![]() His greatest legacy could well outlive his own name: the title of his breakthrough book, “The Anxiety of Influence.” Bloom argued that creativity was not a grateful bow to the past, but a Freudian wrestle in which artists denied and distorted their literary ancestors while producing work that revealed an unmistakable debt. 58 on a list of the 20th century’s best nonfiction English-language books. A readers’ poll commissioned by the Modern Library ranked “The Western Canon” at No. ![]() He appeared on best-seller lists with such works as “The Western Canon” and “The Book of J,” was a guest on “Good Morning America” and other programs and was a National Book Award finalist and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Although he frequently bemoaned the decline of literary standards, he was as well placed as a contemporary critic could hope to be. Yale says Bloom died at a New Haven, Connecticut, hospital.īloom wrote more than 20 books and prided himself on making scholarly topics accessible to the general reader. ![]() NEW YORK (AP) - Harold Bloom, the eminent critic and Yale professor whose seminal “The Anxiety of Influence” and melancholy regard for literature’s old masters made him a popular author and standard-bearer of Western civilization amid modern trends, died Monday at age 89.īloom’s wife, Jeanne, said that he had been failing health, although he continued to write books and was teaching as recently as last week. ![]()
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