Possessed by Memory

February 18, 2019
Admirers of prolific polymath Bloom (Macbeth: A Dagger in the Mind) will treasure this assemblage of 76 pieces, ranging in length from brief reflections to full-length essays, and in genre from memoir to literary analysis. Bloom’s central interest—the role of influence in literary history—is highlighted in selections that showcase his deep immersion in canonical greats (Shakespeare, Milton ), Romantic-era poets (Byron, Keats, and Shelley), and the later Victorians (Browning and Tennyson), whom he sees as undervalued by recent criticism. Bloom also attends to American poets, including Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman, and longtime friend John Asberry, and religious writings, with character sketches of biblical figures such as Deborah, Moses, and Ruth and a meditation on the Kabbalah. Ample excerpts illustrate his assertions, such as that Edmund’s speech from King Lear on how “we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon and the stars” illustrates why the villainous character is nonetheless “surprisingly attractive” for his “candor and clarity.” However, general readers may find Bloom’s personal remarks most affecting, such as on how, while “nearing 88, I have to consider how little I know of time to come.” A rich lifetime of readership and scholarship can be found within the covers of this equally rich book. Agent: Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu, Writers’ Representatives.

February 15, 2019
Literature serves as consolation for an eminent and prolific critic.Legendary critic and professor Bloom (Humanities/Yale Univ.; Lear: The Great Image of Authority, 2018, etc.) has created a literary biography from brief essays on the poems, plays, and prose--many committed to memory--that he has reread, with growing insight, throughout his life. He calls this book "a reverie" that meditates on what it means to be possessed by the memory of "dead or lost friends and lovers" and by works of literature. "When you have a poem by heart," he writes, "you possess it more truly and more strangely than you do your own dwelling place, because the poem possesses you." Now 88, Bloom suffers the debilities of aging: "a tremor in my fingers, my legs tend to hint at giving out, my teeth diminish, incipient macular degeneration dims my eyes, deafness increases," and, even using a walker, he is constantly afraid of falling. He has been hospitalized several times, and he mourns the deaths of many friends, who include colleagues, fellow critics, and poets (John Ashbery and A.R. Ammons, for example) whose works he admires. For spiritual sustenance, religion fails him. "I am a Jew who evades normative Judaism," he writes. "My religion is the appreciation of high literature. Shakespeare is the summit." In one of the book's four sections, Bloom insightfully examines in Shakespearean characters the strange act of "self-otherseeing," by which he means "the double consciousness of seeing our own actions and sufferings as though they belonged to others." Other sections focus on biblical verse, American poets, and, in the longest section, elegies. "I seem now to be always in the elegy season," he writes. Among these poems of praise are lyrics by Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Keats, and Tennyson, whose "Morte d'Arthur" provided comfort to Bloom as he was recovering from two serious operations. Although the author has written about these works throughout his career, these essays reveal a deeply personal attachment and fresh perspective.An eloquent and erudite rereading of the author's beloved works.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 1, 2019

Not surprisingly, masterly and sometimes lightning-rod literary critic Bloom here discusses 80 crucial texts throughout the ages, from Shakespeare to Joyce to Amy Clampitt, but he does so to show how they have influenced his thinking and his life. As he further clarifies, "One of my concerns throughout Possessed by Memory is with the beloved dead. Most of my good friends in my generation have departed. Their voices are still in my ears. I find that they are woven into what I read." Weave that into your reading.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.