Rating: 
Summary: Eminently worthwhile
Review: Bloom's book remains, even some seven years after its original publication, as fresh as a daisy, and eminently worthwhile. His diagnosis about the decline in status of the "canon" (an annoying religious term, by the way) is correct to the extent that e.g. universities, which should make it their business to introduce students of literature to the best texts, have often largely abandoned this role. This matters not only in that fewer students now read good texts, but also in that they no longer know which texts are worth reading - which is not their fault, but a serious handicap to them and anyone they might proceed to teach. In one of my Shakespeare classes I discovered the other day that about 80% of those present had not even heard of Milton (leave alone read anything by him). There IS a group of texts that have survived fashions and have remained worth reading, and the ones that Bloom lists are certainly among them. Even that attempt, alone, is and will continue to be very valuable. Obviously it is harder to pick tomorrow's classics among today's texts, but Bloom rightly realises that the effort has to be made: some texts are better than others, and we cannot read everything. I do not altogether share Bloom's pessimism about the canon's demise. Of course, if he really did feel that the canon won't be saved, his book would not have been worth writing. My own experience as a teacher of literature concentrating on major classics is that they do attract large numbers of students, who are keen to read books they will find nourishing, and who want to be guided both towards them and in reading them. There is a genuine appetite for good authors, and those educators, university administrators or politicians who say otherwise do not, in my view, really know what they are talking about. As far as his discussion of individual texts is concerned, I find Bloom always interesting, perceptive, and searching, even though I not infrequently disagree with him on points of interpretation, and occasionally on questions of value, though I do not think it is a matter of mere personal caprice to place Shakespeare and Dickens among the Western world's most important authors. His choices are usually very defensible in the light of critical opinion as it has developed among countless readers over many years. While the book is called *The Western Canon*, and certainly moves beyond authors writing in English, it should be realised that its emphasis is nevertheless not free from an Anglo-Saxon bias. It is good to see e.g. Tolstoy given substantial attention, but he is the only Russian author given such space, while there are as many as five for England. Even so, what Bloom DOES give us is usually very much worth having, and I have recommended his book to countless students as well as, of course, my own children. - Joost Daalder, Professor of English, Flinders University, South Australia
Rating: 
Summary: Logorrhea
Review: Harold Bloom is well known for his cetic appetite for books and his enormous body of work; but, for those who want to know what makes individual literary works worth reading, Bloom offers only wordy eructations. And make no mistake, this book is primarily about Bloom's theories concerning intertextual `Agon' and the `Anxiety of Influence', only incidentally about the literary works cited, and not at all about the artistic aspects of these works. While Bloom states that "aesthetic value" and "artistic criteria" are what make literary works canonical, he locates these metrics within "interartistic influence" and "the struggle between texts", which are distinct from and only tangentially correlated with artistic merit. The resulting analysis is a tentacular tangle of metaliterary cross-referencing and an ink cloud of cloying superlatives. Bloom confuses concrete artistic concerns with metaliterary relations and sees individual works only through the distorting lens of his synthetic theories. In so doing, Bloom commits the same offense as the reductionists he incessantly complains about --- he simply exchanges the Feminist, Marxist, Lacanian, New Historicist, Deconstructionist, or Semiotic lens for one shaped by theories of Agon, Anxiety, and Influence. Even Bloom is "unclear" as to "whether this is a difference that makes a difference." Well, there isn't any real difference in that all fixate on their respective lenses rather than the literary works these lenses happen to be trained on. Good readers read for the experience of a great story and the artistic presentation of a unique, painstakingly crafted world of words; poor readers read to gaze in a mirror by solipsistically projecting themselves into fictional works and relating to characters; but, the worst readers read to make external interpretations and generalizations. Bloom, along with most literary critisites, founders in the latter category. Further fouling the waters, Bloom identifies "aesthetic strength" with this "amalgam" of ambiguous terms: "mastery of figurative language, originality, cognitive power, knowledge, exuberance of diction." When Bloom simply attaches such loaded and pliable terms to a given work the result is only an expression of his subjective approval; and, Bloom approves mainly of works that afford him the best opportunity to air a farrago of Freudian frippery, erect some agonistic apparatus, and/or weave a web of literary influence. Bloom, true to his ranine literary feeding style, swallows books whole, savoring none of the artistic detail within; and, his gassy commentaries show the unmistakable signs of literary indigestion. To be fair, Bloom offers a handful of lukewarm insights, but I can only recommend *The Western Canon* on this basis to those who would scrabble in a clogged toilet for a mere nickel. Bloom never attempts a sustained and substantive study of the concrete artistic strengths of the literary works he cites; instead, he simply washes them with flummery. But then, Bloom believes that "pragmatically, aesthetic value can be recognized or experienced, but it cannot be conveyed to those who are incapable of grasping its sensations and perceptions," and that "you cannot teach someone to love great poetry." The implication is that Bloom and those who accede to his canonical choices and the bases for their canonicity possess this innate capability to grasp --- how flattering! --- while those who disagree with Bloom do not. This bullet-proof argument survives only under the cooperative fire of intellectual blanks. Intellectually armed readers will simply gun it down and march on unconvinced, marvelling at how such a voracious reader has been left so intellectually malnourished and so particularly ignorant as to the concrete and conveyable nature of artistic expression. If all these failings were not enough, Bloom's slobbering praise of Shakespeare and embarrassing insistence on Freud give one the uncomfortable impression of pubescent crushes (the chapter on Freud makes it clear that Bloom's infatuation for this improbable pair is largely due to the great opportunity they present for Bloom to spin his "story of literary influence and its anxieties"). Then there's Bloom's intellectual pillow fight with the Philistine "School of Resentment", as Bloom dubs it, which is agonizingly tedious and exposes Bloom as just another sad clown in the miserable academic circus. And then we have the grandiloquent, vacuous prose --- lots of gaudy window dressing but not much in the shop. As for the arguments, Bloom proves only that those afflicted with diarrhea of the pen invariably discharge turgid, watery books.
