Harold Bloom’s most recent books are The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life and The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible. He teaches at Yale and is at work on a play, To You Whoever You are: A Pageant Celebrating Walt Whitman. (February 2012)
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The Grand Comedian Visits the Bible
February 23, 2012
Cain
by José Saramago, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa
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Revisiting Isaac Bashevis Singer
October 28, 2010
The Magician of Lublin
by Isaac Bashevis Singer, translated from the Yiddish by Elaine Gottlieb and Joseph Singer
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Yahweh Meets R. Crumb
December 3, 2009
The Book of Genesis
illustrated by R. Crumb
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Pilgrim to Eros
September 24, 2009
Byron in Love: A Short Daring Life
by Edna O'Brien
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The Glories of Yiddish
November 6, 2008
History of the Yiddish Language
by Max Weinreich, edited by Paul Glasser, translated from the Yiddish by Shlomo Noble with the assistance of Joshua A. Fishman
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Who Will Praise the Lord?
November 22, 2007
The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary
by Robert Alter
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The Lost Jewish Culture
June 28, 2007
The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950–1492
translated, edited, and with an introduction by Peter Cole
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Operation Roth
April 22, 1993
Operation Shylock: A Confession by Philip Roth
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Literature as the Bible
March 31, 1988
The Literary Guide to the Bible edited by Robert Alter, edited by Frank Kermode
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On the Heights
September 26, 1985
Selections from George Eliot’s Letters edited by Gordon S. Haight
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The Flight of the Hawk
May 30, 1985
New and Selected Poems: 19231985 by Robert Penn Warren
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Mr. America
November 22, 1984
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Days of Encounter by John McAleer
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Inescapable Poe
October 11, 1984
Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales edited by Patrick F. Quinn
Edgar Allan Poe: Essays and Reviews edited by G.R. Thompson
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The Central Man
July 19, 1984
Lincoln: A Novel by Gore Vidal
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The Real Me
April 26, 1984
Walt Whitman: The Making of the Poet by Paul Zweig
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Apocalypse Then
January 19, 1984
The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Vol. I: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments
edited by James H. Charlesworth
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Sumerian Feminism
October 13, 1983
Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer by Diane Wolkstein, by Samuel Noah Kramer
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Norman in Egypt
April 28, 1983
Ancient Evenings by Norman Mailer
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Memory and Its Discontents
February 17, 1983
Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi
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From Moses to Gilboa
September 23, 1982
The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse edited and translated by T. Carmi
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Driving Out Demons
July 15, 1976
The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by Bruno Bettelheim
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My Favorite Book in the Bible
July 28, 2011
It may seem frivolous to speak of a favorite book in the Bible but mine is Jonah, by far. A sly masterpiece of four brief chapters, Jonah reverberates in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, where it is the text for Father Mapple’s grand sermon. Tucked away in the Book of the Twelve, with such fierce prophets as Amos and Micah, Jonah is out of place. It should be with the Writings—Song of Songs, Job, Koheleth—because it too is a literary sublimity, almost the archetypal parable masking as short story.
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Bashevis Revisited
September 20, 2010
Der Kuntsenmakher fun Lublin perhaps should have been entitled The Trickster of Lublin when first it was published in English a half-century ago. Isaac Bashevis Singer’s second novel established his American audience, which grew until his death at eighty-seven in 1991. Rereading it now in Yiddish and in English (the novel has just been reissued in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of its publication) has been a mixed experience. The book set the formula for all his narratives long or short. They are prurient sagas of the flesh and of repentance, marked by the ambivalences of a vegetarian satyr.