The western canon is a crock of normative prejudiced white bullshit. It doesn't work anymore and it is fucking boring. Nobody gives a fuck about Tennyson or Baldwin or any other luminaries we're told to read. Who selects what's to be noteworthy for generations? Any canon that springs from Europe should be murked. I like Bloom - but what he's fighting for is affected white people reading. Is this racist? No it's realist. White people tell us what to read and we are to take it as numinous.
I think Bloom is fascinating. I often disagree with him, and there are many controversial things to say about him, but I still love the fact that someone has such passion for something so important. The man is an intellectual colossus, and in many senses he's the very last of a dying breed, and I'm saddened to hear of his recent illness, for he has no successor. I'm happy to hear someone talking about it, and he's the kind of thing that culture needs these days.
Cool post, I'm also a Harold Bloom fan and found your point of view rather cool. A couple things though. While Anxiety is definitely considered his most important book "The Book of J" is actually what put him on the mainstream map. It suggested that the writer of the first five book of the Bible were written by a woman who happened to be a literary genius. He can definitely be considered a conservative/reactionary in strictly literary terms. He calls the socially oriented literary approaches.
@john9man One of the aspects of new historicism and other similar literary approaches is the destruction of the "western canon" by trying to include what might be considered pop lit, or low lit just as valuable as high literature. His perspective on politics don't have much to do with it. He upholds the idea that the purpose of literature and the essence of literature is what he calls the sublime. I quite liked your comment about Bloom as an "equal opportunity offender"
@Blunic The sound is an English approximation of German. His pronunciation is rather correct, though I'm sure a German speaker would still find an American pronunciation rather... awful.
Man I just loved it. You talked very intelligently. There are so many stupid people, some of them quite famous, giving popular talks and dominating the youtube space that you sometimes lose your hope. It is really wonderful and even surprising to see a stranger like you talking intelligently. I am curious what you would become in future. I hope people like you find their way in academia.
Bloom's thesis in "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human" is an idea first put forth by Knut Hamsun in his 1890 novel "Hunger." The protagonist states, "How could one possibly talk of conscience in the middle ages? Conscience was first invented by Dancing-master Shakespeare" (125).
Agree. I was hoping for an attack on Bloom. Instesad, we get a much deserved tribue and introduction to one of the greatest literary critics of all time, the Samuel Johnson of the last 50 years. How come there are no footages of him here?
Bloom refers to the deconstructionist mafia [ led first, I believe, by Paul de Man] as coming from the 'school of Resentment'. And what they so resent, I suspect, is the gift of creative genius. No neo-Marxist influenced theory can tolerate such an anarchic notion, which depends as much on genetics as it does drive and opportunity. Hence, their impulse to render all available texts into the same dull heap of socio-politically determined pulp. They saw at the limb on which they stand.
Well, he's too harsh on the deconstructionists, neo-Marxists, etc. However, I am sympathetic to his position. I'm somewhere inbetween Bloom and the cultural studies crowd.
Clipper. Sounds like a complex and difficult position to me. One foot on the platform and the other on the train, so to speak. Deconstructionists, with few exceptions, write with all the verve and force of lab technicians, grimly promoting their nickel-dime nihilism inside a cramped lexicon of language so deadening and bent on obfuscation it seems a tone poem from Stalins grave. They reek of envy and resentment, wanting mainly to dismantle a form they can not begin to master.
Bloom has held firm against the viral perniciousness of the French Invasion, that grey-pallored exercise in nihilism which sought [ with apologies to Pol Pot] to bring literature to Year Zero. Moreover, he writes with great force and style, something entirely lacking in most of his antagonists, who seem possessed of the souls of Stalinist lab techncians. So, thanks, Hooded, for celebrating this cantankerous old buffalo, and refusing to take path of least resistance.
I was just about to post a comment but decided not to for the same reasons i was originally inclined to post it and for the same reasons i will not reveal them or justify my reluctance.
