While Bloom strove to make literary criticism accessible to the general public, he also demonstrated outright antipathy for identity politics in the realm of literary commentary. In his best-known text, 1973’s The Anxiety of Influence, Bloom wrote, “We are now in an era of so-called ‘cultural criticism,’ which devalues all imaginative literature … Politicizing literary study has destroyed literary study, and may yet destroy learning itself.”
My fellow elderly fella and estranged-now-reconciled book blogger Steven Beattie, who I affectionately call Beats, with some thoughts on the passing of Harold Bloom. Beattie is one of our most reliable critics and is always a smart read.
