18 Comments
User's avatar
Steve A's avatar

Well, you missed out George Steiner...

I knew Bloom was a good 'un when I learnt he'd included "Little, Big" (John Crowley) in his 20th C canon - one of my literary epiphanies as a teenager. Read it and weep.

Expand full comment
The Druid Stares Back's avatar

I know! (As I mentioned elsewhere in the comments). Real Presences is one of my all-time favorites.

Expand full comment
Kalle Kula's avatar

The lab leak to direct injection link is very interesting

Expand full comment
Stephen Bradford Long's avatar

Now I need to read Bloom!

Expand full comment
James Marinovich's avatar

And to think I felt frustration with the post-modern existentialism prevalent in my own formal liberal education of the 1970s! Now I feel blessed to have been born into that generation. For anyone interested in reading or re-reading Shakespeare, I highly recommend first turning to the appropriate play in Bloom's Shakespeare, Invention of the Human, for an illuminating introduction (warning: you might find yourself morphing into Bardist). When is deadline for your online Shakespeare and Magic class, and how difficult would it be, technically, for a mid-1970s English major luddite who has yet to successfully negotiate a Zoom call?

Expand full comment
The Druid Stares Back's avatar

Invention of the Human is a great guide!

You can probably enroll up to the end of the month. All it takes to get on Zoom is to hit a link. If you can figure out how to post a comment on Substack, Zoom is easy peasy.

Expand full comment
Monnina's avatar

I find that rereading James Baldwin and/or Flann O’Brien an antidote to most prevalent cultural ailments 😺

Expand full comment
Lancelot Schaubert's avatar

What do you think of Vonnegut’s claim that the best authors come from other subjects and then embody their wisdom within English creative writing?

Expand full comment
The Druid Stares Back's avatar

I wouldn't call it an absolute rule, but I think there's a lot of truth to it. Even more in the case of journalism.

Expand full comment
Lancelot Schaubert's avatar

Agreed. What examples would you point to for the creative writing (or even music) side of things?

Expand full comment
The Druid Stares Back's avatar

Four that immediately come to mind are John Keats (trained as a surgeon), John Clare (a farm laborer), Wallace Stevens (and insurance company executive), and William Carlos Williams (a physician). There are probably hundreds more. Another is Anthony Burgess, a self-taught novelist and composer.

Expand full comment
Lancelot Schaubert's avatar

I think of Le Carre (Mi6), Rothfuss (chemist), Dostoevsky (Eastern Orthodox theology + war camps), Mary Oliver (dead pigeon smuggler), and Tolkien (WWI survivor + Philologist).

Expand full comment
Sethu's avatar

For awhile now, I've been referring to universities as Maoist madrasas.

I remember that when I was in college—graduated in 2011—critical race theory and the sociology of gender and whatnot were still considered kind of esoteric and edgy. (Yes, Judith Butler was involved.) At the time, the fact that the ideas were manifestly psychotic was overshadowed by the way it was sold as being something akin to the base code of the Matrix. Fortunately, though, it didn't take me very long to snap out of it; I learned about the enemy and proceeded to run away. And then I knew what I was looking at right away after it leaked from the lab.

Also, do you have a favorite edition of the collected works of Shakespeare? I was eyeing this one by Pelican, since I've liked their individual volumes:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/289647/the-complete-pelican-shakespeare-by-william-shakespeare/

Expand full comment
The Druid Stares Back's avatar

I haven't used that one. I like the old Riverside if you can find it, as well as the Bevington. And you can always count on the Norton edition.

Expand full comment
W.D. James's avatar

I suspect I would have been a Lit major if I had had you as a prof.

Expand full comment
The Druid Stares Back's avatar

thanks!

Expand full comment
Lancelot Schaubert's avatar

Unless Jack the Ripper was Mary Pearcey, of course.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Dec 10
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
The Druid Stares Back's avatar

Henry IV, Part 1 is one of my favorite plays

Expand full comment