I said that the point about Anxiety of influence being obvious because I suspect you get about as much information from the hooded negro as reading the dust-jacket of the book. He makes obvious points and doesn't read the works he critiques (his podcast on Derrida shows absolutely zero understanding of Continental philosophy). The Hooded Negro needs to either: (1) read (2) shut up because he understands nothing right now. DO THE WORK MAN; BEING AN INTELLECTUAL IS WORK.
what a brave position HN: "Anxiety of influence is Harold Bloom's best work"--This is like saying, I think Hamlet is Shakespeare's best play--thanks captain obvious. No wonder you like Harold Bloom--he is a frickin windbag just like your garbage post which I suspect is made from some bathroom stall in a Chapters book store.
So what? Anxiety of Influence is Bloom's best work, and Hamlet is Shakespeare's best play. Just because they're obvious points doesn't mean they shouldn't be stated?
go back to the fuken black jungle u black fuk and take yor jungle buks witf you u shit nigger. U fink ur smart u shit? Well I can build a wall u shit as I am a bricklayer! Can you????? Total waste uv time... becuz u cannot. All u can do is read sum shitty books by sum book ritin niggae... DON'T FUK WIF BRUM!
Bloom was actually influenced by Derrida. Trying to determine how a poet or any artist is unlike a precursor involves an apophatic or negative process where you assume that the two are basically the same and then you find out how the artist is NOT like the precursor. This seems to be the easiest method to determine a poet's originality. I think that this is basically what deconstruction can be said to be anyway - an apophatic or negative method applied to literary criticism and other fields.
Harold Bloom isn't a conservative reactionary because he wrote about masturbation?!! Sorry but intellectual masturbation is quite a telling indication that someone is a conservative reactionary.
yah, that how goethe is actually pronounced. i made the same mistake for a long time--i kept typing in gerta, geirta, etc. in looking for references to schopenhauer and nietzsche's oppinion on the writer, only to dscover, eventually, that goethe is actually pronounced like gert-a
"...anyone who can discuss Goethe & masturbation at link I don't think you can really call them a reactionry.. " - Now I know why you don't understand Derrida & Foucault...
honey, no one understands Derrida or Foucault. They are the bane of literary studies. Flabby French theorists. Derrida's theories run around in convoluted circles to come to the simple and unremarkable conclusion that absolute meaning does not exist. Nietzsche covered this long before...and did it better. Foucault has been highly criticized for his shoddy scholarship, especially in his "History of Sexuality" volumes.
"Euripides", please don't use the name of gifted poeple to pull other hardworking, mentally disciplined through the dirt. and stop this enoying name-throughing. how about putting a couple of years of work in before exposing your tonsils again. sincerely yours,"honey".
I'm afraid Euripides is spot-on there ladoudi. I'm also afraid that the hard work and mental discipline you admire (and which is in fact sorely lacking in the works of both Derrida and Foucault) should have been applied to a quick proof-read of your post before you sent it. "poeple", "enoying", "name-throughing", you could put in another couple of years of work yourself methinks.
Derrida and Foucault are quite interesting in their own right, but they are as infants in comparison to Nietszche, Wittgenstein, and Thomas Kuhn, who made similar points with much more clarity, intellectual rigour, and intelligibility. Leave Derrida and Foucault to the freshmen who have yet to realise how sloppy their work was.
I think the French philosophers, such as Derricda and Foucault, have to be understood within the context of French thought, the style and ordinary way of thinking about these kinds of topics; if I recall they didn't emphasize clarity and logical argument as did others for particular reasons--perhaps they were more informed by aesthetics and salon-like conversation, worthwhile for their contribution not of argument but for ideas themselves.
I'm sorry, I'm not being a native speaker and I have to handle three languages fluently.
Dowdy, poeple like you who still stumble through the realms of college football competativeness applying first, second and third places to ideas they don't understand in the first place will never get the benefit of ideas other poeple spent a live of work, devotion and enthusiasm to think. Do you understand that? Maybe I can help you out with translations in german & french? Ladoudi.
Hey Ladoudi, first off let me apologise for criticising your spelling, I hadn't realised it wasn't your first language. Your English is actually pretty good for a non-native speaker. Secondly, can I just say that you shouldn't pass judgement on 'people like me' without knowing me.