Rating:
Summary: A much-needed dose of literary insanity
Review: I am still trying to understand how (almost) every single reviewer (good and bad, conservative and liberal) treats this book as if it were some sort of critical Mount Everest: to be Quixotically assaulted as a throwback to ignorant pre-Deconstructionist days, or to be ludicrously extolled as a Conservative Holy Grail, preserving the sacred works amidst a Gomorrah of Feminist studies and the like. For the book is simply this: An account of one person's love of literature and an elaboration thereof. Bloom continually reiterates (and all reviewers admit this, without going any further) that Bloom contends that the criteria of works of art should be aesthetic: not political, social, theoretical etc. But all this means is that books shoud be judged on whether they appeal to you, whether they move you, whether you have come to love them: "aesthetic" comes from a Greek word meaning "to feel." Personally, I think his Bardolatry is mostly ludicrous. But this is Bloom's book, not mine. While, on the other hand, his chapter on Emily Dickinson is the most profound and moving I have ever read on her poetry. It is aesthetic. It moved me. I loved it. So there. My disagreements with him don't really matter to me because no two people are going to see eye-to-eye on everything, and I don't regard this book as prescriptive. It is descriptive. It is descriptive of views that have come to be held by a literary genius and great lover of the written word over a long period of time. I appreciate it and (yes) love it on that level. It has no theory, per se, to promote, no cause to advocate, no fight to pick (Bloom himself likes to say, regarding literary fads and theories, "Whatever it is, I'm against it."). Yes, he's rather down in the mouth about the current state of academia. But aren't you down in the mouth about something too? The Western Canon has likes and dislikes. It is idiosyncratic. It is aesthetic. It is irrational. It is insane. I love it.
Rating:
Summary: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!
Review: Bloom is supposed to be one of the great readers of our age. How then did he become such an awful writer? He is obscure, pompous, mired in academic doubletalk and, much of the time, totally incomprehensible. About the only saving grace of this book is its humor which is entirely unintentional. Consider: "George Eliot at her most Wordsworthian, in Adam Bede, seems curiously Tolstoyan." Or Bloom on Dickens: "Here again, in a Borgesian way, Kafka aids in the interpretation of Bleak House." The book is filled with references to this school of critics and that -- "Adorno and the Frankfurt School," "The school of Auerbach, Singleton and Freccero," etc. if you are into that sort of thing. Pretentious writers often quote themselves; here, adding a wrinkle, Bloom approvingingly quotes another literary critic explaining what Bloom really meant in an earlier work. Here is part of it: "The point has been well expressed by Peter De Bolla in his book Towards Historical Rhetorics: ... 'For Bloom, "influence" is both a tropological category... and a complex of psychic, historical and imagistic relations.'" Bloom goes on to say this is an "accurate summary." I have read a number books that I think would make people more inclined to read, or re-read, the classics (e.g. David Denby's Great Books, Robert Kanigel's Vintage Reading). This is not one of them. In fact, this is not a book for people in love with books. It is a book for people who have a fetish for literary criticism.
Rating:
Summary: hurray for non-politically correct writing
Review: I have said lots about Bloom in reviews of his other books. Suffice it to say that he was a literary genius who took advantage of his odd sleeping patterns and low need for sleep to read scores of books a week for his whole life. Therefore, I appreciate Bloom for his encylopedic knowledge of literature. And don't think he hasn't read contemporary multi-cultural works -- it's just that he never loses his perspective because he can hold the classics in his hands along with new works and compare them in an unbiased way. Like his book on Shakespeare, this book's main virtue is that it will inspire both the inexperienced reader and the long time reader to pick up many of these masterpieces and read them (or reread them). For that alone, Bloom deserves praise. You may not always agree with him, but you cannot help but be in awe of his knowledge base which extends from the biblical to the modern with few gaps. I found the reading list helpful as well. Of course he leaves out many great authors, but he's not trying to be all inclusive and that shouldn't stop you from seeking out other great works of literature. This is a great introduction to many great works that deserve to be read by any thinking person.
