Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating misreading of the classics
Review: There are a lot of things to like about Harold Bloom's book The Wesern Canon, and quite a bit to dislike. What is really good about his approach to literature is his passion about the classics of the Western tradition, and the his fierce recrimination of contemporary literary criticism and its "school of resentment." Whatever else you can say, it is clear that Bloom cares deeply about his subject and as a lover of books, you can't help but to be caught up in that enthusiasm as a reader. That being said, I still found many, many things that are deeply wrong with the way in which he approaches literature; he gives what I regard as horrible misreadings of some of the classics that he is championing. His reading of Joyce's "Scylla and Charybdis" episode is horribly wrong, as is his estimation of Shakespeare's influence on Joyce's work. He is equally wrong about his approach to Shakespeare himself, and his reading of King Lear borders on atrocity. Dismaying overall are Bloom's obsession with literary influence, which tends to grievously trivialize virtually all authors that have the misfortune of being born after Shakespeare and Dante. Also, his main obsession is the view of art as art itself, his obsession that the aesthetic has no relation to reality but only to other works. A disappointment, because an embrace of Western literature is just what is needed today.. this fails to really do so effectively.
Rating: 
Summary: It inspired this "general reader" to start reading the canon
Review: Since I am one of the "general readers" to whom Harold Bloom directed The Western Canon, I am not qualified to judge his critical opinions. All I can say is that Mr. Bloom's descriptions of canonical works made these works and their authors sound so rewarding that I began to read them. As soon as I read the chapter on George Eliot, I had to read Middlemarch. As soon as I read Mr. Bloom's description of Jane Austen's Persuasion, I had to read that novel. Especially compelling is Mr. Bloom's description of the competitive drive that pushes strong authors to attempt to write their way out of the shadows of earlier literary giants - a phenomenon that he terms "the anxiety of influence." This concept is most useful, Mr. Bloom argues, in helping us to understand Shakespeare's place at the center of the canon. I began reading The Western Canon one year ago, and since that time I have, under Mr. Bloom's guidance, sampled hearty portions of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, Eliot, Beckett and Proust, and have read tidbits of Whitman, Dante and Joyce as well. Harold Bloom is the teacher we all long for but seldom find; to him and to The Western Canon I owe the most intellectually rewarding year of my life.
Rating:
Summary: A wrong turn by a great man
Review: Harold Bloom took a wrong turn in this book, pandering to an imagined audience of "general readers' that was really a fantasy of his publishers. This
book was primarily read and discussed
by literature professors, some of
whom, surprisingly, didn't dislike it. Harold Bloom is one of the
great critics and great men of our time. His earlier books, particularly those published in the 1970's and 1980's, are well worth reading. Bloom has always stood for the right things, and he should be thanked for that.
Rating: 
Summary: Important and educational, but with a lot of problems.
Review: Mr. Bloom has really written four different books mixed together: a polemic on the nature of literary greatness, and perhaps on the nature of beauty generally; a survey of Western literature; a guide for those wishing to study Western literature and criticism systematically; and a collection of his own critical essays and essays in criticism. Mr. Bloom's polemic is against the various social-value parties of literarians, who look at art as a social phenomenon, for better or for worse. The left-wing version thinks that art has traditionally been used to oppress womenanminorities, and should now be used to repay the debt to womenanminorities. Aesthetic affirmative action. The right-wing version thinks that art has always been behind the moral superiority of the educated classes, so if you want to be moral and educated, you'd better read the right books too. Bloom attacks both, returning to the concepts of "aesthetic value" (his quotes) and literary influence. I'm on his side, but he does not even discuss any evidence to support his claims, and in any case nobody ever persuades anybody in this kind of argument. I also don't know why he repeats over hundreds of pages what he could have said on the subject in ten. As to the survey and guide, Mr. Bloom perfoms an important service in explaining to today's student and reader the very concept of the Western literary canon. His remarks on the importance of influence, and especially on the centrality of Shakespeare, are also good. As to the twenty-six writers whom he discusses at length, there are no obvious and gross mistakes, but one sometimes wonders at his choice of writers and works: is Montaigne really more "crucial" than Baudelaire, or even more "representative" of the French canon? Is Faust II really more canonical than Faust I? Perhaps the weakest part of the book, and without doubt the longest, is the collection of Bloom's original ideas on the importance of the twenty-six. To paraphrase an old Supreme Court decision, Bloom's idea that Shakespeare gains his historical importance because his characters develop from listening to their own speeches shows the critic's ingenuity more than it explains anything about Shakespeare. Mr. Bloom should have stuck with has own quotation from Hazlitt on the subject. In a similar vein: the Kafkaesque, which is really only a sort of uncannyness, is not really what's basic in Kafka, whose most famous works are better in parts than as wholes, anyway. What's important in Kafka is his "patient gnosticism". And so on. This book is too long, and the original criticism is not worth much, but The Western Canon may be very useful as an introduction to literary criticism, and even as a learner's guide to the western canon. (This review is based on the hard-cover edition.