If you want to know, I no longer 'stumble through the realms of college football competitiveness', I finished my masters a year ago and am now stumbling through the realms of working for a living, which is a big disappointment after college.. I just posted because I miss the fun of debating these things with people who care about it. I'm not trying to rank these thinkers in any way, just expressing my opinion which was formed after years of studying these guys' writings.
...and I have benefited from reading Derrida and Foucault, they had some great ideas. All I'm saying is that my initial astonishment and admiration on reading them had diminished by the time I entered third year and discovered all of these other guys whose ideas, in my opinion, were far more rigorously conceived and presented.
I have major problems with deconstruction now, I think it's a pointless exercise, but hey, that's just me. I also think 'Scarface' was an idiotic movie but everyone I know thinks it's a classic so what do I know?
@Euripides27 Wow!! just realised you posted this 3 years ago! ah well, Nietzsche didn't finish the job. Heidegger tried and also didn't quite make it. Derrida ain't perfect.
"anyone who can discuss Goethe & masturbation at link" you don't we can really call a reactionary... now I understand why you don't understand Derrida or Foucault.
Thank you for talking about important things.
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ZAJAIRA1000 5 months ago
Are you reading Bloom out of personal interest or are you an English major?
TheRealSmacker 6 months ago
beautifully done. Thank you.
ccalson 7 months ago
The western canon is a crock of normative prejudiced white bullshit. It doesn't work anymore and it is fucking boring. Nobody gives a fuck about Tennyson or Baldwin or any other luminaries we're told to read. Who selects what's to be noteworthy for generations? Any canon that springs from Europe should be murked. I like Bloom - but what he's fighting for is affected white people reading. Is this racist? No it's realist. White people tell us what to read and we are to take it as numinous.
TheDucciano 7 months ago
@TheDucciano You sound very intelligent.
jgibanez 2 months ago
@jgibanez Don't know if you're being sarcastic or not but my point still rings true. Holla at cha boy.
TheDucciano 2 months ago
wow this is rare, an intelligent nigger ... hmm i'll have to really use my brain to convince him to be my slave
hohohee1 9 months ago
@hohohee1
wow this is rare, an internet racist honky...hmm i wont have to really use my cock to
convince his white women to make more brown babies - they love niggers
dude, dicks like you will be history in about 20years. get all your racist shit out now because in about
2025, you'll be cleaning hector's bathroom and doing jamal's yardwork.
have fun!
TheDucciano 7 months ago
@hohohee1 there are niggers and there are black people. I believe there's a big difference. He's a smart black person, stop being an ass.
sf200425997 5 months ago
@hohohee1 lol so funny but so racist, :( made me cry rofl
ITAKEYOURGP 3 months ago
go be a nigger somewhere else
molloyju 10 months ago
Really enjoyed this. Thank you for being an intellectual in this world of "Two and a half Men"-watchers :)
thundermorphine 11 months ago
thanks.
MackenDaFlows 11 months ago
He calls himself "BloomBartollousBardallator!" He is a riot, sometimes...see Harold Bloom - How to Read and Why.
WaleedRahman 1 year ago
I think Bloom is fascinating. I often disagree with him, and there are many controversial things to say about him, but I still love the fact that someone has such passion for something so important. The man is an intellectual colossus, and in many senses he's the very last of a dying breed, and I'm saddened to hear of his recent illness, for he has no successor. I'm happy to hear someone talking about it, and he's the kind of thing that culture needs these days.
hanshotfirst1138 1 year ago
Amen bro!
goethean 1 year ago
Shakespeare "invented" psychology? what the fuck does that even mean?
WellConditionedChimp 1 year ago
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johanhellerstedt 1 year ago
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johanhellerstedt 1 year ago
informative stuff, just one thing, it's "Goethe", not "Gurthe".
cheers
MajorTomIL 1 year ago
@MajorTomIL No, HN pronounced 'Goethe' correctly. German pronunciation remember.
greenslumber 10 months ago
great stuff: I'm really getting an education -- thanks :)
garvic7 1 year ago
Cool post, I'm also a Harold Bloom fan and found your point of view rather cool. A couple things though. While Anxiety is definitely considered his most important book "The Book of J" is actually what put him on the mainstream map. It suggested that the writer of the first five book of the Bible were written by a woman who happened to be a literary genius. He can definitely be considered a conservative/reactionary in strictly literary terms. He calls the socially oriented literary approaches.