Rating:
Summary: At last, a celebration of literature.....
Review: After decades of endless bickering from the School of Resentment, we finally have a bold alternative. Bloom necessarily links many works with the flowering of Western Civilization (our ideas, values, and contradictions), but he remains true to the texts themselves; never inserting needless political commentary and postmodern gibberish. Bloom selects a wide variety of authors, which allows the reader to understand the diverse nature of the canon itself (compared to the artificial and often times unwarranted "inclusions" often seen in more politically correct collections). However, the key to this book, or any of Bloom's undeniably readable work is that he, unlike the self-righteous voices of multiculturalism (who are only concerned with "fairness," righting past wrongs, oppression, and the "hidden forces" of privilege in literature), understands that the only concept that truly matters is the one least accepted in our current age -- JOY. Bloom brings back this underrated and long forgotten reaction to the written word and I thank him for that.
Rating:
Summary: The canonical critic
Review: if there is a samuel johnson living among us, he is probably harold bloom. i loved to find my favourite writers in his book. and, being a portuguese, i can only tank him for including Fernando Pessoa among the 26 geniuses he selected.
Rating:
Summary: A considered perspective
Review: I will be brief. This is not an accessible work. It propogates elitism among literature, a general aesthetic principal and, above all, a hierarchy within art. Whether or not you agree with his perspectives, Prof. Bloom presents a remarkable viewpoint. Other reviews have criticized him for 'trying to hold onto his job.' This seems a rather uninformed opinion. Prof. Bloom has his job, and will hold it. But who can follow him? It is precisely this kind of argument ad hominum (excuse my poor spelling; I'm tired) that Bloom argues against. We cannot judge the work based on the author; there must be an aesthetic scale, or at least a comparason. Bloom reveals literatures weakness in his conclusion: it is accessible. Anyone can write. In our post-modern world, we're too afraid of leaving someone out... Well, I tried to be brief. Anyhow, I highly recommend this work to anyone who is up to the challenge, or any opponent of Bloom's beliefs--which I cannot adequetly describe here: I have not the skill for it.
Rating: 
Summary: A teaser for readers and writers
Review: You may not agree with Bloom, his ideas about the literary canon, and his list of the anointed few writers who will survive our era of chaos, ignorance and political correctness. I don't, at least not entirely. But I think the ideas stated in _The Western Canon_ deserve to be considered by every reader or writer truly interested in the western tradition. What is literary greatness? Why do some writers stand the test of time century after century, even against the spirit of their times, while most are forgotten? Bloom reminds readers that literature, like enlightenment, is not always pleasant nor safe, and should be sought for something more than a passing escape from everyday worries. And he encourages writers to look beyond their time, less to the profitable and more to the insightful and the human when asked to define greatness. I only ask you to try to read Borges better than Bloom did, and to look for Quevedo, Gongora and other writers from the Spanish Golden Century: one of Bloom's greatest mistakes is to pass them by.
Rating: 
Summary: Silly
Review: I don't know what Harold Bloom was trying to achieve with this book, but his insistence on the highest cultural standards is belied by the whole idea of it. The only people who have any genuine stake in there being such a thing as a Western Canon are tenured professors of literature - obviously, if everybody chucks out Montaigne in favour of Toni Morrison, then Bloom is going to be out of a job. But that ain't going to happen - at least, not outside the frenzied imaginations of elderly professors. At the risk of making a really terrible pun, a canon appears to be something of which writers are in permanent danger of being violently expelled. I see absolutely no point in trying to affirm some sort of Top Ten, or Top Hundred, or Top 10,000 Great Writers, unless it's to market a fat book on the strength of it. Writing happens, and literature becomes canonical, from the bottom up, not by the fiat of academics. (You may argue that it's academic prestige that in the end gives a book canonical status, but no claret-drinkin', tutorial-givin', pipe-smokin' blow-in is going to persuade me that Saul Bellow is a better writer than Thomas Pynchon, no matter how many more honorary degrees he has. There, I've put my cards on the table.) If anything, this book is a symptom of exactly the kind of superficality Bloom affects to deplore. His narrowness (has this man spent a single week of his adult life off-campus? If so, you'd never tell) is the strongest possible rebuke to his championing of the virtues of reading the classics. He seems to have little to say about these writers other than "Read This!" If books are ultimately only about other books, then there's no point in reading or writing at all. I gave him two stars on the strength of isolated insights, such as the notion that Emily Dickinson has more "cognitive originality" than any other poet since Dante; an interesting and suggestive idea, pity that Bloom doesn't make more of it. The endless wittering about Who gets to be in the Canon and Who doesn't and Why ends up making Bloom seem like a cranky pundit during the post-match breakdown on a Saturday sports show. "Well, Borges played a good match, he's a good player, but in the end, Barry, he hasn't the staying power, he hasn't the stamina of a Cervantes, certainly the finest midfielder the Spanish have ever known." You'll get more enlightment browsing in the Classics section of any largish bookshop. Risible.
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