Upon recommendation, I read the following article from 2002. I disagree with it. But I still find it important in the debate over the work of Bloom Harold Bloom: His work is portentous, his ideas useless. Bloom's reputation needs puncturing if literary criticism is again to be taken seriously prospectmagazine.co.uk/essay…

Harold Bloom

His work is portentous, his ideas useless. Bloom's reputation needs puncturing if literary criticism is again to be taken seriously

prospectmagazine.co.uk

Jun 18, 2026 · 11:00 PM UTC

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The important points in this article, that Bloom was broadly-read and narrowly-sighted; that he danced around God; that he wouldn't shut up about WS; that he postured, are diminished by hyperbole and ad hominem.
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Well put This article seemed personal.
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All the "incomprehensible" pull-quotes about hermeticism are perfectly comprehensible. The hermetics themselves are somewhat incomprehensible, but the author just needs to read Frances Yates's "Art of Memory" for an easy intro. (He could also just read Portis's "Masters of Atlantis," which offers a comic treatment of that tradition.)
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I think the author just hated Bloom on a personal level 🤷‍♂️😂
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I read it. I wouldn’t recommend others to read it. There are good critiques of Bloom, but this isn’t one of them. Someone who understood Bloom would not ask “And why not round it off, and make it an even half millennium?”—the answer, of course, is Shakespeare. I do, however, agree that it is absurd to place Bloom as one of the three best anglophone critics of the 20th century.
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“Portentous”? I suspect he meant “pretentious.” Not an auspicious start.
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Criticizing a critic is the highest form of lameness.
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His work is defining of American literary criticism. It's like he walked with Shakespeare. I also loved his dismissal of Harry Potter as flat and derivative, lamenting that children will be bereft of the literary magic of the 19th century.
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Crews's "Orpheus Bruno" bit covers all those points, but is shorter and funnier.
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Few could portmanteau as well as Bloom. Searching the Shakespeare book led us to this… open.substack.com/pub/jonath…
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what's wonderful about this article is that if you are ever in need of an example of what a purely ad hominem attack looks like...
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I love Joseph Epstein
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Bloom was a snot, and I have very little use for his theories. A good example of nonsense peddled by someone who knew a lot but should have known better.
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Should have put that second paragraph in quotes bc I thought it was your own hand lol
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Joseph Epstein? C'mon. Who takes him seriously?
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This is precisely the article I would expect from Joseph Epstein.
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Finally!
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I just read the first eight paragraphs and he's made fun of Bloom's appearance two or three times. This seems neither professional nor relevant. Epstein has made some valid critiques I can readily acknowledge, but does he ever acknowledge that Bloom has some incredible insights?
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You are perhaps the worst player of Donkey Kong.
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