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HaroldBloom
I N T E RV I E W E D BY J E S S E P E A R S O N

HaroldBloomisthepreeminentliterarycriticintheworld,andassuchheisperhapsthe
lastofadyingbreed.Bloomadheres,passionatelyandsinglemindedly,tothetrueand
firsttenetoflitcrittotakeabookandjudgeitonitsownmerit,toseeitasathingin
andofitself.Theaestheticvalueoftheprose,themasteryofmetaphor,strengthand
convictionofthemethesearethesortsofthingsthatacriticlikeBloompaysattention
to.
Muchofcontemporarycriticismtakesanovelandholdsituptoaseriesofincongruous
andirrelevantsociologicalmagnifyingglassesgendertheory,feminism,Marxist
analysis,andallsortsofpostmodernmuck.Thesecritics,whomBloomhasmemorably
calledtheSchoolofResentment,havegainedsuchstrengththattheyhavecolored,even
infected,writerswhosecareershavestartedsincetheResentmentbegan.Sowhatweare
seeingiscriticismthatchangesliteraturefortheworseand,asBloomlaments,
contributestotheidiotizationoftheentireworld.Itsamess,anditmaybeirreversible.
AndsowereturntoHaroldBloom,theoldvoicecryingoutinthewilderness,who,
besideswritingoneofthemostimportantandusefulbooksonShakespeare(The
InventionoftheHuman)andcoiningthetermanxietyofinfluenceanextremely
usefultheoryofliteraryevolutioninthebookofthesamename,tookonthewholeof

academia(forthatisnowjustanothernamefortheSchoolofResentment)inthe
towering1994workTheWesternCanon.ItisinthisbookthatBloomfirstandmost
comprehensivelydidhisparttopreservewhatsimportantessential,reallytohumans
fromallthegreatworksofwritingthathavebeenproducedfromtheBibleand
Gilgameshallthewayupto,well,rightnow.Theprofessorsandcriticsoftheworldwill
onlygettheirhandsonmycopyofthisbookwhentheypryitfrommycold,deadfingers.
IrecentlyspokewithBloomoverthephone.HewasinhisofficeatYale,wherehe
teachestwoclassesaweek.
JessePearson:IwashopingtotalkfirstaboutTheWesternCanon.
HaroldBloom:Doyoumeanthewholecategory,orwhatIwroteaboutit?
Imeanyourbook.
Butcanwemakeanagreement?Letsforgetthatdamnedlist.
Ha.Doyoumeantheappendixinthebackofthebookthatlistsallthecanonical
works?
Thelistwasnotmyidea.Itwastheideaofthepublisher,theeditor,andmyagents.I
foughtit.Ifinallygaveup.Ihatedit.Ididitoffthetopofmyhead.Ileftoutalotof
thingsthatshouldbethereandIprobablyputinacoupleofthingsthatInowwouldlike
tokickout.IkeptitoutoftheItalianandtheSwedishtranslations,butitsinalltheother
translationsabout15or18ofthem.Imsickofthewholething.Allovertheworld,
includinghere,peoplereviewedandattackedthelistanddidntreadthebook.Solets
agreerightnow,mydear.Wewillnotmentionthelist.
Itsadeal.
IwishIhadnothingtodowithit.Iliterallydiditoffthetopofmyhead,sinceIhavea
prettyconsiderablememory,inaboutthreehoursoneafternoon.
Itdoesseemlikethesortofthingthatapublisherwouldaskfortomakethebook
morepalatabletoacasualreader.
Itdoesntexist.Letsgoon.
Istartedcollegeinthesameyearthatthisbookwaspublished1994.
1994.Thatsalongtimeagonow.Thats14years.Iamnow78andIvecomeoffa
terribleyear.Inearlydied.ButImallrightnowandImbackteaching.
Whathappened?
Awholeseriesofmishapsandillnesses,butthebigonethatknockedmeoutforsix

monthsandnearlykilledmewasthatIquiteliterallybrokemybackinafall.Butlets
forgetaboutit.Itsovernow.
Lookingatthebook,andthinkingaboutitbeingavailablerightwhenIwasstarting
college
Wherewereyouatcollege?
Well,thatspartoftheproblem.Iwenttoaverysmallliberalartscollegewithno
gradesandnomajors.Letsnotspeakitsname.Or,okay,lets.Itscalled
Hampshire.
Ohyes,Iknowitverywell.Itwassupposedtobeveryelite.Iremembertheyonce
wantedmetotalkthereandIsortofdodgeditbecauseIfeltitwasntgoingtowork.
Itwouldnthaveworked.AndIfeellikeIshouldhavejustreadyourbookinsteadof
goingtoschoolthere.Butcanyoutellme,doyouthinkthatthingshavebecome
betterorworseintermsoftheSchoolofResentmentsincethebookwaspublished?
Obviouslytheyvegottenmuchworse.Justlookattheenormousinternationalaswellas
domesticdumbingdownanddeclineinseriousreadingandindeedthefallingapart,
inevitably,ofstandards.
Yetyourestillsoldieringon,teachingundergraduates.
ButIveturnedmybackontheacademyeventhoughIstillteachatYale.Iampartofno
departmentIbecameadepartment,ornondepartment,ofonewhenIwalkedoutonthe
Englishdepartmentbackin,myGod,waybacktherein1976.Thatsalongtimeago
now.Thirtytwoyears.ButIstartedtowritebooksprettyearlyoncertainlyfromabout
thelate1980sontothepresent,soforabout20yearsnow,addressedtothegeneral
readerallovertheworld.AndithasworkedbecauseInowhaveanenormousgeneral
readership,mostlyinanincrediblenumberoftranslations.Sothereisalwaysasaving
remnantofreadersoutthere,asIhavediscovered.Ontheotherhand,everysingleoneof
thosecountries,likeourown,doessufferfromakindofdumbingdown.
Itsinallsortsofcultureandmedia,butitsmostlyinbooks.
Ithassomethingtodowith,thoughnoteverythingtodowith,technologicalchangethe
factthatmostkidsgrowupnotreadingdeeplyorgoingtoamuseumandstaringata
pictureorgoingtoaconcertandreallylisteningtoauthenticmusicincludingauthentic
jazz.Peoplearetrappedintheageofwhatyoumightcallthetriplescreen:themotion
picturescreenandthisisinascendingorderofevilintermsofwhatitdoestotheir
mindsthroughouttheworldthetelevisionscreen,andfinallythecomputerscreen,
whichistherealvillain.

