Rating: 
Summary: Prententious
Review: I saw Harold Bloom on "Charlie Rose" and he came across as a vain man, with contrived dourness to seem "artistic." And all I could think was, "It doesn't work if you're not an artist." Critics become critics to cling peripherally to the arts, and sometimes make the mistake of thinking they are artists themselve. From reading the prose in this book, Bloom never could have written a sonnet or short story worth a damn. And he's so in love with his own opinions! This book is good just to look at for the list of important works (although some items I don't think should be on the list...What in God's name is Gore Vidal doing on it! Ugh! ). But I read Harold Bloom, and get the same feeling when I watch Keanu Reeves in a movie: "What in God's name is THIS person doing at the top of their professional heap. There has to be better people out there! " In the world of MTV and computer games, any encouragement for people to read literature is great. I just wish it had been delivered differently.
Rating: 
Summary: The Western Canon - A Review in Bad Verse
Review: Must read Shakespeare; must read Dante; Ditto Chaucer and Cervantes.Shakespeare's voices (bold or whining) Break new ground by self defining. Chaucer's wife with gusto liveth. To Falstaff doth she model giveth. In Dante's strange vangelo nouvo, Beatrice solo adorado. The world of play is best defined By Don and Sancho, intertwined. Montaigne makes Pascal blasé; Moliere blows Racine away. Milton's Satan's cunning mission Smacks of Iago's nihilism. Though Dr. J. his own poems stifled, His criticism goes unrivaled. Goethe's grand Walpurgis Nacht Shines as classicism mocked. Wordsworth shows us toxic hope; Austen's Anne, through yearning, copes. Walter Whitman, autoerotic crier of the New American Religion, Stands at the center of the American Canon With his trinity of Soul, Self, MeMyself. Emily Dickinson Transports cognition, past The edge of the Known In the Blank of an eye. Only the diligent Follow her out there, Leaving all others Alone - In the Dark. Bleak House, with its rich, inventive strangeness, Dazzles the imagination and the mind. Middlemarch, with its subtle, diffusive moral import, Sneaks up on the reader from behind. Hadji Murad, the Chechen hero, Makes it Tolstoy seven, pretenders zero. Ibsen's Gynt and Hedda Gabler Hint at mankind's trollish nature. Those who slip the Freudian noose see Hamlet ain't no Oedipussy. Had O. J. Simpson studied Proust, His perspective might have saved The Juice. Make Beth eat ham, let's seize her learwick. Joy stews snakes, 'pears agonistic. Who's afraid of Walter Pater? Reading's Woolf's true alma mater. Patiently not waiting for his consciousness (Or anyone else's, for that matter) To grasp the indestructible ground of being, Spinning tales of chaos and disorder, Bursting at the seems with impenetrable meaning, Kafka sets the tone for the current age. Near the closing of this age, Latin writers take the stage. Borges con su Fabulismo; Neruda sin su Stalinismo; Pessoa with his three fine sidemen; All six owe a debt to Whitman. Samuel Beckett expanded, having no alternative, On his canonical influences. Shakespeare sat above it, as if he were untouchable, In a cottage in Stratford. As Relevance replaces Art, Theocratic Prophets start To rub aesthetic cares away. "A canon's sore in need", I say. So though his vision's rife with gloom, Here's three cheers for Harold Bloom.
Rating: 
Summary: book learnin'
Review: I've owned this book for about two years and I keep coming back to it for encouragement. Like (I expect) most people who buy this book, I was already pretty much sold on the idea of "great books" and secretly wanted someone to sell it to me harder. This book, like all of Bloom's books I've read, delivers all the sales pitch I desire and then some. Whenever I get bored out of my skull by Joyce or any of the others, I turn to The Western Canon for fresh prodding. Oh yeah, and some of the criticism is pretty illuminating too, though I can't say I follow more than about 50 percent of it. Sometimes Bloom makes me feel like I'll never be able to understand anything I read without reading 30 other books first. Once in a while, he mentions a work that I've actually read and I get all warm and learned feeling.
