How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom

How to Read and Why is a book that seems to accomplish its goals a little early. I had imagined it as presenting a Grand Unified Theory of Reading, by which I might expand my appreciation of literature as a whole, and in its first section it does something of that, as Bloom presents a set of what he sees as essential principles for reading. Among other things, he puts forth what seems to me the most persuasive and encompassing rationale for reading I have ever encountered:

Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you, because it is, at least in my experience, the most healing of all pleasures. It returns you to otherness, whether in yourself or in friends, or in those who may become friends. Imaginative literature is otherness, and as such alleviates loneliness. We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect sympathies, and all the sorrows of familial and passional life.

Terry Eagleton--basically England's Harold Bloom--notes in his remarkably negative review that "[i]t sounds as though Harold is a bit short of mates and reads to make up for it." With all due respect to the achievements of Prof. Eagleton, such a statement reeks of petty snark and, worse yet, of intellectual dishonesty. Loneliness is the undiscussed companion of the human condition and if you do not feel at least a little bit like Prof. Bloom does, then I simply don't understand you.

With the why out of the way, Bloom turns to the how in the 200-odd pages that follow, and it is here that Eagleton's criticisms have some bearing. Bloom divides his book into five sections, one each for short stories, poetry, and drama, and two for the novel, and within each section he briefly treats five to six major authors or works. Each gives the impression of being somewhat less than Bloom has to offer; while the section on Keats may serve as a passable introduction to the poet and enlightens us as to why Bloom treasures "Le Belle Dame sans Merci," it fails to break free from Bloom's solipsism. Despite Bloom's notions that we should be forever reading the best literature available to us, knowing how to read Keats is not the same thing as knowing how to read; knowing how to read Keats exactly like Harold Bloom is more distant still. Furthermore, the meager selections of works suggest no reason for their being included together, and while Bloom tosses superlatives around with impunity (there is no "higher aesthetic achievement by a twentieth-century American writer than As I Lay Dying," no greater book by a living American than Blood Meridian, no greater book by an American black than Invisible Man), their ubiquity drains them of power and it is hard to shake the feeling that the works have been selected, not for their greatness, but by whim.

One notable exception to this piecemeal feeling is the final chapter, on the American novel since Melville, in which Bloom articulates an affinity among seven novels: Moby-Dick, As I Lay Dying, Miss Lonelyhearts, The Crying of Lot 49, Invisible Man, Blood Meridian, and Song of Solomon. These novels all express a "negative sublimity," a horrific transcendence in the tradition of Moby-Dick and a uniquely American and apocalyptic vision:

It is not the function of reading to cheer us up, or to console us prematurely. But I conclude by affirming that all of these American visions of the End of our Time offer us more, much more, than their cleansing negativity... There are survivors among these: Ishmael, Oedipa, Invisible Man. Why read? Because you will be haunted by great visions: of Ishmael, escaped alone to tell us; of Oedipa Maas, cradling the old derelict in her arms, of Invisible Man, preparing to come up again, like Jonah, out of the whale's belly. All of them, on some of the higher frequencies, speak to you and for you.

This, unsurprisingly, does not meet Terry Eagleton's expectations of serious criticism, and though my expectations were quite different it did not quite meet them, either. But to read Bloom is to be in the presence of someone who truly loves reading; I hope that one day I should love my own children as much as Bloom loves books. There is little concrete advice in How to Read and Why, but I do find that it inspires me to find something in books that speaks to me as loudly as these works speak to him. Insofar as the success of How to Read and Why is encountering another soul with its unique passions, a literary fellow traveler, it fails as literary criticism but succeeds as something of sister text to the books it idolizes, alleviating a trace of human loneliness.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Then about the meridian of that day we come upon the judge on his rock there in that wilderness by his single self. Aye and there was no rock, just the one. Irving said he'd brung it with him. I said that it was a merestone for to mark him out of nothing at all. He had with him that selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he'd give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et in Arcadia ego. A reference to the lethal in it.

Et in Arcadia ego: "And I am even in Arcadia." That is to say that I, Death, am present everywhere--even in utopia.

I have read three of his books now (this one, The Road, and No Country for Old Men) and I can say with assurance that no one, horror writer or otherwise, writes books as terrifying as Cormac McCarthy. The Road was a post-apocalytpic tale of of a man and his son set out in a barren wasteland, No Country a tale of violence strewn across the Texas-Mexico border in 1980. Blood Meridian is much like that--even set in the same place--but 130 years ago. The plot is simple to describe: An unnamed teenager called "the kid" heads out West and joins up with a group of scalphunters under John Joel Glanton. Glanton and his associates are historical figures, and McCarthy uses as his principle source a book called My Confession by Samuel Chamberlain, a firsthand account of the travails of the Glanton gang.

Chamberlain's book describes the principle villain of Blood Meridian, Judge Holden--usually just called "the judge"--this way:

The second in command [. . .] was a man of gigantic size called ‘Judge’ Holden of Texas. [. . .] He stood six feet six in his moccasins, had a large fleshy frame, a dull tallow face destitute of hair and all expression. His desires was blood and women. [. . .] Holden was by far the best educated man in northern Mexico; he conversed with all in their own language, spoke in several Indian lingos, at a fandango would take the Harp or Guitar from the hands of the musicians and charm all with his wonderful performance, and out-waltz any poblano of the ball. He was ‘plum centre’ with rifle or revolver, a daring horseman, acquainted with the nature of all the strange plants and their botanical names, great in Geology and Mineralogy, in short another Admirable Crichton, and with all an arrant coward. (Chamberlain 271-72)

McCarthy's judge is that and more; he is a mysterious cipher devoted to violence and destruction. He is extremely intelligent, forever sketching and taking notes of local flora and fauna in his notebook, but wherever he goes, children end up disappearing and are found later assaulted and mutilated. The quote I opened the post with is his creation myth, in a way; it describes how the Glanton gang came upon him out in the desert one day, sitting on a rock--the only rock--just waiting for them. As they are out of gunpowder, he leads them on a multi-day trek to gather guano and sulfur from the mouth of a volcano to make some just in time to massacre a pursuant band of Indians.

Noted critic Harold Bloom called the judge "the most frightening figure in all of American literature." Is that true? It might well be. Blood Meridian didn't quite terrify me in the way that The Road did with its undending bleakness and its refusal to offer any glimmer of hope, but the judge very well might be the most terrifying character that I can think of. He is the unstoppable force, hyper-intelligent, hyper-amoral, and assuredly immortal; when he and the kid butt horns there can be no doubt that the conflict will end in the judge's favor. Let's say that in rereading The Road, I wouldn't be surprise to find the seven-foot hairless likeness of the judge staggering through that terrible wilderness.

As to which is better, this or The Road, I have not decided. I think that The Road will stay with me longer because of its sheer terror, but it may be that Blood Meridian is the deeper, more complete book. To call it, as some have, a "Gnostic" novel, is to barely scratch its complex commentary on the intersections of knowledge, humanity, and destruction, while The Road--and to a much more extreme extent, No Country--seem content to look upon their respective horrors more as observers than commentators.