نبوغ: سیمای پنجاه نابغۀ سخن

by Harold Bloom, محبوبه مهاجر (Translator)

نبوغ، دربردارندۀ شرخ مختصری درباۀ پنجاه تن از ناموران ادب جهان است که نوابغ سخن محسوب می‌شوند. در متن اصلی اثر، صد تن از نوابغ ذکر شده‌اند که ترجمۀ حاضر مشتمل بر ذکر پنجاه تن از ایشان است. نگارنده یکی از اهداف خود در تألیف این کتاب را بیان تعریفی دقیق‌تر از واژۀ نبوغ عنوان کرده است. «تقویت و تشدید آگاهی به قدر و قیمت نبوغ» و نشان دادن تأثیر نوابغ گذشته بر نبوغ شخص و دفاع از مفهوم نبوغ، از دیگر اهداف مهم تدوین این اثر است. کتاب، با تعریف شخصی مؤلف از نبوغ آغاز شده و سپس به نکات مختصری دربارۀ نبوغ برخی از بزرگان سخن از جمله: سقراط و افلاطون، شکسپیر، گوته، فروید، داستایفسکی، نیچه، چخوف، کافکا، فاکنر، همینگوی و… اشاره می‌شود.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, History, Biography, Criticism, Literature, Philosophy

597 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Harold Bloom was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread my original review, written (gasp!) more-than-several years ago. Decided to rewrite it a bit...



I used to be obsessed with this book. I read it religiously, in times of trouble or a need for spiritual refreshment.

I actually don't look at it much any more but I like having it around, as a personal token of sorts. The way you don't necessarily need to reread things you read in your youth or loved intensely during a particular time in your life and needed to learn from and be nourished by because, when all is said and done, you have them in your heart with you always.

Don't hate on Bloom because he hates on cultural constructivism, or because he's grandiose, or because he's stubborn and old and a bit set in his ways.

He's READ EVERYTHING! I MEAN EVERYTHING!

Seriously, I've heard of his reading three novels a day, and pretty much memorizing them as he goes. There's honestly nothing he hasn't ingested. The big guy's incredible.

And I think that matters, still, even though I'm less impressed with it now. I feel more and more like Bloom makes a bigger fuss with his visionary predilections and likes to repeat himself to the point of losing pertinence.

And he's, perhaps surprisingly, generous and witty with his learning. Bloom's remarks aren't quite as caustic and incisive as Oscar Wilde's, say, but his writes fluidly in that vein- a bit Englishly, if you will- and it is very much to his credit that he is able explicate the writers here with palpable affection and zest- and all of the selected scribblers are bona fide Great Writers, trust me on this, and if you don't, trust the Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale- and let him eagerly, if egotistically, help you to appreciate them.

Bloom talks about how Wilde was right about everything (he was, he really was) and how Edith Wharton's response to Freud's question "what does a woman want?" was a winningly sly and sarcastic "Whaddaya got?"

He compares Tennesse Williams to Hart Crane and Fitzgerald to Keats, which is what both writers would have given their eye teeth to have heard in person. Bloom mentions Ellison and Mingus in the same breath and refers to Leopold Bloom as "my namesake". C'mon, people, this man is not a Vogon!!!

I mean this is a guy who has delved into everything worth reading since humans started writing them, for christ sakes. Take issue with his opinions if you want to, but you will come out enriched with the experience.

I love this book, though. Sustenance enough to take you through the rest of your reading for the rest of your days. Inspiration in the excerpts, seeing parts of the greater whole. Being led through a personal collection of literary gold by a slightly eccentric, somewhat pushy, consistently engaged critic.

And that's only getting started....

Here's a piece I did about him for The Millions awhile back. I wrote it about a particular book but a lot of it can be applied to the man himself: http://www.themillions.com/2011/08/th...

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harold Bloom, professor na Universidade de Yale e um dos maiores críticos literários, escreveu, em 2001, uma obra na qual seleccionou os 100 melhores escritores de todos os tempos. Apenas considerou génios não vivos e focou a sua análise, não na influência do autor sobre a sua obra, mas nos efeitos da obra no autor; ou seja, refere e analisa a obra, ou obras, que refletem a genialidade (daimon) que imortaliza o escritor.
Estruturou o livro com base no símbolo cabalístico A Árvore da Vida, a cujas dez esferas associou dez génios. Em quase todos os Lustros, esteve presente Shakespeare, que Bloom considera o Génio Maior.

Foi uma leitura muito interessante, rica e absorvente, que me incentivou a ler, ou reler, autores que ficariam esquecidos ou desconhecidos.

Não posso deixar de referir um autor, que não faz parte desta selecção apenas porque em 2001 ainda era vivo, e o único pelo qual Bloom lamenta a sua regra de não nomear génios vivos: José Saramago, que é referido várias vezes ao longo deste livro, e a quem o crítico chama Mestre Saramago.
Com orgulho e emoção, transcrevo algumas frases de Harold Bloom sobre o nosso Génio, agora, já não vivo:
"A minha regra contra os génios vivos impediu-me de incluir o maravilhoso romancista José Saramago, um dos últimos titãs de um género literário em vias de extinção."
"José Saramago, que penso ser o mais talentoso romancista vivo em todo o mundo actual, enterra o sebastianismo na sua soberba fantasia sobre os temas pessoanos, O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis".

[Arminius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harold A Bloom’s book on Genius considers the 100 of people the author views as the smartest people of all time. His list includes religious icons such as Saint Paul and Augustine as well as famous secularist’s Proust and Calvino.
I am not going to make this a long review of my favorites. Instead I am going to discuss the one I found most intriguing.
This man was known as The Yahwist. He was believed to have lived between 980 -900 B.C.E. He is credited as have written the book of Genesis, Exodus and Numbers of the Bible. Harold Bloom views the Yahwist written words through atheist eyes. I believe in God so I view Yahwist’s words as truth but looking as Mr. Bloom does I find the stories the most creative I have ever come across if, in fact, they are fiction.
An example is where God chooses Moses to lead the Jews from Egypt. Moses said to God “Please, O Lord I have never been a man of words… I am slow of speech and slow of tongue. And God replied, “Who gives man speech? Who makes him dumb or death, seeing or blind? Is it not I, God. Now go as I will be with you as you speak and will instruct you what to say.” God then instructs Moses to meet Moses brother Aaron the Levite where God will put words in both their mouths. And hands Moses a rod to perform signs with.
If this story is fiction it is the best fiction ever laid to paper.

