The Man Who Read Everything: The Literary Letters of Harold Bloom
About this audiobook
A selection of the lively letters between one of the world’s greatest literary critics and the poets, novelists, and scholars he most admired
Bringing together a collection of Harold Bloom’s letters to and from eight of his favorite contemporary writers, Heather Cass White provides an intimate view of one of the most famous literary critics of the last century. In correspondence with Alvin Feinman, Northrop Frye, A. R. Ammons, John Hollander, James Merrill, John Ashbery, Henri Cole, and Ursula K. Le Guin, we see Bloom developing his groundbreaking theory of poetic influence, transforming himself into a public intellectual, and reckoning with the meaning of his own legacy.
While Bloom’s public persona was oracular, sure, and often combative, his letters are inquiring and provisional, revealing his overarching obsession with good writing. The presence of love, as the letters show, was always vital to how Bloom worked as a reader. Filled with delightful anecdotes and poignant observations, these letters—many of them published here for the first time—offer a new window onto twentieth-century letters and Bloom’s long and illustrious career.
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About the author
Harold Bloom (1930–2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. His books include The Anatomy of Influence and Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles.
Arthur Morey has won three AudioFile Magazine “Best Of” Awards, and his work has garnered numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and placed him as a finalist for two Audie Awards. He has acted in a number of productions, both off Broadway in New York and off Loop in Chicago. He graduated from Harvard and did graduate work at the University of Chicago. He has won awards for his fiction and drama, worked as an editor with several book publishers, and taught literature and writing at Northwestern University. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed.
Heather Cass White is an English professor at the University of Alabama. She is the author of Books Promiscuously Read: Reading as a Way of Life, among other volumes.
