Lighting, sound, hair all look and sound great!

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for saying so! I’ve been working hard on all those things-especially the hair.

I love Harold Bloom, watching his interviews and reading the western canon made me a better reader. The anxiety of influence will definitely be my next purchase, thanks for the video Chris, I'm still impressed in how good the videos now look.

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks, Esteban! You can thank Cliff at Better Than Food for this one-he shared a lot of technical insight with me about camera/lighting/etc. It’s still a work in progress for me. Glad you enjoyed the video! R.I.P. Bloom.

Haircut looks sharp, Chris. Appreciate the video.

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks! 👊

@kursverzeichnis1297

3 жыл бұрын

@@LeafbyLeaf Finally in video after the teasers in the thumbnails.

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

I know. My intro bit is anachronistic now.

Nice video. Bloom, whether one agrees with him or not, is essential for anyone who wants to be a better, closer, more aware reader.

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Couldn’t agree more. 👏👏👏

This resonates with me in regard to negative reviews, which I rarely enjoy: Bloom, having read as much as he has, seems to have earned 'the right' to disparage....How many who engage in disparagement have?

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Now there’s a thought right there. A prompt for rich discussion indeed.

@levitybooks3952

3 жыл бұрын

I'd credit Bloom more than others, but would contest your point that experience gives 'a right' to commend or disparage a book. I think we all should try our best to review and read reviews as fairly as we can. If anything, I'd argue critical or more negative reviews are needed because there's a positivity bias in book reviews. By this I mean, when most books on GoodReads are almost 4* average rating, it's sometimes very hard to distinguish truly incredibly good books from mediocre books! However, when you look at negative book reviews online, they're normally so weakly justified, personal and offensive that it's better to pretend they don't exist!!

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

This is, in part, why I am going to stop giving books star ratings. These one-dimensional quantitative ratings do not work for works of literature. And it puts more ownership on the "reviewer"/reviewer to qualitatively expand on their opinion.

@levitybooks3952

3 жыл бұрын

@@LeafbyLeaf I see many of the seasoned reviewers on GoodReads refuse to star rate books, and I understand the mentality. What does a star mean? Why make an objective system for a subjective response to a subjective work? Why reduce poetry to heartless numerical classifications. But at the same time, I'm strongly for the star system, because if critical reviewers like yourself don't star books then GoodReads average ratings - which inform the popularity and purchases of books - will be the in hands of uncritical readers. Maybe I'm paranoid, but in a way star rating books feels like a political vote for the social worth of a book, when for instance GoodReads is owned by Amazon. From that perspective, if anything, I'd say only more established and thorough reviewers like yourself should be among the few allowed star ratings for books! Or maybe there just needs to be a clear reference system so we all know what stars mean. But yes, it is a silly system I wish we could do away with altogether - words matter more than stars, always!

Fantastic. Bloom has been on my radar as a reader but more as a writer for many years; but he intimidates. As with many of your videos, you pick apart that intimidation and revive my interest. Having already added too much to my TBR, thanks Chris, I need to figure out how to slot these books in, along with his fantastic anthology of poetry, as a program of study to fuel my own creative writing. For me reading is the precursor to my writing with Rilke serving as the mentor who quiets the noise of distraction in the mind long enough for an idea or image or phrase to tap the subconscious and draw out the meaning of words. Always a pleasure learning and spending this time with you my friend.

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Very nice, Stephen! Indeed the toppling TBR is and always be a looming threat to we readers (and writers). There’s simply too much out there now to absorb in a single lifetime. Thus the need to be selective. Perhaps rotate literary criticism, poetry, prose, etc.? I just dip into the poetry anthologies without worrying about reading them through as books. Rilke is a fine sage/Muse-his poem “Imaginary Career” has been with me for over a decade. As for Bloom, he won’t be there when you’re ready, but his work will.

@SteveReadswithSeamus

3 жыл бұрын

@@LeafbyLeaf totally too much, especially if you aspire to write. Getting the balance right is as anxiety inducing as influence! I have a Ray Bradbury self paced MFA approach... a short story, an essay, a poem a day; a novel and a non-fiction. Right now... the non fiction is focused on preparing me for the new puppy! 😆

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Very nice! I remember that regimen from Zen in the Art of Writing. Great book!