john9man 1 year ago
@john9man One of the aspects of new historicism and other similar literary approaches is the destruction of the "western canon" by trying to include what might be considered pop lit, or low lit just as valuable as high literature. His perspective on politics don't have much to do with it. He upholds the idea that the purpose of literature and the essence of literature is what he calls the sublime. I quite liked your comment about Bloom as an "equal opportunity offender"
john9man 1 year ago
@Blunic The sound is an English approximation of German. His pronunciation is rather correct, though I'm sure a German speaker would still find an American pronunciation rather... awful.
aki009 1 year ago
Man I just loved it. You talked very intelligently. There are so many stupid people, some of them quite famous, giving popular talks and dominating the youtube space that you sometimes lose your hope. It is really wonderful and even surprising to see a stranger like you talking intelligently. I am curious what you would become in future. I hope people like you find their way in academia.
hailmomo 1 year ago
i did not expect you to be so cool. would love to get a beer with you; you sound like a pretty intelligent dude.
lawrencepluto 1 year ago
it kind of is
lawrencepluto 1 year ago
Just wonderful. Thank you for doing this.
bogorzelak 1 year ago
Bloom's thesis in "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human" is an idea first put forth by Knut Hamsun in his 1890 novel "Hunger." The protagonist states, "How could one possibly talk of conscience in the middle ages? Conscience was first invented by Dancing-master Shakespeare" (125).
It's great to see videos like this on YouTube.
grumblefuss 2 years ago
"It's great to see videos like this on YouTube."
I know, it's comforting to see some of us still have brains in the American Silver Age.
thistexaspoet 2 years ago
Great work, dude. This is not at all what I was expecting from this video.
keelorenz 2 years ago
Agree. I was hoping for an attack on Bloom. Instesad, we get a much deserved tribue and introduction to one of the greatest literary critics of all time, the Samuel Johnson of the last 50 years. How come there are no footages of him here?
ZachClooney 2 years ago
very interesting
lesassassins 2 years ago
I never thought of it like that Oswald Bates
timnelso 2 years ago
Bloom refers to the deconstructionist mafia [ led first, I believe, by Paul de Man] as coming from the 'school of Resentment'. And what they so resent, I suspect, is the gift of creative genius. No neo-Marxist influenced theory can tolerate such an anarchic notion, which depends as much on genetics as it does drive and opportunity. Hence, their impulse to render all available texts into the same dull heap of socio-politically determined pulp. They saw at the limb on which they stand.
molloyx 2 years ago 5
Well, he's too harsh on the deconstructionists, neo-Marxists, etc. However, I am sympathetic to his position. I'm somewhere inbetween Bloom and the cultural studies crowd.
columbusclipper 2 years ago
Clipper. Sounds like a complex and difficult position to me. One foot on the platform and the other on the train, so to speak. Deconstructionists, with few exceptions, write with all the verve and force of lab technicians, grimly promoting their nickel-dime nihilism inside a cramped lexicon of language so deadening and bent on obfuscation it seems a tone poem from Stalins grave. They reek of envy and resentment, wanting mainly to dismantle a form they can not begin to master.
molloyx 2 years ago
Bloom has held firm against the viral perniciousness of the French Invasion, that grey-pallored exercise in nihilism which sought [ with apologies to Pol Pot] to bring literature to Year Zero. Moreover, he writes with great force and style, something entirely lacking in most of his antagonists, who seem possessed of the souls of Stalinist lab techncians. So, thanks, Hooded, for celebrating this cantankerous old buffalo, and refusing to take path of least resistance.
molloyx 3 years ago
Comment removed
NecroButcher91 2 years ago
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I'm not going to lie, reading your writing gives me the impression that you must be an extraordinary asshole.
NecroButcher91 2 years ago
I was just about to post a comment but decided not to for the same reasons i was originally inclined to post it and for the same reasons i will not reveal them or justify my reluctance.
blishypoos 3 years ago
Those being that you want to appear intelligent but have nothing to say.
