Much to applaud here ...

... Thoughts on reading and education.

Glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks "said H Bloom" is a pompous ass.

Dave Lull has made my day by sending along this by Joseph Epstein: Bloomin’ Genius.

On Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human:
Choice selections of the characteristically impenetrable Bloomian prose are the raisins in this indigestible pudding of a book: “Shakespeare’s uniqueness, his greatest originality, can be described either as a charismatic cognition, which comes from an individual before it enters group thinking, or as a cognitive charisma, which cannot be routinized.”

This about sums it up:
A critic for whom Bloom hasn’t much regard, T. S. Eliot, once said that the best method for being a critic is to be very intelligent. Harold Bloom isn’t very intelligent—he is merely learned, though in a wildly idiosyncratic way. He has staked out his claim for being a great critic through portentousness, pomposity, and extravagant pretension, and, from all appearances, seems to have achieved it.

But really, read the whole thing.

Bumped up.