Bloom's hierarchies and smack-downs are the perfect literary criticism for an age when Americans pay lip service to the importance of books but few of them can be bothered to pick one up. Bloom clearly thinks that the literary end times are upon us, and his despair, unlike his enthusiasm, is catching. Bloom sees himself as some sort of Noah before the flood, marching his favorite poets aboard the ark of his library two by two. At heart, he reads like a high-culture Nick Hornby, more comfortable listing and savoring his favorites than laying out a case for them. Read him if you must, enjoy him if you can, but under no conditions give him as a gift, the way so many people do. He makes less well-read people feel like idiots and the erudite feel like the last of some noble, dying breed, as Bloom surely believes himself to be. Only if people fall for this guff does he stand a chance of being right.

from: Review: Harold Bloom's "Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?" reported by David Kippen
source: NPR Special, 6 October 2004
via: HighBeam Research