Itsdisappointingbecausetheinternetcouldhavebeensuchagoodthing.Itcould
havebeenlikeanindestructibleLibraryofAlexandria,butwithporn.
ThisgoesbacktowhatIsaidaboutthesavingremnant.Yourepartofthatsaving
remnant.AsIvebeensayingforyears:If,infact,youhaveanimpulsetobecomeand
maintainyourselfasadeepreader,thentheinternetisverygoodforyou.Itgivesyouan
endlessresource.Butif,infact,youdonthavestandardsandyoudontknowhowto
read,thentheinternetisadisasterforyoubecauseitsagreatgrayoceanoftextinwhich
yousimplydrown.
Istartedschool,ostensiblyatleast,asapoetrymajor.ButIcouldntfindaclass
therethatwasntTransgenderedChicanoPoetsoftheLatterHalfof1982or
something.NotthatIdontliketransgenderedChicanopoetsof1982theyre
great,Imsure.ButIwantedtolearnmorethanthat.Orrather,Iwantedtostart
fromtheverybeginningandworkmywayuptotransgenderedChicanos.Iwanted
thecontextofhistory,andIcouldntgetitatcollege.
Ohmydear,letsnotgetintothat.Imsowearynowofbeingcalledaracistorasexist.I
canttakethatanymore.
Butwheredoesthisfearofreadingtheworksofwhatsomecriticsderisivelycall
deadwhitemencomefrom?
Well,wereabouttocrashonthescaleof1837,theGreatPanic,or1929,andnowwere
goingtohavethePanicofeither2008or2009.Thatisaconsequenceitsoneofmany
consequencesincludingalotofinnocentdeadeverywhereofthewayinwhichthe
countercultureultimately,byitsenormousrecoil,helpedgiveusGeorgeW.Bushand
SarahPalin.Theyarebothsemiliterateatbest.Theybothexudeselfconfidence.And
theybothclaimadirectrelationshipwithGod.
Hopefullyshelldisappearnow,orjuststartatalkshoworsomething.
Sheisavery,verydangerousperson.
Agreed.ButmovingonIfapersonwantstoseriouslyapproachliteratureontheir
own,outsideofacademia,itsverydifficult.
Withoutarealteacher,anauthenticteacher,arealmentor,itsverydifficultforanyoneto
getstarted.
Canyouexplaintomeyourconceptofthesolitaryreader?Thatswhoyousayyou
addressyourbooksto.
Itsnotaconcept.Itsjustafact.Therearesolitaryreadersallovertheworld.Idont
haveanyspecialinsightintothis.Idonotknowwhyitisthatcertainyoungpeople,from
thebeginning,arelonersperfectlysanewhowanttogoandbealonewithaverygood
book.Again,itsthesavingremnant.ItsasortofstrangegraceandofcourseIm

profoundlythankfulforit.SoyoudonthavetoaskmewhatImeanbythesolitary
reader.Imeanyouonthebasisofwhatyouvetoldme.Allyouneedtoknowaboutthe
solitaryreaderisPearson.
Nice!CanwetalkabouttheSchoolofResentment?
TheirnameisLegion.Ihavewastedmybreathonthem.DoctorSamuelJohnson,my
hero,toldustoclearourmindsofcant.ButmyfriendJohnHollanderkeepswarningme
tostoprantingagainstcant,whichiswhatIdo.Bythetimeyouvespentacertain
amountofenergyrantingagainstcant,itbecomesakindofcantinitself.Soletsnot
botherwithit.
Butitsbeenastruggleofyoursforsolong.
Phrasesthatyouformulatecomebackandhauntyou.Ishouldnthaveformulatedthe
SchoolofResentment.Ioncecalledthemarabblementoflemmings,andIruninto
thatphraseeverywhere.AndInowwishthatIhadntformulatedthesinglephrasethatI
seemtohavegiventothelanguage:theanxietyofinfluence.Ofcourseeverybody
misunderstandsit.
Howdotheygetitwrong?
Theyinterpretitasanaffectinthelaterwriter.Butitisntanaffectinthelaterwriter.It
doesntmatterwhetherthelaterwriterdoesordoesnotfeelananxiety,consciousor
otherwise,withregardtoaprecursorfigure.Itsactuallytherelationshipbetweenone
poemandanotherpoem,onenovelandanothernovel,andsoonandsoforth.
Itsaninescapablething,andanancientthing.Itssimplywhathappensfrombeing
partofthelineageofwritersandwriting.
ThecurrentpaperbackofTheAnxietyofInfluencehasalongintroductionbymeon
ShakespeareandMarlowe,whichmakesveryclearthatIdontthinkofitasapost
Enlightenmentphenomenonanymore.InfactitexistsinPindarinrelationtoHomerand
obviouslyinPlatoinrelationtoHomer.Itsuniversal.ItsinancientChinese.Itsevenin
theHebrewBible.ThinkoftherelationshipbetweenBenSiraandtheApocrypha,so
called,theecclesiastical,socalled,thewisdomofthefathers,inrelationtoCohelethor
Ecclesiastes.Butgoon.
Yeah,IdbetterbecauseImgettingwayoutofmyleaguethere.Intheintroduction
toTheWesternCanonyousaythatyouagreewiththisideathatthereisagod,and
hisnameisAristophanes.Whatssogreatabouthim?Hewassortofthefirst
literarycritic,right?
Yes,thegreatpointaboutAristophanesasIseehimisthatheistherealbeginningof
Westernliterarycriticism,particularlywhenhesavagesEuripidesinfavorofAeschylus.
Infact,hereallytalksaboutakindofanxietyofinfluenceonthepartofEuripidesin

relationtoAeschylus.WhatIcanrecognizeasWesternliterarycriticismreallybegan
moreinAristophanesthaninAristotle.Hisformalismtellsmethatcriticismalwayshasa
closerelationshiptotheoriginsofparody,ofsatire,ofakindofdesperateirony.Andof
coursewedonthaveliterarycriticsanymore.Itsanarchaicnotion.
Oh,buthey,whataboutJamesWood?Imsortofkidding,ofcourse.
Oh,dontevenmentionhim.Hedoesntexist.Hejustdoesnotexistatall.
Ithoughthislastbookwasfuntoreadbecausehegetssoenthusiasticaboutthings,
butyeah,Idontreallyunderstandthephenomenonofhimonthewhole.
Mydear,phenomenaarealwaysbeingbubbledup.Thereareperiodpiecesincriticismas
thereareperiodpiecesinthenovelandinpoetry.Thewindblowsandtheywillgoaway.
Hislastbookseemedtobeaperiodpieceatleastintermsofitscoverdesign.It
lookedlikeatextbookfromthe30sor40s.Itwaskindofcute.
ApublisherwantedtosendmethebookandIsaid,Pleasedont.Ithinkitwasmyown
publisher,ofthehugebookImworkingoncalledLivingLabyrinth:Literatureand
Influence,inwhichIvebeenboggedforfiveyearsnow.Itsmeanttobeagrandsumma
andmaybemyundoing.Anyway,Itoldthem,Pleasedontbothertosendit.Ididnt
wanttohavetothrowitout.Theresnothingtotheman.HealsohasandIhaventever
readhimonmebutImtoldhewroteaviciousreviewofmeintheNewRepublic,
whichIneverlookatanyway,inwhichheclearlyevidenced,asoneofmyoldfriendsput
it,acertainanxietyofinfluence.Idontwanttotalkabouthim.
OK.Maybethisnextoneisasillyquestion.
Askwhatyouwill,dear.
HowdowereadShakespeare?
Well,IofcourseteachShakespeare.Imbacktoteachingagainafterayearoff,andI
alwaysteachaclassonShakespearethatgoesthroughtheyearandaclassonhowtoread
poemsthatgoesthroughtheyear.Butthisisaveryhardthingtoanswer.Criticalbooks
onShakespeareusuallydonthelpmuch.
Isgoingtoseeproductionsofhisplaysvaluablewhilereadinghim?
Ifitstherightproduction.IwontgotoalmostanythingbecauseIknowitsgoingtobe
hackedupandsmashedbysomestupid,pigheaded,politicallycorrect,highconcept
personwhothinkshisorherconceptsarehigherthanShakespeares,whichisridiculous.
SoIdontevengoonceayear.IdoubtthatIllevergotooneagain.