MustachioEdd 2 years ago
so how am i doing?
blishypoos 2 years ago
Nice!
5PhiV 3 years ago
I said that the point about Anxiety of influence being obvious because I suspect you get about as much information from the hooded negro as reading the dust-jacket of the book. He makes obvious points and doesn't read the works he critiques (his podcast on Derrida shows absolutely zero understanding of Continental philosophy). The Hooded Negro needs to either: (1) read (2) shut up because he understands nothing right now. DO THE WORK MAN; BEING AN INTELLECTUAL IS WORK.
zxrug 3 years ago 2
/semiliterate pseudogallic werebogus detected
Toffusaurelius 3 years ago
Kinda agree with you.
blishypoos 3 years ago
what a brave position HN: "Anxiety of influence is Harold Bloom's best work"--This is like saying, I think Hamlet is Shakespeare's best play--thanks captain obvious. No wonder you like Harold Bloom--he is a frickin windbag just like your garbage post which I suspect is made from some bathroom stall in a Chapters book store.
zxrug 3 years ago
So what? Anxiety of Influence is Bloom's best work, and Hamlet is Shakespeare's best play. Just because they're obvious points doesn't mean they shouldn't be stated?
MUrrrrD 3 years ago 8
Actually A Winter's Tale is Willy S's best work.
trinitymike 3 years ago
@MUrrrrD except that hamlet isn't
utopiantoken 1 year ago
way to go HN!!
CristiHainic 3 years ago
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go back to the fuken black jungle u black fuk and take yor jungle buks witf you u shit nigger. U fink ur smart u shit? Well I can build a wall u shit as I am a bricklayer! Can you????? Total waste uv time... becuz u cannot. All u can do is read sum shitty books by sum book ritin niggae... DON'T FUK WIF BRUM!
MoronicWisecrack 3 years ago
wow...
That's quite a display of ignorance.
tokenfrenchman 3 years ago 2
yes, you seem intelligent. Noooooot!
get a life man
trumpetman80 3 years ago
It looks like bricks aren't the only things you lay.
cinemaman3105 3 years ago
Well, I really like him.
JohanHelenius 3 years ago
I hate Harold Bloom..well not HATE but I really dislike him.
shademurtagh 4 years ago
Why do you strongly dislike him?
rks1978 4 years ago
tawdry-
theomniaphilus 4 years ago
"theomniaphilus" You must be old and white.
RobHawk 4 years ago
may i just say, it's wonderful to see people talking about this kind of stuff on youtube. please, please keep up what you're doing.
bananaear 4 years ago 15
Bloom was actually influenced by Derrida. Trying to determine how a poet or any artist is unlike a precursor involves an apophatic or negative process where you assume that the two are basically the same and then you find out how the artist is NOT like the precursor. This seems to be the easiest method to determine a poet's originality. I think that this is basically what deconstruction can be said to be anyway - an apophatic or negative method applied to literary criticism and other fields.
billycarr 4 years ago 2
Hooded Negro. that's a great name. I like it. I tried Derrida and couldn't understand what the fuck he meant.
rvbarnesboy 4 years ago
Harold Bloom isn't a conservative reactionary because he wrote about masturbation?!! Sorry but intellectual masturbation is quite a telling indication that someone is a conservative reactionary.
brotherwise 4 years ago
harold bloom is not a "conservative" reactionary, if by "conservative" you mean politically conservative.
urthogie 4 years ago
Very poised and natural. No doubt a substantial career in education or media -- talk-show or panelist.
byquist 4 years ago
Cleanth Brooks all the way.
piemelbrieislekker 4 years ago
I will read those books You named.
Thank You.
