Bloom intended his work to be provocative, but no doubt he would be aghast that the reaction to his work has been more outright dismissal than engaged refutation. But establishing his premises in order to establish something better is apparently not worth the effort. In the end, Bloom's provocative work is stuck in the world of theoria rather than praxis, because he can win the argument and lose the war. Even if you grant that he has indeed isolated the pivotal members of the Western Canon who followed in Shakespeare's wake, it is hard to believe that college classes on the novel are going to make students read "Don Quixote," "Persuasion," "Bleak House," "Middlemarch," "Hadji Murad," "Remembrances of Things Past," "Finnegan's Wake" and "Orlando" rather than "Madame Bovary," "The Grapes of Wrath," "The Color Purple," "Things Fall Apart," "Run, Rabbit, Run," "Beloved," "A Prayer for Owen Meany," or whatever works they desire. Maybe it is just inevitable that with an educational system that sees (paying) students as consumers, Dead White European Males (i.e., DWEMs) are out for good because those are the students who are filling up the classrooms obviously do not fit that description. Equally inevitable would be the idea that Bloom's intellectual legacy will be his work "Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human," and not "The Western Canon." However, I do think that those who so strongly disagree with Bloom need to deal with his thesis directly. This is not an intellectual straw man, although it may well be the last gasp of the "Old Tradition" of the study of Literature.
Rating:
Summary: a great (and fun!) read
Review: I bought this book when it was first released and thoroughly enjoyed it. These pages hold opinions and ideas about authors and books by a wonderfully witty intellect and teacher. It is true that the "Western Canon" has been questioned and argued about much in the last few years, and may be why Harold wrote it, but for most of us, who are really interested in "babble" about literature (see review below) this book is a joy to read. Not to be read as fact, but simply enjoyed for the delightful and interesting ideas of ONE legendary literary critic who devoted his life to reading and discussing and teaching literature of all genre.
Rating:
Summary: Sad
Review: Harold Bloom has finally buried himself in his own academic babble. Nonesense begets nonesense in this book and Bloom fights straw men of his own making while never really giving a solid, well-reasoned aesthetic to base his rant upon. As a professional writer with 54 hour minor in English, I find this book a great disappointment for it neither defends, explains, nor promotes the canon of great literature in any clear or reasonable way. It is sad to see a once sharp mind so lost in itself like this. I gave the book two stars because it does serve to stire up the conversation about great books, thus does make a valuable contribution in that light. It does little else.
Rating:
Summary: a feast of philosophy
Review: The rest of the reviews that will engulf this review pose that the western canon is "gospel". It is not gospel, but a man's opinion. I just happen to think it is an opinion of erudition. For a beginner that welcomes a challenge, this book is the ignition needed to start the conquest of literature. For the learned, this book might be too concise or superfluous, but it still opens the mind. This book provokes some kind of response. The only reason this book would be offensive( the fact that I said the word offensive is an invition to read it)is if the reader thinks that Bloom is displaying too much audacity by drawing a clear-cut line, of the best, from the OK.
Rating:
Summary: Part celebration, part anguish, and all passion.
Review: This book is about spending a lifetime reading books that matter. Written more than five years before last year's HOW TO READ AND WHY (2000), in this book Harold Bloom addresses the question: "What should the individual who still desires to read attempt to read, this late in history?" (p. 15). When university English Departments are no longer focused on reading the Canon, I realize now that I was fortunate to take classes taught by English professors who, like Bloom, inspired an "authentic passion for reading" the classics. In our Theocratic Age of computers, "MTV Rap," an "Virtual Realty," Bloom encourages us to "confront greatness" in our reading. "Confronting greatness as we read is an intimate and expensive process," he writes, "and has never been much in critical vogue. Now, more than ever, it is out of fashion, when the quest for freedom and solitude is being condemned as politically incorrect, selfish and not appropriate in our . . . society" (p. 489). I'm neither interested in nor qualified to engage in the debate of whether Bloom's literary opinions are right or wrong. As in HOW TO READ AND WHY, Bloom's central argument here may be summed up in Samuel Johnson's observation: "the irregular combinations of fanciful invention may delight a-while, but that novelty of which the common satiety of life sends us all in a quest; but the pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted, and the mind can only repose on the stability of truth" (p. 189). Bloom believes there is a "qualitative difference between . . . Shakespeare and every other writer, even Chaucer, even Tolstoy, or whoever" (p. 24). Bloom surveys twenty-six "representatives of the entire Western Canon" (p. 10) in his book including, among others, Shakespeare ("Shakespeare is the Canon," he writes, p. 47), Dante, Chaucer, Milton and Goethe ("his wisdom abides, it seems to come from some solar system other than our own," p. 191) of The Aristocratic Age (Part II); Wordsworth, Austen, Whitman ("the American shaman," p. 256, and "Center of the American Canon," p. 247), Dickinson, Dickens and Tolstoy of The Democratic Age (Part III); and Proust, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Borges, Neruda, and Beckett of The Chaotic Age (Part IV). Although other readers may be troubled by Bloom's view that there are "qualitative differences" among these and other writers, few would take issue with the trusted, lifetime reading plan he offers in this passionate guide to the classics. So why read the Western Canon? "All that the Western Canon can bring one is the proper use of one's solitude," Bloom tells us, "that solitude whose final form is one's confrontation with one's own mortality" (p. 28). G. Merritt
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