[Sunny · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable read. A book about other writers and books can’t go wrong really for me. I liked Bloom’s writing style and it was a pleasure to meander through Bloom’s clearly erudite knowledge of some of the world’s most exquisite writers and glean from his insights into them. Shakespeare was clearly Bloom's favourite and throughout the book he refers to him again and again by juxtaposing that English legend against all the other writers and only a few could really take any sort of stance against him, understandably so. The book is about a 100 of the world’s greatest writers that ever lived. Bloom, a Jewish geezer, truncated the book into sections which had something to do with the Jewish faith (probably Kabbalistic) and would go on and put groups of his favourite writers into these blocks. The blocks or sections of the books were called things like Keter, Hokmah, Binah etc etc … Overall a really enjoyable book and 4 stars I guess because none of his insights really wowed me that that much. I learnt about a lot of other books and was intrigued to read about some of the writer’s books I had never read but will surely do from now on. :)

[Alex S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book, but I think mostly because I enjoy reading about books and authors, I think there's something kinda warming about hearing somebody discuss these books with what seems to be an unrivaled passion. So, in that sense, it's a really biased review since I just really like this kinda fawning literary criticism, but I'll try to be objective about it.

Harold Bloom writes good prose. Ironically I think this goes pretty unrecognized with literary critics. He's not too abstruse, even when conveying something relatively abstract or complex, and he's accessible in such a way that, when he posts an excerpt from whichever piece he's commenting on (which he does often), he can easily explain and expand on and - most importantly - teach you what you need to know about the piece.

There's enough information in this book to build a dozen documentaries, but it works with the casual and appreciative and wise and fluid way of conversation. I've gone back to this book several times just to read a chapter before bed or something, and it's one of the few books I plan to take with me to college. It's engaging without being demanding. You've definitely gotta be interested in the subject matter though, otherwise this is really gonna suck, and for twenty dollars it's not worth the risk.

[Domenico Fina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bloom eccede in narcisismo, ovvero convincere che il suo pensiero sulla letteratura è IL pensiero. Tutto l'uomo è stato esplorato e descritto interamente da Shakespeare, secondo Bloom. L'uomo nasce da una costola di Shakespeare. E ovviamente non è vero, ogni epoca presenta le sue intuizioni originali, o quantomeno non basta mai un solo autore, neppure Shakespeare. La banalità delle azioni che scaturiscono anche da una battuta sbagliata, è presente in Flaubert, la pressione della banalità e della casualità del quotidiano nelle opere di Flaubert è illustrata benissimo da Kundera (vedi i saggi de Il sipario, questi nel loro divagare ragionato risultano molto più interessanti e acuti dei saggi di Bloom). Musil inserisce, tra i tanti, il tema dell'esperienza di seconda o terza mano, che arriva dall'etere, per cui "oggigiorno chi può dire che il suo sdegno è per davvero il suo sdegno". Ebbene Musil che scrive uno dei massimi capolavori del Novecento, viene ignorato da Bloom. Ma nel suo narcisismo Bloom ci vuole perfino convincere che Hart Crane è un poeta inserito nell'elenco dei 12 più grandi della letteratura Americana, ignorando nel recente Canone Americano, poeti come Marianne Moore e Auden e scrittori (udite udite) come Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Bellow. Uno dei meriti che riconosco a Bloom è quello di aver valutato la grandezza di Emily Dickinson, il suo "guizzo cognitivo", al pari dei più grandi di sempre. Bloom, inoltre, non ha la vera capacità di capire il presente e un grande critico non può essere solo avvinto al passato, poiché il passato è nella maggior parte dei casi già illuminato e posizionato. Il presente è più vago e nel presente si misura la capacità critica "anticipatrice" e non ereditata, in tal senso non si accorge minimamente di grandi nomi, non li legge, ad esempio Munro, Kundera, Coetzee, Marias, Vila-Matas, Antunes, Reza, Strout e altri. Clamoroso non aver capito la grandezza e originalità di Alice Munro, Franzen l'ha capita benissimo. Resta un critico prevalentemente concentrato su se stesso. Narcisista che non persuade, non avendo un metodo critico accurato e ponderato, tale da poter convincere che un Hart Crane è superiore a Marianne Moore (e non lo è, non lo sarà mai, lo è solo per lui). Infine Bloom non tiene in benché minima considerazione le donne nella letteratura, salvo Emily Dickinson e Virginia Woolf, un romanzo come "L'uomo che amava i bambini" di Christina Stead, capolavoro attualissimo americano non risulta tra le sue letture (e Christina Stead è autrice da demone interiore, proprio uno di quegli autori che piacerebbero a Bloom), non cita Magda Szabò o Suite francese di Irene Nemirovsky. Insomma Bloom, a mio avviso, è un critico che fra qualche anno (passata la moda) sarà prescindibilissimo nella critica americana e internazionale.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

The idea sounded great: trace some of the brightest minds throughout history and reveal who they were, what they did, and how the mass of mediocre-minded men and women (like me) can relate and be inspired. Unfortunately, the author spiraled into esoteric ruminations on the more obscure aspects of each genius' work that was not very relatable or interesting. He seemed to expect one to start with a highly educated view of the mostly literary subjects, and he quickly dives into teasing out nuances of the subject's character and lesser known ideas. It doesn't help that Bloom uses the mysticism of Kabbalism to outline his work, and he contstantly refers to it throughout. I wasn't interested in the almost religious, illuminiti overtones of the book, and it seemed he was constantly trying to share an inside joke or best his literary colleages on issues that I didn't care to read about.

Now, if you are looking for higher literary criticism that is not just formated for the layman, this is a great book for you. This author isn't saying what every other author on the subject of great books/authors is saying. It's different, it's fresh, it's insightful; but it's also concentrated on arbitrary areas of a person's life or opus that one may not be interested in. You have to go in with an open mind, not looking for specific facts on a person's life or opus. And Bloom won't waste his time helping you catch up. He's is moving on to what interests him, with or without you.

But, I learned new things. I especially liked the chapters on Emerson, Shakespeare, and Twain. It's a great reference and it challenged me to do some hard thinking...but it wasn't captivating. Watching Bloom swim effortlessly in and out of the subjects was fun, but he has his ways of letting the reader know that they're lightyears away from swimming with him. It was much more a celebration of Bloom's genius than anyone elses. And I don't mind that, since it does appear he is very intelligent. But still, it wasn't what I was looking for.

[Jimmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a book like this, there are usually writers that the reader is surprised to find on the list and writers that the reader feels should be on the list. The one writer that I feel was missing in particular was Yukio Mishima, the great Japanese writer. Bloom left out this part of the world as a whole.

In many of Bloom's books, he complains about feminists, and this book is no exception. I have to admit that I find that kind of funny to read.

I sometimes get the impression that Bloom is showing off his great reading background. That can get in the way of what he has to say. And what exactly does he have to say? Too often the chapters seemed to say nothing about the writer and would include too many quotes and references to other writers, especially Shakespeare.

The biggest flaw for me was that Bloom often lost my interest. He is not a fun writer. But all in all, I liked reading about these 100 different geniuses.

[Spike Gomes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I more or less panned Bloom's "The Western Canon", but for some reason "Genius" seemed so much more tolerable for me to read, despite the critic writing much in the same idiosyncratic and highly personal and digressionary mode. Why? I would say most of it has to deal with the fact that the chapters are much shorter. Bloom is a lot easier to take in small doses, that's for sure. He's also using a kabbalistic organizational framework, instead of historiographical, and honestly, considering his take on writing and aesthetics, an esoteric argument based on theology fits him a lot better than anything that strives to some sort of empiricism. The bardolotry is also toned down a bit (but is still there in spades), and he even shows some signs of ironic awareness about his intensely autobiographical critical style.

So what's the book about? To boil it down, it's 100 writers that Bloom considers geniuses, all organized into the various spheres of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. That said, there's not really much of single stream that unites the book. You could pick up any particular chapter and read it out of sequence and be none worse for the wear. Heck, it would probably make more sense than trying to read it with Bloom's mystical "gnostic" framework in mind. It's important to note that just because a chapter is dedicated to a certain person, that it's not necessarily the case he much likes the person, or will even spend much of the chapter discussing their work. Goodness knows Bloom's got a major hate-on (oops, agonistic relationship) for T.S. Eliot that repeatedly emerges in other chapters almost at random. It's rather funny because in some ways, once you get past Eliot's mild anti-Semitism and Bloom's raving philo-Semitism, they're rather alike in character and outlook on many things.

So what's the plus that you get in reading this that you don't get in "The Western Canon"? Well, one thing Bloom does very well is select interesting quotes from lesser known works from well known authors as well as bring up authors that are not very well known. An early read through of this book was where I became first acquainted with Fernando Pessoa, who is now a personal favorite of mine, even though my liking and understanding of him is the complete inverse of Bloom (he loves the early Alvaro de Campos, with it's emotionally and verbally explosive evocation of Whitman, I love the later Bernardo Soares and his understated paean to the glories of tedium). You can't go wrong with good authors and books, and while Bloom is a crank with tenure, he's an amazingly well-read and tasteful crank. Pretty much the only choice I can't comprehend is Freud, but I attribute that to his philo-Semitism. I pretty much guarantee that if you get this book, you'll find some sort of value in it due to being introduced to various obscurities that are either highlighted or mentioned in passing by Bloom. Also, Bloom's cranky crankishness is pretty entertaining in the small 3-10 page doses each chapter entails. Any longer and it would be intolerable.

Three and half stars out of five.

[Arash Allahverdi · Rating 5 out of 5]

نبوغ ، نوشته ی هارولد بلوم،نشر هرمس به ترجمه محبوبه مهاجر کتاب شیرین، روان و خوش‌خوانی‌‌ست که درسال 91 منتشر شده است.شرح نبوغ صد نابغه از بزرگترین ادیبان جهان از سقراط تا اکانر.این ترجمه اما به دلائلی که مترجم در موخره کتاب ذکر کرده است شامل نیمی از این نوابغ است. کتابی که تو را غرق در ادبیات صرف می‌کند و ساعتهای مدید با چشمی تقلیل یافته به اجتماع ،سیاست و هر چه کثافتِ مغمومِ بیرون،مشغولت می‌کند.بلوم انگار که مصمم است تو را ایستاده به تماشای نبوغ بزرگان ادبیات ببرد و آنگاه سجده‌ات را به نظاره بنشیند و تو نمی‌توانی به راحتی این فراموشی را گناه و خیانتی کلبی‌مشربانه بنامی. تعریفی که بلوم از نبوغ می‌دهد به قول خودش تعریفی نیست که به زبان ماتریالیسم مفهوم شود.به همین دلیل ، نبوغ در عصر ما،عصری که زیر سلطه‌ی ایدئولوژی‌های متاثر از سرمایه‌داری و ماتریالیسم است به کلی کنار زده می‌شود.او از زبان امرسون آمریکایی نبوغ را خداوند درونی یا همان نفس متکی به خویشتن می‌نامد،نفسی که ساخته و پرداخته تاریخ،اجتماع وسیاست نیست بلکه ذاتی و اهلی شخص است. نابغه، فرد درونی و خدای درونی خویش را در مبدأ حیات می‌جوید ، پیدا می‌کند و به واقعیت تبدیل می‌نماید. این همان کاری‌ست که شکسپیر ،نابغه تمام دروان‌ها ،به زعم بلوم،انجام می‌دهد و همینطور دانته،جویس،پروست،کافکا،رمبو و دیگر نوابغ کتاب.