Soaretherenousefulguidesbesidesyourown?
IalsolikeHaroldGoddardsbook.ItscalledTheMeaningofShakespeare.Itsnowin
twopaperbackvolumesandIreallyurgeyoutoreaditandgetotherpeopletoreaditas
wellastoreadmyadmittedlyratherramshacklebookonShakespeare.
IlldowhatIcan.Howmanyofhisplaysdoyougetthroughinyourcourseonhim?
Imanageinthecourseofayeartocramin24ofthe38orsoplaysbecausetwodozenof
themreallyareofthehighestquality.
YouhaveaparticularaffectionforthecharacterofFalstaff,whoappearsinthe
twoHenryIVsandTheMerryWivesofWindsor.
Ohyes,yes.InthisIfollow[literaryscholar]A.C.Bradley,whowastherebeforeme.In
fact,thatsstillagoodbook.HisworkonShakespeareantragedyisfarpreferabletomost
modernbooksonthesamething.BradleysaidthatthefourShakespeareancharacters
mostinexhaustibletomeditationareFalstaff,Hamlet,Iago,andCleopatrawhichmight
atfirstseemaneccentricchoice,butyoubroodonitandyouseethatheisright.Learis
beyondyousoyoucantreallykeepmeditatingonhimpastacertainpoint.Macbethis
toouncomfortablycloseyoucantmeditateonhim.Rosalindistoofreeofyou,istoo
saneandnormal.
Whatmakesthosefourcharacterssorich?
Theyresopowerfully,ellipticallypresented,andIguessincreasinglythatstheclueto
myShakespeareanteaching.Fromthefirstmomenton,Itrytoshowthestudentsthat
eventhoughheistherichestofwriters,heisalsoparadoxicallythemostelliptical.You
alwayshavetofollowwhatitisthathesleavingoutonpurposetomakeyourminds
workharder.WithFalstaff,Hamlet,Iago,andCleopatra,anenormousamountisleftout.
Doesteachingyoungpeoplegiveyouanyhopeforthefutureofliteratureand
criticism?
ItgivesmepersonalexhilarationatthemomentbecauseIwasawfultiredoflyingonmy
backandbeingcutoff.AndIrefusetoteachgraduatestudents.Ihaveforanumberof
yearsnowforobviousreasons.
Isitbecausetheyareruinedbycontemporaryacademiaatthatpoint?
Look,Ivebecomethepariahoftheprofession.Youhavetowritelettersforgraduate
studentsandIfoundthatIwasgivingthemthekissofdeath.Imnotgoingtoputthaton
myheadinmyoldage.SoIgaveitupmaybeeightortenyearsago,whenIwasalready
old.TheonlythingthatIthinkisalittleawkwardisgoingintomyShakespeareclass
everyWednesdayandmypoetryclasseveryThursdayandfindingthatmystudentsare,
afterall,sincetheseareYaleundergraduates,verygoodandhighlyselectedones.
Theyreallquitewonderful,Ithink.Buttheyarebetweenroughly19andatmost22

yearsofageandIm78.ThereisanagegapthereandIcantalwaysbesurethatImable
tobridgeit.
Andwhicheraofpoetryareyouteaching?
Oh,IdidahugeanthologycalledTheBestPoemsoftheEnglishLanguage:From
ChaucerThroughRobertFrost,thoughitactuallygoesbeyondFrost.Hessimplythelast
persontobealiveandtowritepoems.Iwantedtoenditwiththecloseofthe19th
centuryintermsofthepoetsbirth,withHartCrane,whoisstillmyfavoritepoet,bornin
1899.Ifollowthatbookoutforthefirstsemester,andinthesecondsemesterIgobackto
thefourpoetswhoafterallthistimearetheonesImostcareforamongthe20thcentury
poets:WilliamButlerYeatsandWallaceStevens,uponwhomIvewrittenverylarge
books,HartCrane,onwhomIvewrittenacoupleofessays,includingthecentennial
introductiontothecurrentbestpaperbackofCranespoetry,andD.H.Lawrence,whom
Ivewrittenonlyacoupleofessaysonthroughtheyears,butwhoisamarvelous
poet.Andnowmyvoiceisfailing.Wellhavetostop.
Thanksfortalkingtome.
Andthankyou,Mr.Pearson.BeforeIgointotheGreat,perhapswewillmeet.
O R I G I N A L LY P U B L I S H E D I N V I C E M A G A Z I N E I N 2 0 0 8
INTERVIEWS

A Conversation with Harold Bloom author of How To Read and Why

What
inspired
you
to
write
How
To
Read
and
Why?
With both The Western Canon published back in 1994 and Shakespeare: The Invention
of the Human published in 1998, I had toured extensively and found an astonishing
response from the audiences I addressed and from people who talked to me and people
for whom I was signing books. To this day, I am deluged with mail from people who say
how desperately pleased they are to find that someone is indeed writing about literature
for the common reader, that someone does not try, as it were, to do the French thing, in
regard to literary study or the many ideological modes which I will not mention, which are
now practiced in the Anglo-American Universities and college world.
The more I thought about the response to these two books I had written, the more I
realized that neither of them had really addressed a need which I felt highly qualified and
highly driven to meet. And that is, a self-help book, indeed, an inspiration book, which
would not only encourage solitary readers of all kinds all over the world to go on reading
for themselves, but also support them in their voyages of self-discovery through reading.
[How To Read and Whyis meant to] give readers a human aid to their own reading, not to
tell them what to read, because to some extent I had done that in The Western Canon,
but to tell them indeed how to read, and even more than how, to remind them why we
have to go on reading, why indeed it's a kind of death in life if we yield completely to what
William Wordsworth called the "tyranny of the bodily eye," that is to say, the tyranny of
the visual at a time when we are so bombarded by information of a visual kind.
What do you think is the single greatest threat to the future of reading?

