Makes Me Sad: Harold Bloom Whacks Stephen King
I like Harold Bloom's work on Shakespeare. I like Stephen King's page turners. I don't think they are necessarily great literature, but I do think they are examples of great storytelling. Harold Bloom feels that King is blight on literature and is horrified by his receipt of the National Book Foundation's "distinguished contribution" award. He told us so in an op-ed that's run in a bunch of papers this week. In it, Bloom denounces most of modern literature, but not through argument, only ranting polemic. His point is lost amid his insufferable arrogance. This is the problem with brilliant guys like Bloom, once they're set in their ways, once their formation is complete, nothing new (save that it imitates what they are already familiar with) could ever possibly be acceptable. Eventually they turn their brilliance to jeremiads lambasting things they've never read and likely wouldn't be able to assimilate even if they had. Again, I'm not saying that Stephen King's work represents some evolution of literary style, but Bloom is not criticizing King alone. He's tarring all of contemporary literature with the same black brush. It's too bad.