بلوم صرفاً به جست‌و‌جوی اصالت فوق‌العاده‌ی یک اثر،یعنی کاراکترها،روایت و روابط درونی و حیاتی یک اثر، می‌گردد.به همین جهت نبوغ شکسپیر را قبل از آنکه در خود شکسپیر بجوید در شخصیت‌های او از جمله فالستاف و هملت می‌جوید. بلوم معتقد است که شکسپیر در جست‌جوی خداوندِ درون خود ،در مغاک ضمیرِ باطن‌اش این کاراکترها و کنشهای آنان را یافته و به عرصه‌ی واقعیت در‌آورده است.این جستجو و یافتن، نیازمند یک ضمیرِ هشیار فردی‌ست که اغلب شارحان کنونی،ناقدان سیاسی،جامعه‌شناسان ادبی و تمام سیاهچال‌های فکری آکادمیک و کوره‌های شیطانیِ رسانه‌ها از درک آن ناتوانند.این تعریف بلوم است و به ظاهر تعریف و رویکردی کاملاً غیرسیاسی و غیرجامعه‌شناختی و حتی می‌توان با نگاه ظاهر‌بین و کین‌توزانه‌ی سیاسی این رویکرد را حاصل چرخش چرخ‌های سرمایه‌داری خواند.علاوه بر این بلوم،شخصاً بزرگترین هدفش را ستردن ادبیات از کسانی می‌داند که برای خواندن آثار ادبی مقصودی اجتماعی قائل‌اند.با این همه اگر خواننده‌ی واقعی،درس حقیقی بلوم را آموخته باشد درسی که اصل آن غور در همان مغاکِ ضمیر باطن است به راحتی می‌تواند بفهمد که رویکرد او به نوبه‌ی خود به نحوی خلاف جریان شنا کردن و به شکلی ایستادن در مقابل چرخ‌های سرمایه‌داری و سیاست مصرف‌گرای معاصر است و ادامه‌ی لجوجانه‌ی کنش گنوسی و صرفاً ادبی خود.

هارولد بلوم،این ناقد آمریکایی، هدف از خواندنِ ادبیات را التذاذ هنری در خلوت روشن خویشتن می‌داند نه عوامل مولد بغض و کین به منظور اصلاح جامعه. در کل این نگرش‌های بعضاً افراطی و دوسونگرانه در بلوم قدری آزار دهنده و خودخواهانه به نظر می‌رسد اما با تمام اینها «نبوغ» ِ بلوم کتابی برای آموختن ِ راه التذاذ از ادبیات است و هم کلامی با امرسون که:«از زیاده‌ی تاثیر نباید هراسید،با نظری بلندتر باید اعتماد کرد و در خدمت بزرگان باید بود» درسی که بلوم می‌دهد درسِ دوری از نگاه کین‌توزانه و مقید است و اینکه باید در دامانِ زمان پر ستاره و درخشانی فرو رفت که لوکاچ همیشه حسرتش را می‌خورد. دوری از نگاه کین‌ورزانه و یافتن این گنج و درس انسانی همان چیزی‌ست که بلوم ،خود، در برخی از سطورِ کتابِ بزرگِ نبوغ، آن را فراموش می‌کند.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the few writers, if not the only one, who can publish a book within the oxymoronic subgenre of popular literary criticism, Harold Bloom's Genius is quite the work in itself, polished and multifaceted like a gem and yet retaining the charismatic grittiness of its author. As a perspective towards literature, it has been cleansed of what Bloom considers impurities, such as the ideological cant and jargon sometimes found in Marxist, feminist, or New Historicist critical theories, though he neglects the invaluable insights supplied by the best of their adherents. Instead of reading literature as rooted in cultural or historic specifics, Bloom argues that we should praise the classics as embodiments of universal genius. And, while Bloom acknowledges our ambivalence towards geniuses, who we both uphold and undermine, he asserts that our finest cultural artifacts should be engaged with because they provide the greatest opportunity to discover and augment our truest, deepest self. The representative works he idolizes -- Hamlet, Don Quixote, and the three major monotheistic religious texts are among the most beloved -- are streaked with the personalities of their creators, who saw themselves most clearly in relation to the world and were unrivalled in communicating their wisdom through language. While the subject matter of Genius might be impenetrable or without context except for those who can match Bloom's inestimable breadth of reading and contemplation, anyone with interest in literature will benefit to some extent from this admirably, cantankerously atavistic study of the greatest books ever written.

[Kyle Callahan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a catalog of 100 literary geniuses. I went into it thinking it would be a sustained investigation of the notion of genius, spread across the 100 examples, but it's really more of 100 short papers (some as short as 3 pages) dedicated to the genius of each particular writer....and when Bloom has a hard time verbalizing the particular traits of genius in a given writer, he fills his pages with extended quotations from their work, as if to say, "Look at this! What else do I need to say?!"

Basically, it comes down to this: Shakespeare was the pre-eminent genius, the Godhead that contains all genius, and the other 99 writers are all mere aspects of that genius (though geniuses in their own right).

That's not to say this isn't a decent book to have around the house. It's basically an introduction to 100 of the best writers of all time, and like any catalog, it contains worthwhile discoveries, and like any catalog, you can pretty much open to any page (well...section), and start reading. You don't have to read it from beginning to end.

But if you're hoping to "understand" the notion of genius by the time you complete the book, then this probably isn't the work for you.

[Booksrock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, I feel like I have learned so much, many new insights in Shakespeare. It is always gratifying when scholars that one respects such as Harold Bloom have some of the same ideas that I have played with for years. Bloom says in the Shakespeare section that he tends to agree with Goethe who had stated that one gets much more out of reading Shakespeare than seeing it performed. Wow, did that make me feel great. With very few exceptions, I have rarely enjoyed Shakespeare in performance. It is usually too slow, or lacks clarity, or is outright boring! But, the reading, well, that is another story altogether. Bloom's "Mosaic" is his choice of the top 100 literary minds. I am ignorant of many of them, but feel like I have learned a good deal. It is a heavy book, and I find I must take it in small doses. Every page tells me something new. I love that! I have admired Bloom for many years, and I occasionally even understand him!

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 1 out of 5]

I never figured Harold Bloom for the trendy-Hollywood type, but you should know that he uses the Kabbalah to organize this mostly obvious mishmash of canonical geniuses and pseudo-geniuses. You can almost hear him sigh heavily before going on about some of the more, how to say it, un-Bloomable choices (e.g. Muhammad or Victor Hugo). Also, his firm battles on behalf of the "canon" have probably kept him away from stumbling on genius in other places. Creative genius needs a more enthusiastic tour guide, not this out-of-breath old soldier from the battle of Shrewsbury Clock.

[RosaLei · Rating 5 out of 5]

It impressed me that Harold Bloom brought me up close and personal with great minds that I admire and also introduced me to many whom I heard of and some I never knew as well. I love the way he organized the book throughout the diversity and time periods of the talent by using his relation to Kabbalah; a very interesting method. I frequently reference the book for inspiration and motivation with my own creative endeavors and am grateful that he took the time and effort to complete such a great work!