Rating: 
Summary: R.I.P.
Review: What the Frank E. Browns and Booklist Inc.'s perceive as a must read {and those who comprehend their mumbling}is actually the mold slowly spreading over academic "literary" prescriptions. But nothing could save this ponderous & vain brick.
Rating:
Summary: Pompous Bore
Review: A literary allusion in a Stephen King novel will do more to reinvigorate the classics, then Harold Blooms best efforts ever could.
Rating:
Summary: Establishment Refuse
Review: If this were my fist intoduction to "literature" I would despise it forever. Where is Jack Kerouac?
Rating:
Summary: superb
Review: Only Shakespeare here prevents 5 stars. But I was inclining to three stars as it seemed to me the professor had trouble organzing his brilliant scholarship into coherent paragraphs. But, midway through my comprehension improved, with essays on Wordsworth, and Austen, and then just a brilliant chapter on Emily Dickinson--near Shakespearean in language and thought, this author is brilliantly insightful with precise, profuse vocabulary--followed by equally nice chapters on Tolstoy and Freud. And so I respectfully differ with some reviews in criticism of the writing ability, which I believe on par with those the professor reviews. Thus, to me, the writing, the enormous IQ, memory and synthesis of material, scholarship and vast depth of insight are the good parts of the book. Though an unqualified judge, I believe the professor gets himself in trouble in the subjective part of the book, to wit his opinions of his subject matter, and the way he characterizes and interprets the canon, in my humble view, very narrowly. While I appreciate literature as an explanation of intellectual freedom, and I think I understand the professor's almost mystical "secular transcendence", it seems to me that this buzz is reached too much by a concentration in the literature of the weird, the strange, the bizarre and at times repulsive (Whitman and Proust). In defense of the author, he anticipates and contradicts every argument, and he, contrary to many reviews, supports everything (actually ad naseum if you read the whole book). The basic conclusions are convincing to the point of unassailability, and yet there is still a little wonder whether we are looking at literature here through a most narrow and obsessive prism. To me this book is a must read. It is overwhelming.
Rating: 
Summary: Bloom's Canon
Review: What a book!...I know now that there are some people who have failed to read Homer's Iliad closely enough and who still dream for olimpic games in literature... "A beautifully mistaken book".
Rating:
Summary: The British Canon
Review: Bloom's writing is suffused with a largeness of mind and heart one rarely encounters-something, I suppose, that may come only with age & experience. However, a few significant points should be, IMO, stressed: 1. Bloom's tedious & a bit annoying crusade against "Establishment" & "School of Resentment" is something one can (dis)agree with or not, but his cantankerous repetitive diatribe, flowing from the first page to the last, bores imaginary disinterested reader ( probably only disgruntled academics yelp " Yes! Yes! " in musty corners of dilapidated libraries ). 2.The best chapters, radiating joy, gusto of a reading experience & mesmerizing a reader ready for the sacred bookworm initiation are essays on Shakespeare, Dante, Montaigne, Whitman, Tolstoy and Proust. The parts on Joyce and Freud are sad examples of misreading ( Bloom's obsessive-compulsive word, like "inscrutable" for Conrad ). 3. Bloom's anglomania ( how else to call it ? ) is guilty for the endemic of dullness literally wrecking more than a half of the book. Maybe I'm a hopeless case of a continental European reviewer, but: a) the Bardolatry is frequently distasteful and plainly wrong ( not that Shakespeare is not on the top in the company of 4 or 5 other colleagues; just, he aint in the solitary position ) b) with all due respect, this book could/should have been issued without Chaucer, Johnson, Wordsworth, Austen, Eliot, Woolf and ( probably ) Dickens and Kafka basking in the glory of pillars of the Western literature. c) The conspicuous absence of Boccaccio, Voltaire, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Conrad and Faulkner is an outrage that, in my eyes, sinks this, otherwise valuable book.
Rating:
Summary: Bloom Should Retire
Review: With professional academics like Bloom festering in the ivory tower it's no wonder that the American educational establishment is a bloody ruins.
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