Harry Potter is fun, but quitage is whack! I don't understand that game
GuamIsGood 4 years ago
this is a total catfight and i am diggin it. keep arguing about the dead guys. go!
iamlameduck 4 years ago
Did he say Gertha?
ktooronl 5 years ago
yah, that how goethe is actually pronounced. i made the same mistake for a long time--i kept typing in gerta, geirta, etc. in looking for references to schopenhauer and nietzsche's oppinion on the writer, only to dscover, eventually, that goethe is actually pronounced like gert-a
hatc9723 4 years ago
Goethe, the German writer
robjiv21 4 years ago
"...anyone who can discuss Goethe & masturbation at link I don't think you can really call them a reactionry.. " - Now I know why you don't understand Derrida & Foucault...
ladoudi 5 years ago
honey, no one understands Derrida or Foucault. They are the bane of literary studies. Flabby French theorists. Derrida's theories run around in convoluted circles to come to the simple and unremarkable conclusion that absolute meaning does not exist. Nietzsche covered this long before...and did it better. Foucault has been highly criticized for his shoddy scholarship, especially in his "History of Sexuality" volumes.
Euripides27 5 years ago
"Euripides", please don't use the name of gifted poeple to pull other hardworking, mentally disciplined through the dirt. and stop this enoying name-throughing. how about putting a couple of years of work in before exposing your tonsils again. sincerely yours,"honey".
ladoudi 5 years ago
I'm afraid Euripides is spot-on there ladoudi. I'm also afraid that the hard work and mental discipline you admire (and which is in fact sorely lacking in the works of both Derrida and Foucault) should have been applied to a quick proof-read of your post before you sent it. "poeple", "enoying", "name-throughing", you could put in another couple of years of work yourself methinks.
Dowdy78 4 years ago
Derrida and Foucault are quite interesting in their own right, but they are as infants in comparison to Nietszche, Wittgenstein, and Thomas Kuhn, who made similar points with much more clarity, intellectual rigour, and intelligibility. Leave Derrida and Foucault to the freshmen who have yet to realise how sloppy their work was.
Long live the Hooded Negro! Keep it up man!
Dowdy78 4 years ago
LOL that is all I have to say. LOL
Facade19 4 years ago
I think the French philosophers, such as Derricda and Foucault, have to be understood within the context of French thought, the style and ordinary way of thinking about these kinds of topics; if I recall they didn't emphasize clarity and logical argument as did others for particular reasons--perhaps they were more informed by aesthetics and salon-like conversation, worthwhile for their contribution not of argument but for ideas themselves.
curiousphilosophe 3 years ago
I'm sorry, I'm not being a native speaker and I have to handle three languages fluently.
Dowdy, poeple like you who still stumble through the realms of college football competativeness applying first, second and third places to ideas they don't understand in the first place will never get the benefit of ideas other poeple spent a live of work, devotion and enthusiasm to think. Do you understand that? Maybe I can help you out with translations in german & french? Ladoudi.
ladoudi 4 years ago
Hey Ladoudi, first off let me apologise for criticising your spelling, I hadn't realised it wasn't your first language. Your English is actually pretty good for a non-native speaker. Secondly, can I just say that you shouldn't pass judgement on 'people like me' without knowing me.
Dowdy78 4 years ago
If you want to know, I no longer 'stumble through the realms of college football competitiveness', I finished my masters a year ago and am now stumbling through the realms of working for a living, which is a big disappointment after college.. I just posted because I miss the fun of debating these things with people who care about it. I'm not trying to rank these thinkers in any way, just expressing my opinion which was formed after years of studying these guys' writings.
Dowdy78 4 years ago
...and I have benefited from reading Derrida and Foucault, they had some great ideas. All I'm saying is that my initial astonishment and admiration on reading them had diminished by the time I entered third year and discovered all of these other guys whose ideas, in my opinion, were far more rigorously conceived and presented.
Dowdy78 4 years ago
I have major problems with deconstruction now, I think it's a pointless exercise, but hey, that's just me. I also think 'Scarface' was an idiotic movie but everyone I know thinks it's a classic so what do I know?
Dowdy78 4 years ago
@Euripides27 Wow!! just realised you posted this 3 years ago! ah well, Nietzsche didn't finish the job. Heidegger tried and also didn't quite make it. Derrida ain't perfect.
blishypoos 1 year ago
"anyone who can discuss Goethe & masturbation at link" you don't we can really call a reactionary... now I understand why you don't understand Derrida or Foucault.
ladoudi 5 years ago
Kudos to you. Anyone who can talk so knowledgeably about literary criticism deserves a great deal of respect.
belle8epoque 5 years ago