I used to believe, until fairly recently, that the greatest threat was both visual overstimulation--television, films, computers, virtual reality, and so on--and also auditory overstimulation, you know, what I call rock religion, MTV, rap, all of these mindless burstings
of the eardrums. And, of course, I think what has happened to education on every level,
from grade school through graduate school throughout the English speaking world, is an
increasing menace to disinterested and passionate reading, reading not governed by
ideological
and
other
social
considerations.
But more recently, I have reached the very sad conclusion that what most threatens the
future of reading is the, I will not say probability--I would become very wretched indeed-but the real possibility of the disappearance of the book. I begin to fear that what it means
to be alone with a book--the various ways in which you can hold a book in your own
hands and turn the pages and write in the margins when you are moved to do so,
underline or emphasize when you are moved to do so--might almost vanish, that the
technological overkill of the latest developments we are moving towards, the e-book sort
of thing which Mr. Gates and others are proclaiming might perhaps put the book in
jeopardy. And I really don't think that without the book we are going to survive. You can
have a technological elite without the book, but you cannot finally have a humanely
educated portion of the public that is able to teach to others. As a matter of fact, I think
what you will really have is the death of humane teaching, as such.
What can people get from reading that they can't from movies or television?
I would say not less than everything. You can get a great deal of information, as such,
from screens of one sort or another. You can dazzle yourself with images, if that is your
desire. But how you are to grow in self-knowledge, become more introspective, discover
the authentic treasures of insight and of compassion and of spiritual discernment and of a
deep bond to other solitary individuals, how in fact can like call out to like without reading,
I do not know. I suppose if I were to put it in almost a common denominator sort of way, I
would say that you cannot even begin to heal the worst aspects of solitude, which are
loneliness and potential madness, by visual experience of any kind, particularly the sort
of mediated visual experience that you get off a screen of whatever sort. If you are to
really encounter a human otherness which finds an answering chorus in yourself, which
can become an answering chorus to your own sense of inward isolation, there truly is no
authentic
place
to
turn
except
to
a
book.
You talk in the book about contemporary readers having difficulty comprehending
irony in literature of earlier times. Why do you think this is a problem?
Irony by definition is the saying of one thing while meaning another, sometimes indeed
quite the opposite of what overtly you are saying. It's very difficult to have the highest
kind of imaginative literature from Homer through Don DeLillo, as it were, and entirely
avoid irony. There is the tragic irony, which one confronts everywhere in Shakespeare,
that the audience, the auditor, and the reader are aware of--something in the character or
predicament or inward affects, emotions of the protagonist or protagonists, that the
heroes
and
heroines
are
totally
unaware
of
themselves.
It's very difficult to convey this quality of irony by purely visual means. Visual ironies tend
to fall flat or they vulgarize very quickly or they become grotesque. Really subtle irony of
any sort demands literary language. The way in which meaning tends to wander in any
really interesting literary text, so that the reader is challenged to go into exile with it, catch
up with it, learn how to construe it, make it her very own, is essentially a function of irony.
If we totally lose our ability to recognize and to understand irony, then we will be doomed
to a kind of univocal discourse, which is alright I suppose for politicians' speeches and
perhaps for certain representatives of popular religion, but will leave us badly defrauded.
What books or poems have you returned to most often over the course of your
life?
The primary answer has to be Shakespeare. Even if I did not teach Shakespeare all the
time, I would always be re-reading Shakespeare, reciting Shakespeare to myself,
brooding about the great plays. I tend personally to re-read the major lyric poets of the

English language from Shakespeare's sonnets through Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane.
That's what most vivifies and pleases me. I re-read Jonathan Swift's A Tale of the
Tub twice a year, but that's to punish myself. It is, I think, the most powerful, nonfictive
prose in the English language, but it's a kind of vehement satire upon visionary projectors
as it were, like myself, and so I figure it is a good tonic and corrective for me. I re-read
Proust every year because In Search of Lost Time is just about my favorite novel, except
maybe for Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, which I also tend to re-read every year or so. I
re-read Dickens all the time, especially my peculiar favorite which I've loved since I was a
child, The Pickwick Papers. I re-read Oscar Wilde nearly every day of my life, or I recite
Oscar to myself, but that's a personal enthusiasm which perhaps surpasses his literary
worth, very large as that indeed is. I read Dr. Samuel Johnson all the time because he is
my great hero as a literary critic and I have tried to model myself upon him all my life. But
this answer would be endless, since I do very little besides teach and read and write.
What
is
your
favorite
book
to
teach?
Oh, most certainly, Shakespeare. Teaching either the high tragedies, Hamlet, Othello,
Macbeth, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, or the greatest of the comedies, Twelfth
Night, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream, or what may be, I think, the finest,
most representative instance of what Shakespeare can do, the two parts of King Henry
IV, taken together, considered as one play, in which, of course, the central figure is my
particular literary hero, Sir John Falstaff. And the so-called late romances, which are
really
tragi-comedies,
particularly The
Tempest and The
Winter's
Tale.
Did you have a teacher who was a particular inspiration to you?
Oh yes. I was deeply inspired and helped greatly, humanly, by three of my teachers in
particular. When I was at Cornell undergraduate, I came very much under the influence
and the kind guidance of M. H. Abrams, Meyer Howard Abrams, who I'm delighted to say
is still alive. He's 88 years old now, one of the leading, perhaps the leading scholar of
English
Romantic
poetry
in
the
20th
century.
Then when I became a graduate student at Yale, I was much under the influence of
Frederick A. Pottle, who was a Johnson and Boswell scholar and a Romantic scholar,
and is remembered best now for writing a large two-volume definitive biography of James
Boswell and for his work on the Boswell papers. He was a tremendous steadying
influence upon me. I was a sort of wild young man with fierce opinions of every sort and
congenitally unable to see anybody else's point of view. Mr. Pottle was sufficiently
strenuous in urging a proper care upon me for the really civilized and well thoughtthrough and valid opinions of others, not just any opinions. But I think he did me a vast
amount
of
good.
The third person would be the late dean of Yale College, William Clyde Devane, a great
Browning scholar. I was his student also, but mostly he was too busy during those 25
years, first when I was a graduate student and then when I was a younger and
beginning-to-be-middle-aged person on the faculty. He was too busy running Yale
College to give me much direct instruction, but he took a great interest in me, defended
me against my Yale enemies, as Professor Pottle did, and I had plenty of enemies, some
of whom I no doubt deserved and some of whom I didn't deserve. But he was a fountain
of wisdom. He was a man of enormous worldly insight, but of still an idealistic kind, and
he took the long view. Even if I never quite learned from him to take as long a view as
William Clyde Devane could take, he had a strong effect upon me.
I suppose also, you know, I would say that Meyer Howard Abrams and Frederick Albert
Pottle and William Clyde Devane were, in their very different way, very wise men. I say at
the beginning of How to Read and Why, "information is readily available to us; where
shall wisdom be found," which is an ancient Biblical question. I found wisdom in those
three teachers in particular. While I'm not trying to be a guru or anything of that sort, any
more than they tried to be or actually were gurus, any hard-won wisdom of my own
comes primarily from what they started in me and from the deep reading of what by now
must be literally hundreds of thousands of books-ingesting them, memorizing them,
voluntarily and involuntarily, pondering them, always turning them over in my mind.