Rating:
Summary: Important and educational, but with many problems.
Review: Mr. Bloom has really written four different books mixed together: a polemic on the nature of literary greatness, and perhaps on the nature of beauty generally; a survey of Western literature; a guide for those wishing to study Western literature and criticism systematically; and a collection of his own critical essays and essays in criticism. Mr. Bloom's polemic is against the various social-value parties of literarians, who look at art as a social phenomenon, for better or for worse. The left-wing version thinks that art has traditionally been used to oppress womenanminorities, and should now be used to repay the debt to womenanminorities. Aesthetic affirmative action. The right-wing version thinks that art has always been behind the moral superiority of the educated classes, so if you want to be moral and educated, you'd better read the right books too. Bloom attacks both, returning to the concepts of "aesthetic value" (his quotes) and literary influence. I'm on his side, but he does not even discuss any evidence to support his claims, and in any case nobody ever persuades anybody in this kind of argument. I also don't know why he repeats over hundreds of pages what he could have said on the subject in ten. As to the survey and guide, Mr. Bloom perfoms an important service in explaining to today's student and reader the very concept of the Western literary canon. His remarks on the importance of influence, and especially on the centrality of Shakespeare, are also good. As to the twenty-six writers whom he discusses at length, there are no obvious and gross mistakes, but one sometimes wonders at his choice of writers and works: is Montaigne really more "crucial" than Baudelaire, or even more "representative" of the French canon? Is Faust II really more canonical than Faust I? Perhaps the weakest part of the book, and without doubt the longest, is the collection of Bloom's original ideas on the importance of the twenty-six. To paraphrase an old Supreme Court decision, Bloom's idea that Shakespeare gains his historical importance because his characters develop from listening to their own speeches shows the critic's ingenuity more than it explains anything about Shakespeare. Mr. Bloom should have stuck with has own quotation from Hazlitt on the subject. In a similar vein: the Kafkaesque, which is really only a sort of uncannyness, is not really what's basic in Kafka, whose most famous works are better in parts than as wholes, anyway. What's important in Kafka is his "patient gnosticism". And so on. This book is too long, and the original criticism is not worth much, but The Western Canon may be very useful as an introduction to literary criticism, and even as a learner's guide to the western canon
Rating:
Summary: Classic Criticism from a great critic
Review: A refutation to all those who claim there is no canon. There is, and Harold Bloom is here to show us what it contains. Bloom is erudite, witty, pointed, and forceful. The book reader in me loved his complete listing if the Canon in one of the appendices. A large book, to be read slowly, but with a great deal of weight behind its premise
Rating:
Summary: A valuable counterbalance to the deconstructionist onslaught
Review: In this highly concentrated book Bloom provides a long-needed stabilizing force amid the sickening swirl of the deconstructionist and post-modernist demolition squads.
Adding many new insights on major authors such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton as well as non-English authors such as Cervantes and Goethe, Bloom takes us back to our roots, the glories we have inherited, and inspires us to recapture the principles and foundations of the best of our Western traditions. This book is far more than a subjective piece of literary criticism.
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