>>25242789
Neither Myra Breckinridge nor Lolita are Western canon material. Come the fuck on now. He really was just padding the list with random crap.

They’re decent novels but of their time and both rely on controversy (humanizing a pedo vs a tranny dude who fucks guys in the ass with a strap on). Without the 1960s political climate and the controversy of their content they dont stand up to scrutiny.

>>25242789
because he [Bloom] was a hack

Bloom himself was a jester. If you read his actual analyses, he's just doing the same as those he reprimands for using literature as a vehicle for bad philosophy while blind to the art side of things.

>doesn't know what canon is
>cries about what Bloom selected for his canon

>>25242789
Never understood why people put so much stock in people like Bloom or Roger Ebert. Middlebrow tastemakers for people with no cultural sense. Maybe it's because I'm not American, but it's shocking how much influence these 2 in particular have had on American culture. Is it because people had no other source of information other than the TV? I don't understand why they're still relevant.

>>25243568
I know Nabokov has at least 5 works more canonical than any book by Vidal

>>25243606
What do you think middlebrow means? What does Harold Bloom have to do with TV?

>>25242789
lolita and pale fire are the only good nabokov books

>>25243615
Middlebrow as in thinking blood meridian is in league with Shakespeare. I am genuinely asking why Bloom is so well known. He seems like the sort of kindly old professor that does well on TV but not much else. Like, if not for seeing him on Charlie Rose, how else would you have happened upon him? Does he get assigned in schools?

>>25243611
>doubles down on stupid
Your mom must be so proud. But go ahead, make the case.

>>25243646
>Middlebrow as in thinking blood meridian is in league with Shakespeare
When did he suggest that?
> Like, if not for seeing him on Charlie Rose, how else would you have happened upon him?
He had multiple books become best sellers.

>>25243662
>When did he suggest that?
when he included them both in his canon?
>He had multiple books become best sellers.
So he wrote for a general audience? I'll take your word for it, but he seems like such a character I find it hard to believe the popularity of his written output preceded that of his personality

>>25243632
they are the best but i don't think you could argue any are bad. his middling books are better than anyone else's middling works.

>>25243606
it's not exclusively american. look at scaruffi.

>>25243673
>when he included them both in his canon?
That doesn't at all mean he considers them level with each other. There are at least a few books on his canon that I know he's not keen on. It's a huge canon, not a small list of his favs.

>>25243686
>Piero Scaruffi (born 1955) is an Italian-**American** cognitive scientist, philosopher, cultural historian and writer who maintains a website on which his reviews of music, film, and art are published

fuck off

>>25243606
two fat parasites, a jew and a mudshark

>>25243686
No one knows or gives a shit about scaruffi though

>>25242992
By that logic Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary aren't canonical, since their theme is firmly of their time.

>>25242992
Arguably, Lolita is more controversial now that it was when it was released because pedophilia/hebephilia is considered the single biggest social taboo nowadays. Plus, Nabakov always denied that the novel was a statement against pedophilia, making it even more controversial.

>>25244316
If you read the afterward Nabokov was intentionally trying to write a controversial novel, iirc he was deciding between an interracial romance, a story about an atheist who lives a long, good, life, and a story about a pedo.
He got lucky choosing the only one that was taboo both in the 1950s and in current day
>>25242992
Agree, Lolita is a mediocre novel, the only reason it's hyped is people like to think that they are special for being able to "appreciate great prose" despite the plot of the novel. In reality outside of a few key passages the prose is not good, half the novel is about asinine countrysides and random paintings, with the narrator pointing out random shit like them being of his father's estate (it's not even supposed to be symbolism just purple prose)

>>25244384
>read the afterward
opinion 100% discarded lol

>>25244476
Opinion discarded for reading the afterward, written by Nabokov, explaining his writing style and why he wrote lolita?

>>25244513
Your judgement of prose quality is totally irrelevant if you spell afterword "afterward"
>inb4 it's just a spelling mistake
No, it's a very common brainlet misspelling that demonstrates incomprehension of the construction, and inattentiveness to the meaning of words.
Not to mention you're obviously filtered by Nabokov's irony wrt the "afterward"

>>25242992
>They’re decent novels
What are you smoking? Lolita is a masterpiece and Myra is dogshit. Seeing both Harry and (You) put them in one camp is insane.

>>25243632
Ada is on their level

>>25242789
Bloom says that your "canon" is a reflection of your taste and he wasn't immune to that. Of course he also assumes that if you read more and refine your taste sufficiently your life of great books will look much like his.
The only mistake he's made there for me is overrating Gore Vidal and Roth. Nabokov has other great novels, but nothing canonical.