How did you choose which works to discuss in the book?

As I made very clear in one of the earlier sentences of the book, there is nothing
prescriptive about the book. It isn't trying to tell you what to read; it is really trying to tell
you how to read and why to read. It is a self-help and inspirational kind of manual, as it
were. And as I say very clearly at the beginning, whether I'm dealing with any of my five
categories, European novels, American novels, short stories, poetry, or plays, I can only
give samples. I tried to take samples that were really in some deep way central to the
experience of the reader, but that were also to some degree, varied, and above all else
accessible. I wanted them to be accessible stories, accessible novels, very familiar works
if possible, or familiar to many readers, if not to most or all readers. (I would have to
admit that Shelley's The Triumph of Life may be a little too difficult for the purposes of the
book, but I felt that by then one could try a really difficult poem on the reader.)
But it's very, very difficult to try to write such a book and keep it to about whatever this is,
285-or-so pages, and not seem to be purely arbitrary or purely personal in the books that
you choose. Thus some of my friends who are poets and novelists and playwrights,
though they like the book, have questioned why one writer is there rather than another,
and I'm not always sure that I can give an answer that will altogether satisfy or appease
them. To some extent, the choices had to be, in part, arbitrary. But I think they are all of
them representative. I think they are almost all of them accessible to a reader with good
will who is willing to work a little. I think that all of them are beautiful, to use a term that
we should not let go of. They are all of them aesthetically rewarding to the highest
degree. And I think that all of them have either a great wisdom or, quite manifestly, a
great
unwisdom,
which
teaches
you
a
good
deal
also.
When I re-read the book in proof the other day, I realized that without meaning to do so, I
had at one time or another, whether I was dealing with novelists, storywriters, poets, or
dramatists, found myself reflecting upon and trying to say something useful about the
quite palpable influence of Shakespeare upon all of these writers. And he has been, of
course, in all European languages, probably with the exception of French, the
inescapable influence, the inescapable presence for the last four centuries, since he is,
after
all,
the
largest
and
most
powerful
writer
that
we
know.
In the prologue you write, "Ultimately we read in order to strengthen the self." As
you have noticed, self-help books top bestseller lists. How can reading great
literature
provide
an
alternative
to
these
manuals?
In the self-help and inspirational category, to be perfectly fair, most things that are
published, or that sell widely, are really intellectually and spiritually rather thin. They don't
challenge a reader in any way, and I'm afraid frequently tend to flatter a reader in
preconceptions and misconceptions and easy adjustments to one's own self. So the
question is, how can one possibly hope to vie with, to compete with, self-help books of
that sort in presenting a book on how to read and why. I suppose pragmatically is the
only answer I can give. I have tried to be as simple and clear as I either can be or can be
induced to be. It is a very direct book, I think. It addresses the reader--whether he or she
be
young
or
old,
whatever
their
background--quite
intimately.
The purpose of the book, and I hope the achievement of the book, is to get in very close
to a reader and try to speak directly to what it is that they either might want out of the
book or might be persuaded to see: that truly, though they may not have been aware of it,
this is what they want and only really first-rate imaginative literature can bring it to them.
For example, they want Chekhov's short stories, because they are not only so poignant
but have the uncanny faculty, rather like Shakespeare in that regard, to persuade the
reader or the auditor that certain truths about himself or herself, which are totally
authentic, totally real, are being demonstrated to the reader for the very first time. It's not
as though Shakespeare or Chekhov has created those truths. It's just that without the
assistance of Shakespeare and Chekhov, we might never be able to see what is really
there.

Pre-eminent American literary critic Harold Bloom's twenty-ninth book, Where

Shall Wisdom Be Found?, was officially launched a few hours after this
conversation took place in his Manhattan apartment on 26 October 2004.
Ieva Lesinska: Every article about you mentions your amazing ability to read and remember.
My question then is what do you forget?
More literature in Eurozine

Literary perspectives

Hungary
Andrzej Tichy

The scream of geometry (modified excerpts)

Anna Friman

Pornographers in black
Karin Sarsenov

Is it a sin to travel? Itinerant women in post-Soviet narrative

Ingeborg Kongslien

Migrant or multicultural literature in the Nordic countries

Stig Saeterbakken

My heart belongs to Europe. Therefore it is broken

Marius Ivaskevicius

My Scandinavia
Pauls Bankovskis

The joy of small places

Mrt Vljataga

Why study literature?

Harold Bloom, Ieva Lesinska

Breakfast with brontosaurus. An interview with Harold Bloom

Ida Brjel

European waistlines
Bernard Magnier

The presence of African literature

Georges Niangoran Bouah

Leave us alone!
Harold Bloom: Ah, that's really interesting indeed, dear. First of all, I am
getting a little older and... Well, I have always had a very selective memory: I
don't remember period pieces, I don't remember junk of any kind and, of
course, I have many enemies in the English-speaking world, in and out of
universities and the media, because I was politically on the extreme left.
Culturally, I totally reject this horrible political correctness, this hideous notion
that people should read and study any work of literature, of the imagination on
the basis of the ethnic origin, the agenda, the sexual orientation or skin
pigmentation of the writer. That strikes me as real fascism. And I fought
against it bitterly from about 1967 till the present it's a battle I've waged for
thirty-seven years and of course I have acquired many enemies in the proces.
I am told that by now I have been translated into seventeen languages, so
tens of thousands of readers all over the world are getting in touch I receive
thousands of emails and letters a month so I have to answer these things
very selectively. Unless I respond very slowly, I tend not to respond at all. I
hardly sleep at all, but there still isn't enough time. I had terrible health

