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Title details for How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom - Available

How to Read and Why

by Harold Bloom
John McDonough
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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"Information is endlessly available to us; where shall wisdom be found?" is the crucial question with which renowned literary critic Harold Bloom begins this impassioned book on the pleasures and benefits of reading well. For more than forty years, Bloom has transformed college students into
lifelong readers with his unrivaled love for literature. Now, at a time when faster and easier electronic media threatens to eclipse the practice of reading, Bloom draws on his experience as critic, teacher, and prolific reader to plumb the great books for their sustaining wisdom.
Shedding all polemic, Bloom addresses the solitary reader, who, he urges, should read for the purest of all reasons: to discover and augment the self. His ultimate faith in the restorative power of literature resonates on every page of this infinitely rewarding and important book.
"Bloom is one of the last ... of his kind ... one of the greatest educators of our time ... Wonderful ... Bloom writes with passion of those writers whom he loves, and whose work for him affirms life."—John Banville, Irish Times

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    December 1, 2019

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781980013570
      • File size: 320427 KB
      • Duration: 11:07:33

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Imagine yourself in a literature class taught by a professor as charismatic as he is brilliant. You are guided through centuries of selected poetry, drama, short stories, and novels, learning why each is important and how they connect. You also get some hints on how to read for maximum enjoyment; for example, read HAMLET, then see a good stage production, then read it again. John McDonough's rich voice keeps you focused and interested, and, when he performs short bits like the anonymous poem "Tom o' Bedlam," mesmerized. Definitely enhanced by audio, this would be a good choice for fans of the Superstar Teachers series. J.B.G. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 29, 2000
      This aesthetic self-help manual is a reliably idiosyncratic guide to what Yale literary critic Bloom calls "the most healing of pleasures"-- reading well. In chapters that focus on short stories, poems, novels and plays, Bloom takes readers on a swift but satisfying joyride through the West's most outrageous, original and exuberant texts--classics by Chekhov, Flannery O'Connor, Borges, Dickinson, Proust, Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison, among others. Unconventionally organized by literary genre, his text is passionately anecdotal and observant. By asking great questions--"Why does Lady Bracknell delight us so much?"; "How does one read a short story?"--Bloom hopes to influence our reading lists and habits. He gives some texts, such as Moby-Dick, almost cursory treatment; others he discusses at length. Fans of his bestselling Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998) will find the lengthy discussion of Hamlet here to be a kind of coda. Overall, this book is a testament to Bloom's view that reading is above all a pleasurably therapeutic event. "Imaginative literature is otherness, and as such alleviates loneliness," he notes, reminding us of what's inexhaustible about writers such as Whitman and Borges and attesting to the satisfaction that literary texts offer our solitary selves.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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