When I first encountered Bloom I jumped in with his later works and his unique vocabulary for explaining literature was so ingrained in him that he didn’t give as much explanation and I found I had to backtrack to his earlier works to get a handle on him. I like hearing you discuss his works because it allows me to test what I understood and to sort of get a better hold on his way of thinking. As an aside I just received The Bright Book of Life in the mail today and am very excited to begin delving into that. Thanks for this series.

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Sounds fairly similar to my experience with Bloom. I actually began with The Anatomy of Influence and abandoned it after about 75pp. Then I read his most “provocative” book, The Western Canon. From there it was How to Read and Why, and Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? At that point I was hooked. I’ve read all of his work now except the last 3 published books (including Bright Book, which I just got last Tuesday myself). Glad you enjoyed the video.

Thank you for this video. Bloom spent a lifetime in making connections amongst writers he felt were (mis)reading and were being (mis)read by one another. The persuasiveness of his explanations of these connections makes one believe in a 'tradition', that works of literature (mis)speak to one another (and us as readers) over years, decades, even centuries. Sometimes these connections seem far-fetched--did Stevens or whoever it was really read the last book of Spenser's Faeire Queene let alone in some way be in agon with it--or maybe in the end it didn't matter as long as Bloom saw it and could spin the web for us. In any event, the theory enriched our (reading) lives, and at the same time led us to entertain the possibility that in fact we are all merely products of our reading, and that all we think we are as humans is merely a belated recognition of what has already been written by those who came before us.

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Fantastic input, Stuart! As Bloom would say, Shakespeare had already invented our concept of the modern human and we are belated (ipso facto: he reads us before we read him). And indeed Bloom can get creative at times with the connections, but overall we are nonetheless convinced of this thread that runs through the Bloomian canon. His treatment of Stevens (of whom he has a standalone study that is pretty much overlooked) is really nuanced here, too, as he shows how much Stevens railed against having any precursors. Re: your last sentence: Don Quixote is certainly a product of his reading!

Bloom is a great reader, a killer reader, maybe the more young critic reader I've ever read, someone that makes reading contagious.

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Well put! Bloom, unlike perhaps any other critic, stimulates my love for reading.

Fantastic video, Chris! I especially appreciate the Queen’s Gambit analogy, having just finished the series last night. Bloom is a fascinating character, and his insights and theories are impressive. Your coverage of him helps simpletons like me to grasp just a bit more than when I attempt to understand his writings. Also, great job with the lighting/video/audio quality. Great stuff!

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for all the compliments! I was quite proud of that analogy because until now I've struggled to more precisely define what Bloom means by influence anxiety. His stuff takes successive readings to begin to grasp (as do the books he loves most). But there are some that I think are pretty accessible (for Bloom): How to Read and Why, and Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? Thanks again!

Those bookshelves!!!!!!!

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

I pinch myself daily!

YES, thus is why Proust was a Neuroscientist!! The painter Remedios Varo interpreted gravity in a painting better than some scientists! I love your love of literature! I'm in Anatomy of... next will be Maps of misreading. You have lured me into this wonderland

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Love that Varo anecdote. Leland Ryken said that there are facts and then there is fiction/poetry that communicates the feeling of facts. Great to hear from you! I’ve heard Bloom’s posthumous Take Arms... is incredible and gives a sort of final word on influence anxiety that shows that Bloom really changed and grew more human over his long career. Can’t wait to read it.

@barbarajohnson1442

3 жыл бұрын

@@LeafbyLeaf yes! Is that the Bright Book of Life that you speak of? I shall look it up. Thanks for your continued inspiration! I dove into Faulkner for a bit, this Covid Portal is very interesting, thankfully no one I know personally has contracted it.

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Actually there are two that have come out: Take Arms against a Sea of Troubles (the one I referred to earlier) and his final book, The Bright Book of Life. I really, really need to get back to Faulkner.

@barbarajohnson1442

3 жыл бұрын

@@LeafbyLeaf i got into Absalom Absalom, wanting to understand the American divide better, I read Sound and Fury years ago, unaware that there was actually an order to the family saga ( might have been helpful?) After Quixote, next, Tolstoy! I must also see what you suggest, I disappeared for a bit🙄

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Wow, you are awash in great books! La dolce vita!

Great review. I just found your channel and subscribed. I really like your bookshelves in the background too.

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks, man! Welcome to the conversation!

I see Beckett keeping an eye on you from the beyond, his ghostly face seeming to float supernaturally on your shoulder, like the better angel.

