TS: Orlando Bloom vs. Harold Bloom

finally

In loving memory of Harold Bloom, here's a clip I just remembered of a C-Span caller asking him about the poem "Real Eyes/Realize/Real Lies." His reaction is priceless pic.twitter.com/ua185Px014

— Patrick Swanson (@patrickswanson) October 14, 2019

https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/on-harold-bloom/

i'm rly fond of his shakespeare book

i really like harold bloom cause one of the only english lit courses i took in college was taught by a Bloom stan, and he was a fantastic teacher who basically just wanted to make sure we really enjoyed shakespeare and didn't care all that much about the analytical quality of our essays. seeing my the cool lit ppl in my twitter feed celebrate his death was kinda surprising lol

I learned a lot about How to Read from Bloom.m

seeing my the cool lit ppl in my twitter feed celebrate his death was kinda surprising lol

this line from the obit j.d. posted throws a sad light i was unfamiliar w on the trajectory that probably led to this:

There was an actual son, rumored to be troubled—either in mind or body—and much beloved. It was for the sake of his health care, it was said, that Bloom had submitted to the indignity of writing all those cheesy Chelsea House introductions and then The Western Canon, the work where he sold out most clearly to a side in a game of politics and political criticism he’d previously refused to play.

i haven't read any of that tho and "basically just wanted to make sure we really enjoyed shakespeare" is my experience of his approach as well

Still stanning for Milo Bloom of Bloom County tbrr

sexually harassed Bobbi iirc

guilty lol @ that

yeah also a fan of his shakespeare book. was never really able muster up strong feelings about either side of the canon wars stuff, everybody should just read good books all the time, idgaf.

i also encountered a few Very Online lit ppl in my feeds dunking on his death and its just like, dude liked different books than you, big deal, chill out and go read a book.

He had impeccable, albeit limited, taste. Anyway my challop is that he was both good and bad.

Just realized that if weren’t for him and those Chelsea House books I might never have moved out of my parents’s house.

i also encountered a few Very Online lit ppl in my feeds dunking on his death and its just like, dude liked different books than you, big deal, chill out and go read a book.

Saw this too. Twitter is disgusting.

The story about his son’s illness prompting his “commercial” turn is true, or at least I’ve heard it from a short grapevine. However, I think his partisanship—while maybe part a publicity thing—was true. He was a humanist and didn’t like the constructivist account of subjectivity that, in various permutations, lie behind all the theoretical approaches he lumped under “the school of resentment”

The people cheering his death are probably not his enemies in the academy as much as people who only know about him via the naomi wolf accusation. Just realized this.

Those Chelsea House books, intimidating and colorful, impressed me in high school, and his categorical dismissals I emulated in my early years.

apart from the naomi wolf thing the accusations of harassment et al have been pretty lacking in specifics, unless calling everyone "my dear" counts

thats a really nice piece alfred

the naomi wolf thing is a legit reason to think he sucks, but in the extremely limited sample of people I follow on social media, the negative comments from the hot take brigade were mostly all variations of "finally we're free of this suffocating promoter of Dead White Men", as if he had been actively going around burning other people's manuscripts. So dumb.

a friend who studied with him (and is/was an attractive woman) said he was a wonderful teacher, funny and unusually kind

umm

OK wow i just checked in on what people are saying on twitter.