U.
Everyone's
A Critic
(But there's only one Harold Bloom)
DAVID YAFFE SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
PHOTOS BY REBECCA SHAUVLSKY
B
eing Jewish, one is a Jewish critic," says Harold Bloom,
wearily running a hand across his forehead. He is wearing his customary lecture outfit: a dark suit that comfortably fits
the body he has referred to as Falstaffian. Wiry white hair is scattered across his forehead, and his muttonchops suggest
a resemblance to one of Mr. Bloom's favorite critics, Dr. Samuel Johnson.
"If one were a carpenter, one would be a Jewish carpenter. If one were a painter, one
would be a Jewish painter," continues the noted author and
educator. "I am very Jewish. I was born in the Bronx on July
11, 1930, to a family who spoke only Yiddish. I still dream
in Yiddish. I still write letters in Yiddish. It was my first lan-
guage. Even though I was born and raised in New York City,
I didn't actually hear English spoken and didn't speak any
myself until I was almost 6. It's still for me slightly an ac-
quired language. ... I still prefer Jews to gentiles. I still re-
lax more with Jews than gentiles. So how could I be anything
but a Jewish critic? Naturally, Freud felt the same way. He
was even a member of B'nai B'rith. ... But this, of course,
David Yaffe is a New York-based freelance writer.
does not mean that I will prefer the work of Isaac Bashevis Singer or Cynthia Ozick to
the work of William Shakespeare."
It is impossible to discuss the work of Harold Bloom with-
out talking about his Judaism. Being Jewish certainly de-
fined the beginning of Mr. Bloom's career when, as a young
critic at Yale, he rebelled against an academy largely in-
fluenced by the anti-Semitic T.S. Eliot.
Perhaps more than any other literary critic of his gener-
ation, Mr. Bloom epitomized the Jewish American assim-
ilation process, not just by becoming a scholar of Romantic
poetry, but by literally consuming all of literature, writing
about all periods in more than 20 books and more than 500
introductions to his Modern Critical Views series.
Mr. Bloom's theory of poetic influence has itself become