Harold Bloom

What hindered Harold Bloom most as a critic seems to be his belief that great literature was a matter of almost exclusively male writers engaged in some sort of Freudian battle. When I began to read literature in my early teens, Bloom’s books were omnipresent. There might be few to no books of literary criticism by other writers. But you would find Bloom’s volumes of edited essays on the shelves next to the works of many of the major authors. In the introductions to which he could casually eviscerate their writing. As if it was actually Bloom with the Oedipal need.

I once started to watch a lecture he gave. I stopped after he quoted himself—twice. For many years, I had no interest in criticism, because I thought being a critic meant being something like Harold Bloom.