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How to Read and Why » (1 TOUCHSTO)

Book cover image of How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom

Authors: Harold Bloom
ISBN-13: 9780684859071, ISBN-10: 0684859076
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group
Date Published: September 2001
Edition: 1 TOUCHSTO

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Author Biography: Harold Bloom

One of our most popular, respected, and controversial literary critics, Yale University professor Harold Bloom s books about, variously, Shakespeare, the Bible, and the classic literature are as erudite as they are accessible.

Book Synopsis

America's wisest, most prolific reader—and the New York Times best-selling author of Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human —draws on his more than 40 years as a college professor and critic to help readers attain a truly profound engagement with great literature.

Publishers Weekly

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. (June) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Table of Contents

Preface19
Prologue: Why Read?21
I.Short Stories
Introduction31
32
"Bezhin Lea"32
"Kasyan from the Beautiful Lands"34
36
"The Kiss"37
"The Student"39
"The Lady with the Dog"40
42
"Madame Tellier's Establishment"43
"The Horla"44
46
"Hills Like White Elephants"46
"God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen"47
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro"48
"A Sea Change"50
51
"A Good Man Is Hard to Find"52
"Good Country People"52
"A View of the Woods"53
54
"The Vane Sisters"54
56
"Tlon, Ugbar, Orbis Tertius"58
60
"Gogol's Wife"61
62
Invisible Cities62
Summary Observations65
II.Poems
Introduction69
Housman, Blake, Landor, and Tennyson70
71
"Into My Heart an Air That Kills"71
71
"The Sick Rose"71
72
"On His Seventy-fifth Birthday"72
73
"The Eagle"73
"Ulysses"74
79
"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"79
88
Song of Myself89
Dickinson, Bronte, Popular Ballads, and "Tom O'Bedlam"94
94
Poem 1260, "Because That You Are Going"95
97
"Stanzas: Often Rebuked, Yet Always Back Returning"97
99
"Sir Patrick Spence"99
"The Unquiet Grave"102
dAnonymous104
"Tom O'Bedlam"104
110
Sonnet 121, "'Tis Better to Be Vile Than Vile Esteemed"111
Sonnet 129, "Th' Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame"113
Sonnet 144, "Two Loves I Have, of Comfort and Despair"114
116
Paradise Lost116
120
"A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal"121
"My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold"123
124
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner124
Shelley and Keats129
129
The Triumph of Life129
134
"La Belle Dame Sans Merci"134
Summary Observations138
III.Novels, Part I
Introduction143
Don Quixote145
The Charterhouse of Parma150
Emma156
Great Expectations162
Crime and Punishment166
The Portrait of a Lady173
In Search of Lost Time181
The Magic Mountain187
Summary Observations193
IV.Plays
Introduction199
Hamlet201
Hedda Gabler218
The Importance of Being Earnest224
Summary Observations231
V.Novels, Part II
Moby-Dick235
As I Lay Dying239
Miss Lonelyhearts245
The Crying of Lot 49249
Blood Meridian254
Invisible Man263
Song of Solomon269
Summary Observations272
Epilogue: Completing the Work277

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