Friday, January 2, 2009

New Years and Bloom


Well this was certainly unexpected, but greatly appreciated. I do wonder how exactly this interview came to happen? It certainly isn't a coupling I would ever have imagined, but it's a surprisingly interesting interview, although one wonders if Bloom actually knew the context (i.e. Vice) in which he would be presented.

There is something overly reverential in the mode of presentation and questioning here (especially for Vice), but that's probably the only way to get Harold Bloom to talk this candidly and openly (is it just me, or does he seem a little paranoid about his standing in academia?). I have a sort of ambivalent relationship with Bloom anyway: I greatly admire his scholarship, and during that brief era of time people thought of him as part of the Yale School or whatever, his writings were up there with some of the best theorists and critics of all time (along with his colleagues, though I suppose we aren't supposed to like that dirty Nazi Paul de Man anymore, eh?#). But, as his writings increasingly addressed a wider audience (especially The Western Canon etc.) he seems to have diluted a lot of his previous work to a position of the ornery contrarian. And yet, those books are still a good read and very informative in their own way, so there you go. I just never thought I'd see an interview with him in Vice? Rereading it though, it makes more sense, as there is an attempt to present him as some sort of "rebel" (which Vice loves) but Bloom's too loquacious and quick to let the interviewer to present him as such. Oh well, interesting read, even after one gets over the incongruity in its placement.
Also, Happy New Year. Please give me a job.
# I suppose this is the kind of thinking which Bloom opposes in the interview. Kudos me! Also, I think it's about time we started reading de Man again. For serious.

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