1. Allergic to Harold Bloom
Looked at the table of contents for Harold Bloom’s How To Read And Why – no Judith Wright. From the second Sargent began talking about it I knew there wouldn’t be. Yank additions & the Euro cannon.
Bloom says he is writing for the solitary reader, “the reader with one candle.” I suppose he means people who read desperately, for their lives, who are so poor or constricted as to only have one candle, as it were, one source of nourishment, one focus, one lifeline out of circumstance. He says that, from time to time, people like that have written to him in gratitude and he was “so moved he was unable to reply.”
Really, dude?
Not to a single one?
Your whole life?
Not one postcard with “Thank you” scrawled in the blank spot?
No wonder you haven't read Judith Wright.
(Why do we leave these judgements to arseholes?)
2. Reading Shakespeare’s Wife
The most shocking phrase: people too poor to have names.
Even taking apart the few of his sonnets I have taken apart phrase by phrase, I’ve come to the conclusion that what Shakespeare had was a huge variety of experience, stunningly clear perception and absolutely unparalleled access to his own processing. His whole body registered an experience, any experience, and translated it verbally, exactly, instantly.
… drops his knotted root – is a serial observation of the cross-section of a weed; you see it as he saw it and registered it, from the top down, in sequence.
Tolstoy has something of the same gift, all those graduated descriptions of the transition from one state of mind to another, from feeling to perception to motive to decision.
3. Colm Toibin, The House of Names
The difference between tragedy and grand guignol is that tragedy doesn’t include the forensics. I swear to God the next thing I’ll read is The Cambridge History of Music, Volume I.
Looked at the table of contents for Harold Bloom’s How To Read And Why – no Judith Wright. From the second Sargent began talking about it I knew there wouldn’t be. Yank additions & the Euro cannon.
Bloom says he is writing for the solitary reader, “the reader with one candle.” I suppose he means people who read desperately, for their lives, who are so poor or constricted as to only have one candle, as it were, one source of nourishment, one focus, one lifeline out of circumstance. He says that, from time to time, people like that have written to him in gratitude and he was “so moved he was unable to reply.”
Really, dude?
Not to a single one?
Your whole life?
Not one postcard with “Thank you” scrawled in the blank spot?
No wonder you haven't read Judith Wright.
(Why do we leave these judgements to arseholes?)
2. Reading Shakespeare’s Wife
The most shocking phrase: people too poor to have names.
Even taking apart the few of his sonnets I have taken apart phrase by phrase, I’ve come to the conclusion that what Shakespeare had was a huge variety of experience, stunningly clear perception and absolutely unparalleled access to his own processing. His whole body registered an experience, any experience, and translated it verbally, exactly, instantly.
… drops his knotted root – is a serial observation of the cross-section of a weed; you see it as he saw it and registered it, from the top down, in sequence.
Tolstoy has something of the same gift, all those graduated descriptions of the transition from one state of mind to another, from feeling to perception to motive to decision.
3. Colm Toibin, The House of Names
The difference between tragedy and grand guignol is that tragedy doesn’t include the forensics. I swear to God the next thing I’ll read is The Cambridge History of Music, Volume I.