[Francisco De Aldana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anglo-centric cultural narcissism unleashed. Bloom´s idolatry of Shakespeare (the most over-hyped literary figure of all times, the result of Brish and American imperialism) is acritical; Shakespeare is not Cervantes´s equal, mush less -as Bloom is obsessed to "prove"- his "superior". And to a Spaniard, Bloom´s ignorance of Spain´s Lyrical (Libro de Buen Amor, Jorge Manrique, San Juan de la Cruz, Quevedo, Góngora), narrative and philosophical (Quevedo´s "Los sueños"; Gracián´s "El Criticón"; the novels of Galdós) and Dramatic geniuses (Lope, Tirso, Calderón) is quite evident.

[Jules Delorme · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genius by Harold Bloom
Jules F. Delorme
Literary criticism, true literary criticism, that deconstructs and doesn’t just attack, that isn’t just a collection of soundbites, criticism that is whole and aims at our higher selves, seems to have gone the way of the dodo. We get most of our information in soundbites and memes today. And longer, more thoughtful, in depth criticism seems to be very much a lost art.
Harold Bloom might well have been the last truly great literary critic. He made you want to read. He broke down why Shakespeare or Milton were great, what made their work so special. He could be provocative and opinionated, but most often these were tools in his hands to get your attention. Once he had it he kept your attention with thoughtful deconstruction, breaking down passages to show you what made them work, what made them so powerful.
Harold Bloom was rarely boring.
I have to admit, when I saw his book Genius, a Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds, on the shelf at my local bookstore, I grabbed it up without much inspection, based almost entirely on Bloom’s name, and assuming that it would be a work on genius in general. I expected passages on Einstein, Freud, Jung and Thomas Aquinas. It didn’t even occur to me that, this being Harold Bloom, this book would be exclusively on literary genius. Even as a writer myself, I’m not sure that I would have chosen to spend good money on a book about one hundred literary geniuses. I doubt very much I could have named anything close to a hundred literary geniuses and many of the names in this book I’d never even heard of before. Some of the names I may never read.
I don’t agree with all of his choices, both in who he chose to include and who he didn’t. Some of the passages seem far too short and some seem too long. But that is part and parcel of great criticism. It requires the critic to take a point of view. One of the greatest film critics of all time, Pauline Kael took the point of view that small verite films are good and big ones are bad. She turned on Stanley Kubrick for making 2001, saying he had sold out to Hollywood. She once wrote an article claiming that Star Wars and Jaws had murdered cinema. I don’t agree with any of those things, but her ability to break down a single scene in a film and explain why it worked or didn’t work was nothing short of art. She was also, as is Bloom, a very good writer.
I’ve often found myself disagreeing with Harold Bloom too. But I have never, not once, found his writing to not provoke me into thinking more deeply about why I disagreed with him or why I agreed with him.
That, to me, is the sign of a truly great critic.
Great critics, quite literally, teach us how to think.
And they definitely are a dying breed.
Don’t get me wrong. I love that IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes and Goodreads exist. They democratize opinion about movies and books and give all of us access to feedback about any book or movie with a few clicks of the keyboard. But in democratization we also become subject to denomination, to census more than individual opinion. You’re probably scanning this piece or not reading it at all because it’s too long. But that is the point. Art, great art, is textured and complex and difficult. You have to sit with it and struggle with it, to pause and really take serious art in. And writing about it should, I would even go so far as to say has, to reflect that.
That’s not to say that every single thing has to be deep and mysterious or it isn’t worthwhile.
A fun read, a fun film is a pleasure of its own kind.
But have we become a culture of the glib, of the soundbite and the meme?
People like Harold Bloom remind us of the beauty of depth, of complexity, of Genius.
And Genius, as a book, can be said to be Bloom’s sequel to How To Read and Why in that it presents us with a list of what Bloom considers to be one hundred of the greatest writers in history. In doing so he invites us to explore some of these writers, discover some we never knew about or only vaguely knew about and maybe go back and rediscover some writers we read but did not fully appreciate. He presents poets like Hart Crane and Emily Dickinson and prose writers such as Cervantes, Beckett and my beloved Faulkner. He gives each writer a chapter in which he deconstructs one work or one piece, giving you some idea why this writer is special.
Since he is presenting one hundred writers it is of course a long book.
And it’s not always easy.
Some of the writers are obscure and difficult and he doesn’t present them as anything but.
But he gives you a glimpse of greatness, one hundred glimpses of greatness. Some you will appreciate this immediately and some may take some time to sink fully in. And some you will just not see the point of this book or of Harold Bloom.
But they are there for you.
And what Harold Bloom does, what he hopes to do, is to give you glimpses of these genius writers’ daemon, their spark of inspiration, while maybe, just maybe sparking your own daemon along the way.
Genius is not an easy book.
It wasn’t meant to be easy.
But I don’t think Bloom is asking you to abandon your Stephen King, your Harry Potter, your romances or your fun reads at all. Of course those books have their place and they are deserving to be read.
I think that he’s just trying to show you that the deep end of the writing pool may be a little intimidating but some of it is well worth the venture away from the shallow end, however briefly.
As I said, Harold Bloom might well be our last great literary critic.
That may not attract you.
That may not speak to you.
You may have abandoned this piece about his book a long time ago.
But, if you haven’t, if you’ve read all of this piece despite its length and challenges, then maybe you should pick up Harold Bloom’s Genius, A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative minds.
I did.
And I can honestly say that I have a long list of writers that I now want to explore. And that my thoughts on writing have been greatly expanded.
It’s not a book for everybody.
Nothing Harold Bloom ever wrote was for everybody.
Most of what he wrote challenged us to think more deeply about what we are reading and why.
If you sincerely don’t care about that at all, don’t read this book.
If you do, read Genius, or any other of Bloom’s many books.
They’re more fun than you might expect.
And you will definitely be smarter for having read them.
I, for one, think that you couldn’t ask for more than that from a truly great critic.

[Daniel Klawitter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bloom tended to become a bit repetitive in his later writings, and there is much that is repetitive here...echoing sentiments from his famous book, The Western Canon. But Bloom's capacious and ravenous love of literature remains intoxicating, even if one finds oneself disagreeing with him at his most bombastic. I was, however, surprisingly touched by his short sketch of the poet Hart Crane, whom Bloom loved since he was a boy. He writes: "I remember the effect of Hart Crane's poems upon me when I first read them, at the age of ten. My understanding of them had to be imperfect, but the power of his metric and his language, and the sustained sweep of his vision, gathered me in, and made me a wonder-wounded hearer." That is as lovely a two-sentence praise of a poet as one is likely to find anywhere.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds [2002] – ★★★★

Using the structure of Lurianic Kabbalah, American literary critic Harold Bloom (1930-2019) talks about one hundred literary geniuses in this book that presents each of the authors’ major works, biographical trivia and Bloom’s own insightful commentary. Virgil, William Shakespeare, Thomas Mann, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, Henry James, Lewis Carroll, Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, George Eliot, Miguel de Cervantes, Jorge Luis Borges, and Fernando Pessoa are just some of the authors included. Since there are so many, I chose to briefly comment on only seven of them in this review.