problems just a few years ago. I survived, but I had to cut back some. You
never know how much time you have.
IL: Do you prepare for that moment of passing in any way?
HB: No, no, no! In my new book I don't know if you've had a chance to look
at it yet I quote one of my heroes, the French essayist Montaigne certainly
one of the greatest essayists of all time who says: "Don't worry about getting
ready for your death, don't prepare when the moment comes for you to die,
you will know how to do it well enough."
IL: What is the new book about?
HB: It's very different from the previous ones. I had written a book
calledWisdom and Literature, and it was mostly finished, but after I got so ill,
almost exactly two years ago first I had a terrible bleeding ulcer, I lost seven
pints of blood, and then I had a heart attack and they had to save me by
giving me a three-way open heart bypass surgery. It took me six months to
recover. It gave me a terrible trauma. Anyway, so I had written this
book Wisdom and Literature, and I threw it away. But I got better. And in a
year, from April to April, I wrote this book Where Shall Wisdom Be Found,
which is a study of wisdom writing as I understand it, beginning with the
Hebrew Bible, Book of Job, Ecclesiastes, passing on to Plato in particular,
who has an endless struggle with Homer, particularly in the Republic, and
the Symposium. And then I thought, who are the two greatest writers that the
Western world has ever known, well, it's certainly Cervantes and
Shakespeare. So I wrote a chapter on Cervantes and Shakespeare,
contrasting the wisdom of each. And then the second part of it, called "The
Greatest Ideas Are the Greatest Events", which is, of course, a notion of
Nietzsche's. I thought I'd take a great moral essayist for each of the four
centuries, the seventeenth, the eighteenth, the nineteenth Montaigne,
Francis Bacon, Samuel Johnson, Goethe, who, to this day, is the mind of
Germany, and the great American sage Emerson. When I reached the
twentieth century, I had a real dilemma, because I do not regard Freud as an
analyst, as a psychiatrist; I considered D.H. Lawrence, his polemical writings,
I considered Paul Valry, the last French sage and theorist, but they didn't
quite measure up. But then I said, ah, the two greatest writers of the twentieth
century are James Joyce and Marcel Proust. Joyce is interested in changing
the form of the novel in relation to the character, whereas Marcel Proust, the
great moralist, is in the great tradition of Descartes and Montaigne. So I
contrasted Sigmund Freud with Proust. And then I said to myself: well, I have
talked about the great Hebrew literature at the beginning, and in the course of
it, I talked about the Talmudic sages, the second-century Gnostics, but, with
the exception of Dr. Johnson, I don't have a Christian sage. Who else should I
choose but the normative Christian wisdom of St Augustine? He also seems
to me the inventor of reading as we know it. But in the end I suspect that the
truest word on wisdom belongs to the doctor and psychologist William James:
"Wisdom is in learning what to overlook." Pragmatically speaking, that seems
to be as wise a remark as I have read.

IL: Do you possess wisdom?

HB: No.
IL: No?
HB: No. If I possessed any wisdom, I would not write a book called Where
Shall Wisdom Be Found? I am very unwise, I can assure you. Unwise in all
things. I think I am a good teacher of literature, particularly of Shakespeare. At
Yale on Wednesdays I give an undergraduate seminar. Of course, I am a oneman department, I divorced the English department back in 1976, I convinced
them to reappoint me as a "professor of absolutely nothing" I give courses in
something called humanities. And on Wednesdays I give a course, year by
year, where we read all of Shakespeare together. And on Thursdays I give a
course called "The Art of Reading Poetry". I regard myself as a teacher. I
remark in this new book that I have only three criteria for whether a work
should be read and reread and taught to others, and they are: aesthetic
splendour, cognitive power, and wisdom. And those are not the standards now
applied in the universities and colleges of the English-speaking world. Nor are
they the standards applied in the media. Everyone is now much more
concerned with gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, skin pigmentation,
and twenty other irrelevancies, whereas I am talking about what I have never
talked about before, and that is wisdom. But I am not a wise man, I am not a
sage. I am an aesthete, a very old-fashioned aesthete I have been realizing
that increasingly.
IL: Would you apply to literary criticism your notion of misinterpretation? Are
you misinterpreting somebody?
HB: The twentieth-century literary critics who were my friends, they are all
dead now, the English George Wilson-Knight, William Empson, the Canadian
doctor Northrup Frye, the American Kenneth Burke, together with Ernst
Curtius, the German critic whom I have never met these seem to be the
major literary critics of the Western world of the twentieth century. I try to
emulate them. They seem to me primarily aesthetes, I am even more directly
an aesthete, because I react against this repugnant political correctness. So I
think a great influence upon me are John Ruskin, Walter Pater, and the divine
Oscar Wilde, all of whom are very wise literary critics. I am fascinated by
Samuel Johnson and William Hazlitt, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, yes. Yes, I
wonder what the Latvian equivalents for "misinterpretation" and "misreading"
would be.
A lot of people in all languages tend to mix up what I call strong misreading
with a kind of dyslexia obviously, I am not talking about that. It really seems
to me that all strong literature is a strong misreading of one kind or another of
literature. And yes, I think it applies to literary critics also. Nietzsche said:
"Jedes Wort ist ein Vorurteil", which I would translate as "Every word is a
misjudgement". He also said in Twilight of the Idols and I quote it again and
again teaching about Shakespeare "Anything that we are able to speak, to
say or formulate, is something which is already dead in our hearts" we can't

even feel it anymore, you know. He says there is always a kind of contempt in
the act of speaking that sounds like Hamlet himself, don't you think? I think it
relates to the same phenomenon... You can't really catch the living moment of
what is happening to you as you read Shakespeare or as you read Tolstoy, or
Dante, or Cervantes, or Dostoevsky any of the greatest writers. Who is the
leading Latvian writer to date?
IL: Most would say, Rainis.
HB: Oh yes, yes. Rainis. Well, it would apply there also.
IL: But as to what happens as you read I think that your book Hamlet: Poem
Unlimited comes closest to capturing that very moment.
HB: Well, this is the book that the English disliked intensely well, they
generally dislike what I write. Of course, the United States is in a terrible
condition, we have a kind of fascist regime here I think it's the real truth
about it and you can quote me on that. A few years ago, when I was in
Barcelona receiving the national prize of Catalonia, I remarked when
somebody asked me a question about president George Bush: "He is
semiliterate at best, to call him a Fascist would be to flatter him." He has now
sufficiently grown in depth that you are no longer flattering him by calling him
a Fascist it is simply a descriptive remark. And yet the United States is not a
dead country primarily because it still allows people to come in here of
course, this fascist regime is trying to keep them out, but the lifeblood of this
country has always been immigration. I teach my clases at Yale and what
cheers me up are my Asian American students about half of the students
who take my clases are Asian Americans. What in my generation the Jews
were the intelligentsia these people are becoming. The Jews in this
country are now so assimilated that looking at their score cards I could not tell
the difference between my Gentile and my Jewish students. The Asian
Americans are the new Jews they are the ones who study hard, they have a
real passion, a real drive to understand. If this country has a future, it will be
because of the new immigrants, the Asians, the Africans, the Hispanics. Our
regime is fascistic, but our constitution is good. The best provision in that
constitution states that any child who is born on the American soil is an
American citizen, and therefore all these so-called illegal immigrants are now
the parents of American citizens. I may not live long enough to see it, but my
hope is that this country would be saved by the Hispanic Americans, the Asian
Americans the new waves of Europeans. This is still a vibrant and living
culture, whereas the English are incorrigible. They have no minds at all. That
little book had a mixed reception in the United States, a terrible reception in
England, a very good reception in other countries. The Italian, the Spanish,
the Portuguese, the Scandinavian readers want to understand me, the
English don't. I really don't want to go there again, it's an absolutely dead
culture. It no longer has any poets, it no longer has any novelists, it cannot
produce a composer or a painter anymore. The French are not much better.
IL: But how about the literature written by people from the former colonies
who are living in London?

