Mediation

Tom Lutz asserts that Harold Bloom (along with Francine Prose) believes the current generation of politicized literary scholars (what Bloom terms the "school of resentment") "are all looking at something besides the text itself, by which they mean a book that is read without theory, without reference to other values, and without mediation of any kind."

Lutz associates this view that we should return to "the text" with New Criticism, but nowhere in his essay does he reveal (if he knows) that Bloom was actually hostile to New Criticism. He considered its approach so limiting and so dismissive (in the practice of most of the New Critics, at least) of the Romantic poets, whose work Bloom so loves, that he deliberately designed his own theory of poetic influence as a corrective, if not an outright rejection, of New Critical biases. Lutz goes on to associate both Bloom and New Criticism with such disparate figures as Mortimer Adler, E.D. Hirsch, and John Sutherland, simply because they appear to endorse the idea that learning to appreciate the "text itself" is an important part of literary education.

In a move apparently intended to show that Bloom doesn't practice what he preaches (or doesn't understand the foundation of his own practice), Lutz cites H. L. Mencken's witless attacks on "The New Criticism" (as delineated by J. E. Springarn in 1911), which putatively show that academic criticism is inherently theoretical, "criticism of criticism of criticism." But again, since Bloom is/was not a New Critic, it's hard to see how this undermines Bloom's own approach to the "text itself." The New Critics did indeed have a "theory" of the literary text as something dynamic and inherently dramatic (and reading as the experience of the text's dynamism), but it is not Bloom's, however much he might accept the underlying emphasis on the integrity of the literary text, free of the demands made on it by those with their own personal and political investments.

But of course Bloom does have a theory. No one who remembers the scholarly debates of the 1970s and 1980s could think otherwise, as Bloom played a major role in these debates precisely as a theorist of literature, a proponent of the Freudian notion of the "anxiety of influence." Far from being considered a conventional formalist, someone who believed a text should be read "without mediation of any kind," Bloom was taken as a radical, even a postmodernist, a critic who was taking literary study away from its proper focus on the "text itself" into very a-textual speculations about the role of poetic influence and its rather violent Freudian implications. Anyone who's read and taken seriously books such as The Anxiety of Influence, A Map of Misreading, Kabbalah and Criticism, and Agon would know that the accusation Bloom is some kind of retrograde enemy of "theory" is ridiculous on its face.

Thus, at least as far as Bloom is concerned, Lutz's invocation of his name as one of those who demands a book be read "without theory, without reference to other values, and without mediation of any kind" is simply incorrect. This is not a matter of interpretation. Some investigation of Bloom's work, even of secondary explications of that work (a simple Google search, perhaps) would immediately reveal that Lutz's account is a caricature of the role Bloom has come to play in current literary discourse (the aging curmudgeon) but has nothing to do with what he's actually written. Even a book such as How to Read and Why, a deliberate simplification of Bloom's ideas about the value of literature, reveals that he does not hold the naive view of reading Lutz attributes to him.

Unfortunately, the caricature of Bloom is widely accepted. Just recently Sandra at Bookworld (otherwise a nice, thoughful litblog) opined that she had contracted "Bloom Syndrome," a "condition in which the sufferer is unable to read any work of literature unless it is deemed Significant by Harold Bloom and which often results in the reader losing the will to live/read, crushed under the weight of canonical imperatives." To the sin of thinking that the "text itself" is what literature is all about (and in Bloom's case looking to account for the text by emphasizing the writer's confrontation with his predecessors, an emphasis that highlights the continuity-through-conflict of literature) is added the annoying belief that the literary tradition is meaningful and worthwhile, that "some books are better than others." It's telling that in our culture someone who becomes associated with beliefs such as these is lampooned as a pathetic fogey who apparently thinks those old books are important or something.

Responses

zbs

March 15, 2007

References to the New Criticism as a homogenous body seems to be becoming more common these days, usually as a mannequin on which to pin those hoary notions about “the text itself”, etc. But the names usually brought out (that is, if any are actually brought up; Wikipedia helpfully gives us: Eliot, Empson, Leavis, Warren, Ransom, Brooks) and values that are attributed them are baffling (sometimes outrageous: I’ve seen suggestions, usually in broad accounts of the post-structuralist development, that the New Critics apparently believed in in fixed meaning, or even the authority of the author). It seems to me that in general the critics above have more points of argument than common theoretical grounds (I suppose one could make an argument for common approach, body of techniques, etc., rather than theory — but if Richards, say, and Empson, are both fairly central figures, then this is problematic as well).
Actually your observation about an operative metaphor between drama and the act of reading may be one of the few theoretical points that is mutual.

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marlyat2

March 15, 2007

As a writer, I have found Harold Bloom useful at various points in my life. I have found his ‘list’–and yes, it has been used as a cudgel against him–useful as well. Most of all I have found his passion for literature and his belief that wonderful books make us more alive to be heartening in an era when publishing has been dominated by demands for “breakout books” and high profit margins, destructive to literature.
Elsewhere in the past few decades, a great many critics have not been the friends of writers or of literature.

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Tom Lutz

August 11, 2007

Here’s what I actually said:
“Like professor Prose, professor Harold Bloom, in “How to Read and Why” (2000), has the same antagonists, albeit more legion. Like Prose, he upbraids wayward academic critics, especially those “who believe all of us to be overdetermined by societal history” and who “regard literary characters as marks upon a page, and nothing more.” Huh? I’ve spent a horrendous amount of time in the halls of academe, and I’ve met some real numskulls, but never anyone who fits that description. “Marks upon a page, and nothing more”? What does that even mean? I don’t want to stir up the dying embers of the theory wars or the culture wars, but why do Prose and Bloom open their guides with attacks against these mythical creatures? Bloom has them organizing into “covens” of gender and sexuality and multiculturalism. These boogeymen and boogeywomen and boogeytransgenderedpeople have destroyed reading, Bloom argues, by destroying irony, and “the loss of irony is the death of reading, and of what had been civilized in our natures.” Itself sorely lacking in irony, this kind of talk sets up a dire narrative in which what Bloom calls “the restoration of reading” is needed, not just because literature is worth saving, but because civilization is at stake. This is a somewhat whorish old story, pressed into all kinds of service over the last century and more, not always to the most savory ends.
To save civilization, Prose and Bloom turn to that New Critical mantra any seasoned reader first heard in English lit 101: “the text itself.” The phrase is one that all the most crotchety English professors have used over the last 30 years to counterattack the critical rabble like me and my old pals who dethroned the old guard with our malevolent theories. The conceit that Prose and Bloom share is that these new kids (however grayed at this point) are all looking at something besides the text itself, by which they mean a book that is read without theory, without reference to other values, and without mediation of any kind.”
I notice you made no reference to “How to Read and Why,” nor did you disagree with my reading of it. I stand by my reading of it, and I don’t bring up Spingarn to say that Bloom doesn’t practice what he preaches. I have been reading Bloom my entire professional life and I know he practices and preaches a lot of diffeent things. I don’t think “The Anxiety of Influence” is egregiously stupid or “New Critical” just because I think “How to Read and Why” is egregiously stupid and panders to its readers by invoking the new critical pieties that I mention, and invoke them he does, however much he may have resisted them 35 years ago.
And to call Mencken’s piece on Spingarn “witless”–was that supposed to be funny?
Take a look at my “Cosmopolitan Vistas: American Regionalism and Literary Value” (Cornell UP, 2004) if you want a serious argument about literature and why we read.

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