How to Read and Why

How to Read and Why

Harold Bloom — 2 recordings in the archive.

The book: How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom.

It's occurred to me several times in these last weeks that no one can in fact write a book called how to read and why since I seem to have done so I suppose I ought to that's much author and apologia for it but a kind of brief description of what I think the book attempts to do and only of course by way of sample I don't think I've actually counted up how many individual short stories poems novels plays are discussed in the course of the work what I suppose they must be 60 odd or so they're only a sampler they have been chosen partly I suppose willfully partly out of intense affection on my own part also because I think in their different ways they do illustrate how and why one ought to read so what I think I will do in the time that I have I think I will read the very close of the prologue and then take one short story writer in this case Flannery O'Connor and read what I've had to say about her then look at three sonnets by Shakespeare and conclude with an account of the remarkable novel by the late Ralph Ellison Invisible Man so I begin with the conclusion of the prologue to this book which is simply called why I read I've just quoted doctor Samuel Johnson what I think is my favorite passage in his preface to Shakespeare and this is Johnson this theer for is the praise of Shakespeare that his drama is the mirror of life that he who has mazed his imagination and following the Phantom's which other writers raise up before him may here be cured of his delirious ecstasy's by reading human sentiments in human language by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world and they confess or predict the progress of the passions and that is the quotation from Johnson to read human sentiments in human language you must be able to read humanly with all of you are more than an ideology whatever your convictions and Shakespeare speaks to as much of you as you can bring to him that is to say Shakespeare reads you more fully than you can read him even after you have cleared your mind of Kent no writer before or since Shakespeare has had anything like…