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850)

In this section, Harold Bloom largely focuses on the character of Vautrin from Balzac’s La Comédie humaine. This is curious because when I read and reviewed Lost Illusions, The Black Sheep and Le Père Goriot, I certainly did not concentrate on him. Bloom calls Vautrin “a Byronic hero-villain”. He goes on to say that Balzac was “always apocalyptically in debt, […] wrote in a frenzy, sometimes sleeping just two hours a night while drowning himself in coffee”, as well as quotes Graham Robb who said that “Balzac is both the embodiment of his age and its most revealing exception” [Bloom, Warner, 2002: 736]. I found that very interesting. Bloom then hints that he is at a loss as to why Balzac achieved big success with his female readers, but I personally think that one novel was enough for him to win all the female hearts – Eugénie Grandet, which portrays a stoic female spirit, quite a change from seductive courtesans or often rather unflattering female portrayals penned by Zola.

Finally, Bloom quotes Henry James who had this to say about Balzacian characters: “they are interesting, in fact, as subjects of fate, the figures round whom a situation closes, in proportion as, sharing their existence, we feel where fate comes in and just how it gets at them. In the void they are not interesting, and Balzac, like Nature herself, abhorred a vacuum. Their situation takes hold of us because it is theirs, not because it is somebody’s, any one’s, that of creatures unidentified…” [Bloom, Warner, 2002: 739].

Willa Cather (1873–1947)

“She is the novelist of a retrospective glory, of the beauty of loss” [Bloom, Warner, 2002: 629], says Bloom, and it is certainly true, particularly regarding one of Cather’s underrated novels – A Lost Lady. “Geniuses of nostalgia are rare”, continues Bloom, “and she was one of them.” In this section, Bloom brings attention to things in Cather’s novels that I haven’t previously considered, such as erotic longing in My Ántonia. I also agree with him when he says that A Lost Lady is Cather’s most exquisite book. Bloom then goes on to mention Nick Carraway of The Great Gatsby as being similar to the My Ántonia and A Lost Lady protagonists (both first being distant admirers of the titled characters), but I wish he had also mentioned how A Lost Lady may have provided an inspiration for The Great Gatsby. I said in my review: “Similarly to Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby [1925], which was published two years after A Lost Lady and was probably inspired by it, there is a tone of pure nostalgia in the telling of this story, a sense of a quiet tragedy unfolding in the background, and, clearly, as in The Great Gatsby – a fascination by the narrator with one mysterious and enchanting “outsider” to a community.”

José Maria de Eça de Queiroz (1845–1900)

Bloom rightly points out that Portuguese classic author Jose Maria Eça de Queiroz is largely unknown and unread in the English speaking world (perhaps like Italian Alessandro Manzoni or Japanese Ichiyō Higuchi). So, it is important to promote his books – see my reviews The Crime of Father Amaro and The City and the Mountains. Regarding the author, Bloom largely talks about a novel I am still to read, but which I have now moved higher on my TBR list – de Queiroz’s The Relic, which he describes to be “a masterpiece, a work as fresh in 2001 as it was in 1887.” For my part, I have always found de Queiroz a surprisingly modern author, especially in the way he structured his novels. They contain certain psychologically-intriguing endings, which may even be considered “twists” by today’s standards. He liked to confound our expectations. We start from one place in his novels, but end up in a different one by the end of the book. This is absent from The City and the Mountains, but is certainly present in both The Crime of Father Amaro and The Maias.

Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980)

I like that Bloom highlights the genius of Carpentier’s work. He says that The Kingdom of This World (1949), The Lost Steps (1953), and Explosion in a Cathedral (1962) “have literary strengths at least equal to those of Borges’s Ficciones and Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.” He does talk at length about The Kingdom of This World, one of my best reads of last year, saying that Carpentier “never moralizes” and that “the greatness…found by…Ti Noel (main character) is not at all a moral greatness” [Bloom, Warner, 2002: 531]. I find that Carpentier emphasised in his work the cyclical nature of history, pointing out how quickly the so-called “heroes” can turn into new tyrants, which, of course, also reflects the consequences of the revolution in France.

In this section, Bloom criticises “politicised literary criticism”, implying that he is always being neutral, but throughout the book there are hints that he is somewhat biased. His treatment of Russian authors shows it since his views tend to reflect English-language sources on this subject (understandable), but, then, on a number of occasions, he also stresses authors’ nationalities or their sexual orientations (as with Willa Cather) as pivotal in shaping their books, which is eyebrow-raising. And then, in the section on Carpentier, Bloom states: “I remember being surprised when Gonzalez Echevarria first told me that Carpentier was French and Russian, with no black ancestors” (Carpentier wrote passionately about the plight of black people in the Caribbean). Really? Bloom’s thinking appears to be an example of what I consider today’s biased thinking that presupposes that people always do things through some kind of self-interest based on their “fixed innate characteristics”. There is this expectation that because someone is of certain nationality or have certain ancestors, they should promote or write about “their own”, so to speak. But, in fact, all people are free agents born on this planet Earth and many are constantly embracing cultures, countries and movements that are not “their own”, and they can certainly extend their respects to any country if they feel particular affinity to it or have a deep interest in it. Carpentier’s family moved to Havana shortly after his birth in Switzerland and he was linked to the Afro-Cuban movements.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)

Bloom characterises Goethe’s work as “an enormous poetic gift, more truly lyric than dramatic”, and says that “Faust, even in translation, remains an essential work…Faustian women and men are all around us…there is a Faustian element in all our technological new-fangledness. Perhaps our Age of Information is essentially Faustian, and is the consequence of a Faustian bargain that an Americanized world goes on making” [Bloom, Warner, 2002: 175].