HB: Something good may yet come out of it. But they are not as high a
percentage of the population as they are here. The only hope to get rid of the
Republican party, since it's the white male population who votes for them, is
that in another generation the Asian and Hispanic and other new Americans
will be numerous enough so that I hope there will be political changes.
The American literary culture is still very much alive there are real poets
here John Ashbery is a remarkable poet; we have four remarkable novelists
still alive and at work: my friend Philip Roth, my friend Don DeLillo, the
mysterious Thomas Pynchon, and that remarkable, reclusive novelist Cormac
McCarthy who wrote that astonishing book called The Blood Meridian, which I
wrote about in How to Read and Why. I don't know if a book like The Anxiety
of Influencewould be translated in the Baltic countries they exist in Russian,
they exist in Czech and Polish... I would like to know more about the Baltics,
but I am a very bad traveller, I don't know if I'll ever go abroad again.
IL: Have you been anywhere in eastern Europe?
HB: No. My parents' families were slaughtered there, so I stayed away. I also
don't like to reschedule clases. I have stopped teaching at NYU, though.
Teaching full-time at Yale and part-time at NYU is simply too much, so after
sixteen years I decided to cut down. I care a lot about teaching and I hope
I'm mistaken I sometimes fear I am the last who does. All my friends have
retired, people of my generation who have taken teaching seriously have
retired. I am beginning to be a dinosaur, a brontosaurus. But I don't want to
give up, I really want to go on teaching.
IL: But why? You have talked about reading as a certain kind of an escape
from the cruelties of life.
HB: Yes, my dear child, it's the same thing. I don't distinguish between certain
kinds of reading, writing, and teaching they seem to me a part of the same
kind of activity. I can't give up any of the three and still be myself. Also, I have
taught for fifty-two years the longest continuity of my life. In some kind of
superstitious way, I would consider it a kind of dying to give up such a long
continuity. Also, by teaching I bear witness to the insistence on aesthetic
values and wisdom. You know, I am very glad you liked that little book I wrote,
I think it's more even than the new one. I feel that in that Hamlet book I really
let myself go, I allowed myself if only once to write for myself, even though
I found myself saying things that I know other people have difficulty
understanding and which they consider extravagant.
IL: What are some of these things?
HB: Well, for instance, that Hamlet starts to fight back against Shakespeare,
that he attempts to rewrite the play that he is in, that he has a kind of authority
of consciousness, that even more than Falstaff he breaks away from
Shakespeare. He is so gifted that, to quote Nietzsche, "He does not think too
much, he simply thinks too well." He knows too well, he understands too well,
he has thought to the end of thought. He has thought himself into an abyss

that is nothing. Of course, Hamlet moves us because there are all these hints
about transcendence, but to me, it's the darkest literary work I have ever read,
its implications are simply shattering.
IL: I think I can more or less intuit what horror understanding represents for
him. Yet I still wonder why he doesn't simply kill himself, why he has to do
away with seven other people?
HB: Good question. He is simply not the nicest guy in the world. He is as
much a villain as he is a hero. He transcends these categories as he
transcends any category.
IL: As I was reading the book, I found myself wondering where you place
yourself, the author, in your own scheme of things? You say it's Hamlet's
consciousness expanding, Hamlet is wiser than all of us including
Shakespeare. Where does that put you, the person talking about Hamlet and
the play, and Shakespeare?
HB: It is a very wise question and a very apt one. (Long pause) I think that the
special power of Shakespeare is to pack more in Hamlet than there is in
Falstaff or Cleopatra or Iago or Lear, but probably the other thing is that we
cannot exhaust Shakespeare in meditation. Yes, I suppose I can count myself
in the picture. Shakespeare more than any other writer allows the reader's
consciousness to expand. Hamlet's consciousness is extraordinarily wide and
it becomes an interesting question whether or not he ever really is mad. And I
don't think he is, if he says "I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is
southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw." I think my meditation, even though
I try to be a faithful reader and a useful literary critic... I think that when
Shakespeare and Hamlet together expand my consciousness to its limits, my
consciousness starts to get the point.
IL: What is that point?
HB: I run into my own limits, not so much from the aesthetic apprehension,
but partly from encountering wisdom, I have to say I have no wisdom. I was
wondering about that as a child and now am wondering again as an old man:
what are my peculiar gifts? I am not so sure. The speed of reading, the speed
of picking things up, the extraordinary memory what is all that? So I know all
my Shakespeare by heart, I know my Goethe. I know there has to be some
kind of intellectual power that accompanies such gifts, but they are not of
themselves counted as gifts, they are something else, they simply indicate the
frontier to psyche and physiology. At times, I run into my own obsessions
that is, my own strength and weakness as a literary critic and a teacher, and
writer I have to personalize everything. I think readers like it a great deal or
dislike it a great deal, the same way my students like or dislike me a great
deal. Because, like Walt Whitman, addressing the readers of his poetry, I sort
of reach out, I shake the reader, I say, listen to me, you know very urgently,
and very personally, very emotionally. I understand that while it gives me a
kind of immediacy, it is also a limitation. So it is not just a question of wisdom,
it gets rather complex. I find your question very interesting, but I gues the best

