Harold Bloom and his Soothing Idiosyncrasies
If you called me peculiar, daffy, or even a terrible bore when it comes to an indulgence of mine, you’d be hard-pressed to find a disagreeable confederate.
This eccentric avocation doesn’t involve Monterey Peninsula poets, French New Wave cinema, or poring over dispersion pattern complexities on Golden Bell’s Sunday pin placement at The Masters.
Nor does it involve Greek philosophers and Roman generals, or, when I’m especially frazzled and in need of a break from the hurriedness of this God-awful century, “shopping” for a Defender 147, researching my future Bombardier 8000, and staring at high-res photos of bottle-green 5930 Pateks.
This cerebral intemperance supersedes the seductive allure of 551 Kirkton Tweed and the futile search for a more perfect plaid on my next odd jacket.
As much as I enjoy poetry, film, golf course architecture, philosophy, military strategy, terribly engineered British trucks, planes I can shower in while cruising at Mach 1, six-figure timepieces, and the haberdashery trade from whence I came, I find an evening listening to Harold Bloom pontificate on the importance of the Western Canon to be wildly entertaining. Certainly, I can’t be the only one, right? There must be other bores who receive enormous satisfaction when he refers to Charlie Rose as “my dear.”
Absorbing the idiosyncratic tone of his voice feels like a cashmere blanket draped over your temporal lobes. His prose warms your innards like crackling hickory logs, and before you know it, the anxieties of life wilt away.
Feeling a bit skeptical? Try for yourself. You’ve nothing to lose. My guess is that Bloom’s appeal is binary. Those of us who have drunk the Western Kool-Aid are all in, and those in the School of Resentment could no more appreciate his voice than enjoy Leaves of Grass.
