The Man Who Read Everything

A selection of the lively letters between one of the world’s greatest literary critics and the poets, novelists, and scholars he most admired

“Terrific from first to last.”―Dwight Garner, New York Times Book Review

Bringing together a collection of Harold Bloom’s letters to and from eight of his favorite contemporary writers, Heather Cass White provides an intimate view of one of the most famous literary critics of the last century. In correspondence with Alvin Feinman, Northrop Frye, A. R. Ammons, John Hollander, James Merrill, John Ashbery, Henri Cole, and Ursula K. Le Guin, we see Bloom developing his groundbreaking theory of poetic influence, transforming himself into a public intellectual, and reckoning with the meaning of his own legacy.

While Bloom’s public persona was oracular, sure, and often combative, his letters are inquiring and provisional, revealing his overarching obsession with good writing. The presence of love, as the letters show, was always vital to how Bloom worked as a reader. Filled with delightful anecdotes and poignant observations, these letters―many of them published here for the first time―offer a new window onto twentieth-century letters and Bloom’s long and illustrious career.

Harold Bloom (1930–2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. His books include The Anatomy of Influence and Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles. Heather Cass White is an English professor at the University of Alabama. She is the author of Books Promiscuously Read: Reading as a Way of Life, among other volumes.