answer is that I am still trying to establish where I am in all this. I would not
want to be Hamlet because, as I grow old and ill, I attach much more
importance to being rather than knowing.
IL: Although you claim not to be wise, I would still like you to try to formulate
what you understand by wisdom.
HB: In a roundabout way I would have to sneak back to Pirke Aboth, to the
Talmudic Sayings of the Fathers to which I turned for comfort as a child and
do so even now. For instance: Hillel used to say: ''If not I for myself, who
then? And being for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?" To me, it's an
example of perfect, balanced wisdom.
IL: Reportedly, you are in the habit of reminding your students: "There is no
method but yourselves." What do you mean by that?
HB: Yes, indeed I tell them that. What theory did the great critics, the likes of
Dr Johnson and William Hazlitt have? Those who adopt and preach some sort
of theory are simply emulating others. In my opinion, any useful criticism is
first of all rooted in experience experience gained by reading, writing, and,
most of all, living. And wisdom also is first of all a personal matter. No, there is
no method. You know, I am really alogos, without a philosophy, without a
system. Any attempt to systematize leads to the kind of purism Plato had I
am of course not talking about the wonderful ironist writing the life story of
Socrates who has no place for poets in his ideal republic.
IL: You seem to have your reservations for philosophers, yet you glorify
Freud.
HB: But you understand that I have no use for him as a psychoanalyst. I
perceive him as a codifier and an abstractor of Shakespeare. It is
Shakespeare who has provided us with a map of the mind, not Freud.
Shakespeare is the real author of Freudian psychology. Freud has simply
translated it into an analytical language.
IL: You talk about Shakespeare as a demiurge. Your attitude seems almost
religious.
HB: But isn't what we experience when reading the Hebrew Bible or the New
Testament the same as when we read Homer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, or
Proust? Isn't the difference between the scriptures and worldly literature only
social and political? The centuries-long polemics on the contrasts between
poetry and faith can perhaps be reduced to the question of whether we should
consider one poem or story holier than another. I have long since come to the
conclusion that we can say with certainty that any powerful literary work is
holy. And the opposite claim, that it is worldly, is equally valid. But it would be
completely senseless to consider any great literary work holier or worldlier
than another.
Now I am starting a book that may also interest you that I have always

wanted to write and I think I am old enough now and the title is rather ironic
Exodus and Higher Culture. Jewish high culture has influenced the
proceses of high culture in Russia, Germany, Spain, the United States, South
America. It's a very complex thing. By exodus I don't actually mean the
exodus from Egypt. That was a Greek word that translates. The Hebrew word
that Yahwa first says to Abraham and later says to Moses in Hebrew is yetsiat,
which is best translated as "get yourself out", pick yourself up and get yourself
out, get out to the world and then on to the public ground. And so the whole
notion of global higher culture as a kind of exodus. Get yourself out of
yourself. Get yourself out of the bondage of yourself. I think what we call
nineteenth-century romanticism and twentieth-century modernism are
variations of this exodus. What we see today in the United States, also in the
so-called "culture studies", is the death of Europe, it's the twilight of Europe.
IL: But, after the events of 9/11, isn't America going back to Europe?
HB: This regime really hates Europe. It doesn't ask for allies. This regime is
acting as if the United States is the new Roman Empire. And it's trying to force
another Pax Romana upon the world, which is no peace at all, like Nazis, like
Fascists, like Stalinists...
IL: But that's what I meant does it not constitute going back to Europe?
HB: In that sense, yes, but it has nothing to do with higher culture.
IL: Your insistence on what you call higher culture makes many people mad,
and when you talk about your dismay at the decline of the book as a cultural
phenomenon, they say that never before in history have there been as many
books and bookstores as now.
HB: I spend a good part of my life in bookstores I give readings there when
a new book of mine has come out, I go there to read or simply to browse. But
the question is what do these immense mountains of books consist of? You
know, child, my electronic mailbox overflowing with daily mesages from
Potterites who still cannot forgive me for the article I published in Wall Street
Journal more than a year ago, entitled "Can 35 Million Harry Potter Fans Be
Wrong? Yes!" These people claim that Harry Potter does great things for
their children. I think they are deceiving themselves. I read the first book in the
Potter series, the one that's supposed to be the best. I was shocked. Every
sentence there is a string of cliches, there are no characters any one of
them could be anyone else, they speak in each other's voice, so one gets
confused as to who is who.
IL: Yet the defenders of Harry Potter claim that these books get their children
to read.
HB: But they don't! Their eyes simply scan the page. Then they turn to the
next page. Their minds are deadened by cliches. Nothing is required of them,
absolutely nothing. Nothing happens to them. They are invited to avoid reality,
to avoid the world and they are not invited to look inward, into themselves. But

of course it is an exercise in futility to try to oppose Harry Potter.

IL: You have discused at length the intimate relationship Americans seem to
have with God.
HB: The United States calls itself Christian, but it isn't really, it has nothing to
do with European, Middle Eastern historical, theological Christianity. It is an
indigenous American religion which started 200 years ago: it is fermenting, it
is enthusiastic, it is mystical. Two days ago in the New York Times, someone
wrote about a woman who was the governor of Texas and whom everyone
called Ma Ferguson, and she said that nowhere in Texas is there any
language other than English to be taught. And she said: "If English is good
enough for Jesus Christ, then it's good enough for us." This Jesus is an
American Jesus. The Holy Spirit of the Pentecostals, which is a burgeoning
religion here, is an American Holy Spirit.
IL: Do you have any relationship with God, be it intimate or not?
HB: A Christian has to believe that something is so, that Jesus of Nazareth
was the son of God, a Muslim is asked to submit to the law of Yahwah and
the submission is the actual translation of the Arabic "Islam" a Jew is not
asked to believe that something is so and neither is he asked to submit to
anything. He is asked to trust in the covenants between Yahwah and his
people. Since it does not seem to me that Yahwah, historically speaking, has
trusted in the covenant or observed the terms of the covenant otherwise
how could there have been Auschwitz? How could there be schizophrenia?
How could there be cancer? I do not accept. Oh, dear child, it is very
complicated, I am in a difficult situation I do not trust in the covenants, and I
believe that Yahwah is in exile, that he has deserted us. On the other hand,
the Kabbalah seems to me the truth.
IL: You like to call yourself a Jewish Gnostic.
HB: (Laughs) Partly for polemical reasons, partly because I have a religious
temperament and my culture is Jewish culture or American Jewish culture.
And the more deeply I read Jewish literature, the more I become convinced
that what we now regard as the normative Jewish literature is esentially a
fossil going back to the second century of the common era. It is based upon a
strong reading of the Hebrew Bible, but it is not the only possible strong
reading of the Hebrew Bible. Clearly, the tradition of Jewish Gnosticism, which
goes from at least the second century of the common era to the present day,
represents a very strong reading also of the Hebrew Bible in the Jewish
tradition, and it's one which seems to me to account much better for the whole
nightmare of Jewish history than the normative Jewish religion possibly can
do. On the other hand, my interests are far from what would be called
religious, or rather I do not distinguish them from what I find in Shakespeare.
So I find your question about my relationship with God almost imposible to
answer. It's like with that question about the Hamlet book: I feel that my
consciousness breaks and I cannot get past a certain point. So I can just
wave at you some quotes. For instance, if you, my dear, would cling to me in

desperation and plead: "Is there really no hope at all?" I could cheer you up:
Oh, yes, lots of hope plenty of hope for God, just none for us.