He then makes rather curious observations: “Goethe associated happiness with astonishment” – interesting, but then proceeds to say: “to read Goethe is, for me, endlessly fascinating, but the Wilhelm Meister novels…and The Sorrows of Young Werther are now museums, transports into past realities…The problem is not that something is wrong with Goethe…but that something is very wrong with us. We have lost not just knowledge, but qualities of spirit that are minimal requirements if Goethe is to be read with pleasure” [Bloom, Warner, 2002: 176]. I understand what he means, but, overall, I am far less pessimistic than he is about Goethe’s novels, which stood the test of time. The Sorrows of Young Werther is a very human drama of longing, unrequited love and despair, and, surely, any teenager of today who experiences the pangs of first love can find something in the story that reflects their own state. Goethe’s Elective Affinities also feels surprisingly contemporary as it explores impulsive passion and emotional manipulation.

Bloom hardly ever makes any comparison with international authors, but, possibly, Goethe may be linked to Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837). Both were writers of idealism and romanticism who believed in an ultimate, transcendent truth, but Pushkin’s hold on the minds and hearts of the readers never abated, though he was inclined to German idealism. No one can ever say that Pushkin or his works are now “museums” and we lost some “qualities of spirit” to enjoy them, the way Bloom characterises Goethe.

Thomas Mann (1875-1955)

One of the best novels I have read this year is Thomas Mann’s The Buddenbrooks, so I was interested in Bloom’s take on the author, but just like Goethe above, Bloom says (writing in 2001) that Mann’s books are in decline: “Mann, like his heroic Goethe, was a great ironist, and irony is difficult to preserve in our present moment” [Bloom, Warner, 2002: 185]. The sentiment rings true, but probably not to the extent Bloom believes it to be the case, or maybe I just have too much faith in the modern reader.

Bloom also emphasises the influence of Goethe on Mann: “The shadow of Goethe rarely left him, though Mann had the strength not to evade the shadow, but rather to render it even more luminous. Bildung, the Goethean vision of self-development, remained Mann’s ideal, even when it is parodied savagely, as throughout Doctor Faustus” [Bloom, Warner, 2002: 186]. This vision of perfecting oneself, reaching emotional depths, and being on the journey of (intellectual) self-discovery is surely prevalent in Mann’s The Magic Mountain, where the protagonist probes deep into the recesses of human knowledge and selfless love while being confined in the same place.

Edith Wharton (1862–1937)

This is probably Bloom’s most “shocking” chapter. He starts it well, saying that Wharton’s “ghosts are rather like her living characters in that they are as much absences as presences, except for Undine Spragg, the present-all-too-present protagonist of The Custom of the Country” [Bloom, Warner, 2002: 636]. This is astute and also makes me think of du Maurier’s novels. Bloom considers The Custom of the Country as Wharton’s best book, and the disturbing Undine Spragg – her strongest character. That is a curious choice. Bloom seemed to have a penchant for antagonists (as evidenced by his obsession with Balzac’s Vautrin), but I also believe that The Custom of the Country is underrated. Bloom then says that “though Mrs. Wharton and Henry James were good (if uneasy) friends, she found the novels of his major phase unreadable” [Bloom, Warner, 2002: 636]. That made me laugh out loud because, yes, one needs some patience to plough through The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl.

Then, Bloom proceeds to say that he admires Wharton (The House of Mirth), but does not like her. That is fair enough, but then he calls Wharton “a racist, antisemite and a snob”. Well, Bloom’s Henry James section does not have such strong wording, though, Henry James was also a snob. Henry James’s private letters and his travelogue also express plenty of very worrying chauvinism and xenophobia (and Charles Dickens have antisemitic book tropes), but neither James nor Dickens received any negative comments of this nature by Bloom. Only Wharton did. And if Bloom then says that “perhaps Wharton was only a near-genius, except in the best of her short stories,” (something I don’t agree with), why did he include her in his book at all?

There are no chapters in this book on Thomas Hardy!, Albert Camus, Nikolai Gogol, Gabriel García Márquez or Vladimir Nabokov. In the Charles Dickens section, Bloom largely discusses the novel The Pickwick Papers, which was his favourite, the Victor Hugo section is about Hugo’s poetry, and in the Tennessee Williams chapter, the talk is almost exclusively about the influence of Hart Crane on Williams, rather than perhaps delving into that playwright’s themes, such as the erosion of “dignity and elegance” by modernisation/postbellum deprivation. I was also not a fan of Bloom mixing poets, novelists and philosophers in one book since their “creativity” is different (how do you compare Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Nietzsche’s philosophical treatise?), and, of course, Harold Bloom being Harold Bloom, nearly every author/their creative potential is traced back to Shakespeare. On the other hand, I found it interesting that Bloom’s favourite Tolstoy novel was Hadji Murat, and now want to read the stories of Flannery O’Connor and The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence.

📔 I sound rather critical about some points Bloom makes, but his book is still insightful and packed with invaluable information on many classic books and authors. It is Bloom’s personal take on the classic literature, and his own list, and I especially appreciate his inclusion of some non-English language authors, including Carpentier, Machado de Assis, and Lady Murasaki. In sum, this is a book with a wealth of information and insight.

[Brent Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harold Bloom’s book gives us a list of one hundred creative minds. The book is worth reading just to see who he picked for the list. He said, “I base this book, ‘Genius’ upon my belief that appreciation is a better mode for the understanding of achievement than are all the analytical kinds of accounting for the emergence of exceptional individuals.”

Since Bloom is one of the most well read in Western literature, as anyone alive today, his list matters. His conclusions seem to be based more on what influenced each person than the person themselves.

One person on the list, Shakespeare, seems to be the one Bloom values for more than his influences. He treats Falstaff and Hamlet as models for people to choose between even though neither ever walked the earth. They are both examples of literary personalities with power that is beyond themselves.

Bloom likely would have said what William Blake said, “that that the history of religion consisted in ‘Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales’.” He added that “Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all emerge from that process, and all of them are endlessly far away from the exuberant beauty of the Yahwist.”

Bloom has taken the storyteller of Genesis, Exodus and Numbers, and calling it the Yahwist turned it into a literary character. The creation of this myth gives Bloom several options. By calling the Yahwist a woman he pushes the feminists who see little female influence in those literary giants Bloom favors, and likewise other scholars are left objecting to the divinity claimed by the myth but with nothing substantial to justify themselves, either.