>>25243706
>>25243800
Scaruffi is literally the king of /mu/ though

>>25243646
>Middlebrow as in thinking blood meridian is in league with Shakespeare.
Not every non-retard is middlebrow

>>25244553
/mu/ is deader than my grandpa.

>>25242992
>but of their time
all novels that aren't sffg are of their time

>>25243686
Scaruffi is American as fuck and has lived there for most of his adult life and his tastes reflect that

>>25244542
>Nabokov has other great novels, but nothing canonical.
What exactly is canonical? Apart from purely personal taste two somewhat objective criteria would be how many later writers cite a writer as an influence, and how much academic critical attention a writer has received. Nabokov mogs most post-Joyce English-language writers in both regards.

>>25244561
idk to me adding Joyce Carrol oats et al to your big important list of western civilisation's defining works of literature is not very discerning. I'd consider those authors as popular fiction made for a middlebrow audience. Also think it's bad practice to include still living authors in their prime to your canon, because you have the power to directly influence the course of their careers, for better or worse. Come to think of it.. what did Bloom exactly add to the already established western canon apart from his most recent favs?

>>25244542
Pnin, Speak Memory, and Ada should be on there if he's being fair but I think he has some grudge against Nabokov.

>>25243706
Scaruffi can't even write in English, he has a team of jannies who translate his reviews from Italian. He lives in America because his grift is consulting for tech firms on mathematics

>>25244539
Regardless of your personal opinion they're very similar novels because they're more well known for their connection to the controversial topics of pedohilia and transgenderism rather than the actual contents of the book.

>>25244929
Yup, found the grudge:
>When I was a Cornell freshman, I walked out of Vladimir Nabokov’s initial lecture in a course on the European novel. At that time, I had read only The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941) and Bend Sinister (1947), which had just come out in English. My adviser M.H. Abrams, a permanent influence on my life and work, was a friend of Nabokov and urged me to take the course. I recall that Nabokov began by unfavorably comparing Gogol and Jane Austen. He added that women just could not write. At seventeen, I was brash enough to walk out. This was observed by Nabokov and by his wife, Vera. That evening, I received a phone call from Mrs.Nabokov, inviting me to tea at their house at 957 East State Street, Ithaca, the next afternoon and gently telling me that her husband was displeased and intended to destroy me in a chess match after tea.
>I was only an amateur chess player and knew Nabokov’s reputation as a composer of chess problems. In some terror, I went over to the Cornell library and took out José Capablanca’s Chess Fundamentals. Relying on memory, I ingested five or six sample games. After tea the next afternoon, which was outdoors on a balmy September day, during which Nabokov did not speak at all, Mrs.Nabokov cleared everything away and the novelist led me over to a very ornate and large chessboard, placed in the shade of a tree. I had never seen such beautiful chessmen, and I was awed. Silently, Nabokov graciously indicated I had the first move, and I commenced one of Capablanca’s favorite games. I held my host off for about eight moves, during which he looked perplexed. Suddenly his face cleared and he cried out, “You young rascal, you have memorized Capablanca!” With great relish he said, “Now I will destroy you in just four moves.” He did exactly that. Without a word, he walked back into his house. I walked home.
>In later years, I edited two volumes of essays on Nabokov, which I do not remember at all. I had a mixed reaction to Lolita but greatly enjoyed Pale Fire and one short story called “The Vane Sisters.” Sometimes I still find him unreadable.

>>25244952
hah, a made-up anecdote, classic Bloom

>>25244783
The fuck are you even saying? I'd call you a snob if I wasn't sure that you are some retard who can barely read above sophomore level. Great writers didn't suddenly stop appearing after 1920s.

>>25244783
>popular fiction made for a middlebrow audience
Describes Shakespeare to a tee. In fact, better than it does Blood Meridian.

>>25244783
Look, you may fancy yourself as a snob but one of the reasons why Bloom was regarded as a literary critic of note was the fact that he had a receptive organ and didn't need 200 hundred years of dead men telling him how to read and what was good, unlike you. He could make the judgment as to a contemporary work's quality (not always but his picks are rather good) based on his reading and artistic sensibility. Just because some 15 year old in the 1850s thought of Tolstoy as some melodramatic period-piece generator does not make him one. Nor do his books lose or gain quality on account of his judgment. It is the task of a good literary critic to recognize good literature as it appears in his time. Otherwise you'd be one yourself.
>Come to think of it.. what did Bloom exactly add to the already established western canon apart from his most recent favs?
Are you retarded? What was he supposed to add besides the contemporary novels he believed would survive father time just as the so called canon had done at some point in their lives? I don't understand what your bone to pick with him is, given the fact that you're struggling to even understand how a canon is created. It isn't created by sheeps such as yourself, it is judged by receptive people with artistic sensibilities.
>I'd consider those authors as popular fiction made for a middlebrow audience.
Just like Shakespeare and Dickens. Popularity has never been the obstacle to canonicity. But you're probably too stupid to understand that.