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

😜

"Bloom has absorbed everything... all of it, even by 1975." This is part of the problem with Bloom, isn't it? And his acolytes? Believing that he'd absorbed "everything" when there was so much work still being created, so much work still to come, especially from the margins and undersides of where he was trained to look for it, made him blind to so much and to so many. I prefer Eliot who saw "the canon" as something constantly in flux, and believed each new work changed what came before.

Carrion eaters! Terrific

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

I know-wonderful epithet!

HI Chris! I would really like if u could do a video on the philosophy aesthetics. Im really interested in the subject, but whenever u read joyce, bloom, emerson and so on there is a lot of referenses to aristotle, plato and aquinas and so on. Do u think u could make a video like that? Like a tracking list... However, amazing video as always and keep up the great! work.

@LeafbyLeaf

2 жыл бұрын

That’s a great idea! I do have a video up here on Longinus’s On the Sublime, which is aesthetic philosophy. Bloom referred to himself as a Longinian. But I think Santayana’s philosophy of beauty would be a good video too. Thanks for the idea!

"Poets adept at forgetting their ancestry write very forgettable poems." I just wanted to write that myself. So damn good!

This is smarter than a PhD class in Literature at Harvard. Are you teaching? Great presentation. However, and i may be singing to the preacher, but i find focal, your impress of Bloom's use of cabala in his diacritics. Misprision itself is a masterful keyword. So much of what should be righted and that is intentionally misdirected is absent or mindful misprision. And yet it is in workery that misprision becomes ill defined, intentionally, and becomes influence instead of addendum. Bloom was a great worker for sure but the enemy of his enemy is your enemy.

@LeafbyLeaf

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks so much for your kind words--and for adding to the conversation! No, I don't teach. But that would be pretty cool, I think.

"queens gambit"..........good lord

For the longest time, I conflated Harold Bloom with Allen Bloom. They both had books critical of academic culture 30 years ago.

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Many people did and still do! Allan’s The Closing of the American Mind is...sobering. Don’t read it already cynico-pessimistic!

@jondaly4501

3 жыл бұрын

@@LeafbyLeaf Allen was into Plato. I'm interested in Plato but never read him directly. Is WHD Rouse a good translator? My wife has a copy of his Iliad and it seems readable.

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

I don’t think (though I could be wrong) that I’ve read a Rouse translation before. Plato and Iliad are arguably THE most basic building blocks of all of Western literature (though we need Odyssey too).

Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

@LeafbyLeaf

2 жыл бұрын

?

@richarddelanet

2 жыл бұрын

@@LeafbyLeaf Was Kiekegaard not entirely correct - as per your opening quote - when we reckon with the likes of Brunel ?

@LeafbyLeaf

2 жыл бұрын

Ah, OK-I need to go back and watch the opening of the video. :-)

@richarddelanet

2 жыл бұрын

@@LeafbyLeaf Aha. Yes. The video was from Nov 2020.

@LeafbyLeaf

2 жыл бұрын

Oh, yes; now I recall that quote. Now-allow me to acquaint myself with Brunel.

Harold Bloom✅...long hair✅

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

LONG hair?

@pon1952leod

3 жыл бұрын

@@LeafbyLeaf It was a gentle way of showing preference for long hair...a nod to when long hairs meant those that read and reflected.

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Ahhhhh, gotcha! I am back and forth on which I like better. My daughter tells me to keep my hair short.

@pon1952leod

3 жыл бұрын

@@LeafbyLeaf I went to university (Canada) in the 1972-1976...all the guys had long hair. I learned to make certain associations that have followed me to the here and now. When I see a man my age, late 60’s, with long hair, I see it as a small nod of resistance👏👏👏. You’re much younger I know but it still warms my heart. While we’re “talking” do you know the author Mark Helprin...he wrote A Soldier of the Great War, and Memoir from Antproof case...I pick these books up from time to time and am transported. Am happy to have found your website✅

@LeafbyLeaf

3 жыл бұрын

Right on! I've heard similar sentiments as yours as regards long hair and the 60s. I actually haven't heard of Mark Helprin that I can recall, unfortunately. But that's always a treat when you've got something that can act as a talisman of nostalgia! Glad you found me.

I love your videos but the suggestion that poetry could serve the purpose of psychoanalysis is very over-romantic and unrealistic in my opinion

@LeafbyLeaf

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks. I have to agree that it is overly Romantic indeed. I’m always stretched in opposing directions between my rational and my romantic side. I think, too, that Bloom was probably one of the staunchest Romantics we ever had. He truly believed in poetry as the panacea for psychological ailment and grappling with life and death.