The book Genius defines literature as what exists between the lines. Bloom told us that his choice for these 100 people was “wholly arbitrary and idiosyncratic.” We should take him at his word and understand that what is important to him is the connections and who each is influenced by. For more on this book and Harold Bloom see www.connectedeventsmatter.com

[Tracy]

Since I just finished adding selections from each of these "Geniuses" to my to-read list, I thought I should say a word about the source of the list. I happened upon this book while browsing the library shelves a few years ago, and was intrigued by the weighty tome with GENIUS in large, serif letters on the spine. Containing 100 brief essays on those Bloom considers to be literary geniuses of the western world, it is an interesting read in itself. Of course, having read only a small fraction of the writers discussed, I was unable to fully appreciate it. (Thus my refraining from giving it a rating.)

It is clearly one man's opinion, but Bloom seems to carry some authority, and many of the works discussed were on my mental "I really should read that someday" list. Since I now have a place to store such a list, I thought this would be a good place to start. Bloom's taste tend more toward the poets than I probably would, but maybe that's just because I haven't actually read much poetry. And, of course, the genius among geniuses whose works I have devoured almost in total, is at least as much a poet as a playwright.

I probably won't ever get around to reading the whole list, and there are some (James Joyce, in particular) that I added with considerable trepidation. But somehow just creating the list seemed edifying.

[João Nuno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Génio de Harold Bloom é um livro enciclopédico. Bloom organiza o livro consoante a cabala, dividindo os cem escritores que considera mais influentes em diferentes secções. Apesar das novecentas páginas, é um livro que pode ser utilizado como index e como introdução à vida e obra dos escritores mais marcantes do ponto de vista do cânone ocidental.
O livro é parcial. Bloom privilegia os escritores anglo-saxónicos e coloca Shakespeare como um deus. Algo que é sempre controverso. Há imensos estilos e formas de escrever. Algumas lacunas quanto à escrita sul-americana. Mas é uma questão de gosto e o autor sublinha que a escolha é pessoal.
No final de cada secção, existe um índice com as melhores traduções para Português de alguns livros marcantes e que pode ser utilizado por quem procura bons livros e autores intemporais.

[Rui · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um pequeno tratado sobre literatura que me fez concluir que terei de reler muito do que já li e ler muitos outros livros e autores em que ainda não toquei. Numa época em que a os livros são feitos a metro é bom uma referência que ajude a refocar no essencial.

Genius made me think about how many books I have to read again and how many new books and authors I have to read for the first time. In an era where books are produced by the thousands Genius is a reference that helps to refocus on the essential on literature

[J.C. Paulk · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn't what I thought it would be. Genius is meant to be read as a reference book, with chunks and bits taken here and there. For those expecting an easy breeze through the book....good luck. Perhaps I'm just not sophisticated enough and am showing my own utter lack of genius. I must admit, however, that this book alone is what sparked my interest in Dostoevsky and others.

[Alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read this again recently upon the death of Professor Bloom. Very difficult to get into the series of essays that reference hundreds of books/poems and even more literary characters, many of who even a well read person will not be very well familiar with. Not written to be easily accessible to non-academics. Skip it.

[Raúl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Como siempre, Harold Bloom promete mucho y al final te da la impresión que algo no te ha llegado. Una crítica subjetiva (estupendo) que al final parece perderse en hablar en cuanto que el crítico se siente superior a los demás, aún no sé por qué.

[Suz Davidson · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a considerable number of profiles of people that are not commonly known, making this a more interesting read than the usual biography category.

[Rene Bonilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

A walk through the history of literary genius. Wonderful journey indeed.

[Rafael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sin duda un tratado sobre los qenios literarios, que habrá siempre que consultar.

[Steven Belanger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely enlightening and entertaining volume about 100 of the greatest writers of the world, from one of the most, well, ingenious writers of the world. So good you want to start reading it again just after you've stopped. This book is second only to Bloom's Shakespeare: Invention of the Human, which I loved even more and which I've also read and re-read.

This one centers around the thesis of the aftereffects of genius upon the ingenious, and it's structured around a more-confusing-than-it-needs-to-be premise that Bloom has to explain to you, because though I get it, I can't explain it here, and I'm not sure it matters anyway. He just didn't want to list 100 names and go at it, so he broke it down, loosely, upon the different types of genius each genius had. Fair enough, but then he goes all ancient Greek and Roman and almost Kabbalistic on you, which some of this book's geniuses--Austen, Chekhov and Cervantes, just to name a few--wouldn't have cared about at all. Separating them by their types of genius, yes. The extra stuff, whatever.

All of this is moot because the insights and writing are really awe-inspiring. Bloom is like Stephen Hawking in that they make even those who think they're decently intelligent feel even more so for having read their works. Bloom also throws in some rather (frequent) stringent sentences about the theocracy of America--and this is back when Dubya was President, less than a year after 9/11. One wonders what Bloom would make of this kakistocracy. His pitch against Dubya's conservative, religious right was high, damning and almost intellectually hysterical, so his stance against today's "system of government which is run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens" would be close to suicidal. When Dubya seems like one of this book's geniuses by comparison, it's time to run for the hills. Or, the border.

This might seem like we've gotten off track, but Bloom places these geniuses pretty well into the societies of their times. It seems pretty clear that the genius and his society go hand-in-hand, one either causing the other, or at least bosom, if not friendly, buddies with the other. Bloom also focuses on one work of the author, but cleverly self-advertises when he says that he's written of Author X's novel Y elsewhere, so let's focus on Z here. You'll know Bloom's other bestselling titles before you're done with this one. Of course it's right that he does this, or you'd read about Hamlet and Falstaff every single time you're reading Bloom on Shakespeare. This also works because he lets you know about some of these geniuses's lesser known works. If you're like me, you'll want to read most of the writing of most of these geniuses as you're reading this. Of the 100 covered here, I think I gave a pass to maybe 5 to 8 of them. Not bad. And I really did want to sit down and read a lot of their stuff. With the summer coming up, this is one of my goals/projects.

So this book is indispensable if you want to be an intelligent, read person. Read this, and his Invention of the Human, and when you're done reading both of them, you'll want to go back and do so again. Another sign of Bloom's genius (and one yardstick he uses to gauge genius in others): Each time you read him, you'll get something else you hadn't noticed before. Not because you're an idiot, but because there was so much there to begin with, you couldn't possibly have gotten it all the first time through.