>>25244987
>>25244990
>>25245049
I don't mind middlebrow culture btw. And I'd accept that Dickens and Shakespeare would have been considered middlebrow at the time. Don't recall either of them being canonised while still alive though, and to call them middlebrow still is disingenuous. I'm no closer to understanding the significance of Bloom to anyone outside of 1990's America. If he was such sharp reader, why'd he bet on such middeling books? If he was such a good critic why hasn't any of his writing endured in todays academia? Are we getting any dissertations on Bloomian literary analysis?

>>25245172
>middleing books
Because they are not middling books. You're just retarded and can't really understand them. Much like you couldn't have understood Dickens or Dosto had it not been for scholars shoving them down our throats for 100 years, conditioning your reading and expectations.
>If he was such a good critic why hasn't any of his writing endured in todays academia? Are we getting any dissertations on Bloomian literary analysis?
Bloom is the most well regarded literary critic in the last 50 years. You seem completely illiterate on the matter yet want to proffer your opinion; that's just retarded

>>25245172
>and to call them middlebrow still is disingenuous.
No more than Blood Meridian. It is at the very least better than anything that paid-by-the-word hack ever wrote, although i don't think you've the intelligence for it.

>>25243646
Gee I don't know who to believe. The overreading literary critic who was both the biggest Shakespeare fanboy and among the most well read people in the last 50 years. Or the 15 year old 4chan retard who can't read beyond an 8th grade level and has no taste of his own.

>>25245191
>not middling books
Idk have you ever been blown away by an Ursula leGuin novel or one by Oates?
>Bloom is the most well regarded literary critic in the last 50 years.
I have never once encountered him within academic context; always exclusively from American posters/readers.
>completely illiterate on the matter
Yes that's why I've been asking you and questioning his significance, but you've been more intent on calling me a retard than pointing me in a helpful direction. Never received so much pushback for being a bit flippant about a /lit/ darling. Is reading him formative for young American readers? Why are people so deferential towards him?

>>25243646
>Middlebrow as in thinking blood meridian is in league with Shakespeare
Reading both of these certainly puts you in the "highbrow" category in any objective, empirical sense.

>>25242789
Because Nabokov is a jester on par with Vidal.

>>25245270
No literary critics are read in school. Maybe try reading his books. I don't agree with everything he writes but he has his own well formed subjective tastes.

>>25245270
Bloom's most famous academic works were early in his career. He came up with the idea of the anxiety of influence. If you've never come across discussion of that, idk what to tell you. Besides that he's most known academically for his ideas about Shakespeare. From the 1980s or 90s onward he shifted more toward writing for general audiences and became a household name for defending the western canon while the rest of academia was "diversifying" reading lists. You got a lot of pushback because describing Bloom as middlebrow makes no sense, even if you're not a fan of him. He was extremely well-read and erudite and harsh toward bad literature.

>>25245172
>If he was such a good critic why hasn't any of his writing endured in todays academia?
Enduring *today's* academia is not a sign of literary merit by any means. Quite the opposite in fact.

>>25245293
He was extremely nepotistic but within defendable boundaries

>>25245294
It's not even true. He is the most influential literary critic of the 20th century.

>>25245270
Name two or three "highbrow" literary critics from the past 50 years you'd put above Bloom so we know you aren't just talking out your ass, if you don't mind. Seems pointless to go back and forth if you don't put forward other critics you find praiseworthy from the same time period or after.

>>25245303
Of the latter half of 20thC I agree. I always put up Northrop Frye and the New Critics as being better, but theyre also earlier. Bloom was imo the best critic of a time when the literary scene was in total decline, and has only gotten worse since. When I did my /lit/ degree in the late 2010s almost all of my professors hated him for being snobby, elitist, misogynistic, a western chauvinist etc.

>>25245313
Frye was influential until the 70s, not after.

>>25245286
>>25245293
Thanks for the responses. I'll try to give him a fair shot. Chalk it down to ESL, but I didn't realise middlebrow was such a loaded term.

>>25245338
Yeah I should have said I agree that Bloom is the "most influential" critic of the 20thC but the ones I mentioned are, in my opinion, higher quality, though there influence wasn't as longlasting.

>>25243673
A canon isn't an anime tier list ranking system of books, its a list of works that were of undeniable importance to a literary tradition, in this case the Western literary tradition. A work can be extremely high-quality yet not make it into the Western canon because it did not have much importance to the Western literary tradition. In theory the reverse can also be true, but in practice it never happens because a very poor work is not going to become impactful to Western writers. Harry Potter for example doesn't belong in the canon since it had no impact on the literary tradition despite its popularity.
There's plenty of issues with Bloom's canon and he openly admits he just sort of threw it together, but including works like Blood Meridian certainly isn't one of those issues.

