Volume 41, Number 19 · November 17, 1994
Bloom's All-Time Greatest Hits
By Robert M. Adams
The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages
by Harold Bloom
Harcourt Brace, 578 pp., $29.95
The project is formidable, and to be approached from below, while one looks up to it: nothing less than an explanation and defense of the Western world's literary tradition from beginning to end, supposing it has either beginning or end. To encompass the outline is one thing; to fill in the complexities, contradictions, and particular complications adds an order of difficulty that must appear inevitably self-defeating. Only an audacious and arrogant mind would undertake such an overwhelming project. Only a pedant would object that in it suggestion, speculation, and confident assertion take the place, very often, of demonstration. There's no making an omelet, Lenin once said, without breaking eggs. The ground around Harold Bloom's audacious book is littered with shells and less agreeable yolks, but the structure stands, and one can learn a lot from the way it's been put together or forced into conjunction. The title is The Western Canon.
Review, 2732 words
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