THE LATEST BOOK of literary criticism from the venerable Harold Bloom offers up his convictions on why reading literature is good for us. It allows the 70-year-old Bloom to share ideas he has developed over the course of a lifetime as a noted intellectual, academic and teacher.
Bloom organises his book by selecting his favourite works from the genres of short story, poetry, drama and the novel. They are all classic works from the traditional canon of Western literature - unsurprisingly, since Bloom is the great champion of the Western literary canon. Any suggestion that literature might be legitimately 'reduced' to a set of social, or political, or historical texts is fiercely opposed. From this position flows the key idea of the book: reading literature is an intensely personal, individualistic experience, with no real social or political function. Reading 'strengthens the self', it 'cultivates an individual consciousness'.
Hence Bloom is only interested in texts which, in his view, transcend the limits of history and culture and provide a timeless continuity of Western thought and experience.
Bloom talks about his favourite texts with a passion and sensitivity that make for an exhilarating read in parts, which will prompt many readers to go out and experience (or re-experience) these authors for themselves. He can be delightfully outrageous, however, as when he claims that 'Shakespeare's rhetorical and imaginative resources transcend those of Yahweh, Jesus, and Allah'. But for readers looking for self-improvement, Bloom doesn't spend much time offering practical advice. In fact, his 'how-to' can be summed up in four brief statements: read slowly, read aloud, re-read, and (where possible) memorise. These precepts are waved as magical talismans for aspiring readers of literature, but will such simple techniques really create sophisticated reading skills? Many readers of this book will expect rather more practical and detailed directions on how to read well.
As for the second part of his title, Bloom drops his answer to the question 'why read?' in a series of almost throwaway epigrams. Reason that he throws against the wall include: to alleviate loneliness, to recognise the possibility of the good, to find ourselves, to understand America, to achieve an advanced sense of freedom, to startle us into a more capacious sense of life and to make us wiser.
All his reasons for reading, however, revolve around his lodestone conviction that literature is for 'strengthening the self'. In fact, for Bloom good reading is vital for maintaining individualism and hence Western civilisation as we have known it. This book is a piece of brilliant propaganda for that view, and a series of often sparkling readings of individual texts. Just don't be misled by the title.
