000			01819n a2200217 a 4500
001			036753
005			20231009193448.0
008			140408s2000 nyu 000 0 eng c
010			_a00708611
020			_a9780684859064
050	0	0	_aPN83 _b.B57 2000
082	0	0	_a801 BLO
100	1		_aBloom, Harold
245	1	0	_aHow to read and why _c/ Harold Bloom.
260			_aNew York _b: Scribner _c, c2000.
300			_a283 p. _c; 23 cm.
520			_aIn the tradition of Mortimer Adler's How To Read a Book and Clifton Fadiman's Lifetime Reading Plan, the indefatigable and irascible Bloom (Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human) offers his apologia for the art of reading well. Greatly saddened by contemporary academic criticism, where the "appreciation of Victorian women's underwear has replaced the appreciation of Charles Dickens and Robert Browning," Bloom stridently argues that "we read in order to strengthen the self, and to learn its authentic interests." For Bloom, as for his critical forbears Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, reading is a solitary act that fills life with zest and insight. He suggests five guiding principles for the restoration of reading and applies these principles to short stories, poems, plays, and novels. Each brief analysis is a finely crafted meditation on the power of great literature, and Bloom's assiduous interpretations of the works of Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, and Stendhal, among others, will send readers running to the books themselves. Although Bloom's use of Shakespeare as a touchstone for his "canon" of great literature is sure to be controversial, his book presents a forceful argument for the power and delight of reading deeply.
650		0	_aReading
650		0	_aLiterature, Modern _x--History and criticism
942			_cMO
999			_c272236 _d272236