>>25242789
He's the Roger Ebert of books. I don't know why people give him so much credit.

>>25245293
It seems to be that the problem here is that he sold out and that his latter ideas became overexposed over his articulate ones.

bloom had better takes (modernism notwithstanding) but nabokov had better taste

>>25245608
>nabokov had better taste
Nabokov thought Updike and Salinger were the great American writers of the 20th century

>>25245612
All redeemed thanks to his Petersburg memoirs

>>25245612
Both better than Pynchon and DFW that's for sure

>>25245643
Bloom famously did not like DFW

>>25243606
Ebert was a total fucking retard and a hack. Bloom has hundred times the credibility despite being a typical Jewish rat in academia.

>>25245608
>bloom had better takes
like what? his criticism is very shallow and he loved freud.

>>25245612
he didn't say the 20th century, those names were referring to the 50s-60s in particular. and how much updike and salinger have you read?

>>25245612
No he didn't you fucking lying retard
>>25245643
He liked Pynchon

>>25245612
>Nabokov thought Updike and Salinger were the great American writers of the 20th century
"A minor novelist with major style...the sublime will never touch upon his page. Updike will never be a great writer."

>>25245747
>>25245752
Sorry I don't remember the particular statement but if you put Updike above Faulkner your taste is suspect

>>25245754
And then he said Updike and Salinger are "by far the finest artists in recent years." Apparently he had trouble keeping his contrived opinions in order.

>>25245754
The last line is a misquote of James Wood saying "Updike is not, I think, a great writer”"

>>25245757
not if you hate faulkner.

>I have carefully read Faulkner's Light in August, which you so kindly sent me, and it has in no way altered the low (to put it mildly) opinion I have of his work and other (innumerable) books in the same strain. I detest these puffs of stale romanticism, coming all the way up from Marlinsky and V Hugo-you remember the latter's horrible combination of starkness and hyperbole l'homme regardait le gibet, le gibet regardait l'homme. Faulkner's belated romanticism and quite impossible biblical rumblings and "starkness" (which is not starkness at all but skeletonized triteness), and all the rest of the bombast seem to me so offensive that I can only explain his popularity in France by the fact that all her own popular mediocre writers (Malraux included) of recent years have also had their fling at l'homme marchait, la nuit etait sombre. The book you sent me is one of the tritest and most tedious examples of a trite and tedious genre. The plot and those extravagant "deep" conversations affect me as bad movies do, or the worst plays and stories of Leonid Andreyev, with whom Faulkner has a kind of fatal affinity. I imagine that this kind of thing (white trash, velvety Negroes, those bloodhounds out of Uncle Tom~ Cabin melodramas, steadily baying through thousands of swampy books) may be necessary in a social sense, but it is not literature, just as the thousands of stories and novels about downtrodden peasants and fierce ispravniki in Russia, or mystical adventures within the narod5 (1850-1880), although socially effective and ethically admirable, were not literature. I simply cannot believe that you, with all your knowledge and taste, are not made to squirm by such things as the dialogues between the "positive" characters in Faulkner (and especially those absolutely ghastly italics). Do you not see that despite the difference in landscape, etc., it is essentially Jean Valjean stealing the candlesticks from the
good man of God all over again? The villain is definitely Byronic. The book's pseudo-religious rhythm I simply cannot stand-a phoney gloom which also spoils Mauriac's work. Has la grace descended upon Faulkner too? Maybe you are just pulling my leg when you advise me to read him, or impotent Henry James, or the Rev. Eliot?

>>25245766
>some retarded actor said…
I think Updike is overrated as hell, but who gives a shit what James Woods thinks or says? And why?

>>25245853
the critic, not the family guy character

>>25245752
>he liked pynchon
Nabokov avoided giving any opinion on pynchon which is a clear sign he hated him but did not want to say bad things about a former student.

>>25246051
>which is a clear sign he hated him
although i don't think he would have loved him, this is ridiculous. pynchon wasn't as big before GR and that came too late for Nab to read. towards the end of his life he said he didn't read much in general beyond his favorite authors.

>>25246133
He and Vera were asked about if he remembered him from class but Nabokov dismissed the question entirely. It felt like he was trying not to badmouth a former student even though he didn't like his work.

>>25244384
>Nabokov was intentionally trying to write a controversial novel, iirc he was deciding between an interracial romance, a story about an atheist who lives a long, good, life, and a story about a pedo.
I actually just reread the afterword yesterday and what you’re saying is not true at all. Nabokov does not say that he chose the theme to be controversial, he was merely mentioning that some people objected to the book simply because they found the theme to be unpleasant.