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How to Read and Why (Paperback, New Ed) Loot Price: R288
Discovery Miles 2 880
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How to Read and Why (Paperback, New Ed): Harold Bloom

How to Read and Why (Paperback, New Ed)

Harold Bloom

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List price R304 Loot Price R288 Discovery Miles 2 880 You Save R16 (5%)

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The eminent American literary critic Bloom sets out here an apologia for the act of reading and a sample selection of short stories, novels and plays that will teach us to read deeply. Professor Bloom sees reading as completely personal and isolated, a way to mould, ground, strengthen and heal the individual through a lone encounter with the otherness of a great text. His selection includes both classics (Shakespeare, Dickens, Shelley) and recent works (Calvino, Borges, Pynchon, Toni Morrison). For each text, he writes a short commentary and traces lineages within the tradition. After a lifetime's reading, Bloom deliberately pragmatic approach means his commentaries come across as literal, anecdotal and occasionally meandering. His selection of writers - predominantly male, white and focused largely on the canon - is explained by his claim that universities have ceased to teach reading in favour of theory and ideology and now deny the potential reader the wholeness of an encounter with the tradition of great texts. In a society under siege to the mass media, Bloom sees his task as rescuing wisdom from the mass of mere information and stopping the books he loves and the skills required to read them becoming obsolete. The only drawback to Bloom's approach is that his view of culture in decline is not borne out by modern readers and their eclectic reading habits. This book would prove useful in reading groups or for anyone who wants a beginners' guide to what is worth reading. (Kirkus UK)

Harold Bloom, one of the great literary critics and champion of written culture, asserts that we read in order to better understand and fortify our sense of our own individuality. In this essential book he offers a reading list of works, some famous, some less well-known, that allows readers to fully explore dimensions of themselves. Practical, inspirational and learned, How to Read and Why reveals that the close reading and re-reading of great literature can sustain, enrich and strengthen every aspect of our own lives.

General

Imprint: Fourth Estate
Country of origin: United Kingdom
Release date: September 2001
Authors: Harold Bloom
Dimensions: 198 x 130 x 20mm (L x W x T)
Format: Paperback - B-format
Pages: 283
Edition: New Ed
ISBN-13: 978-1-84115-039-0
Categories: Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary theory
LSN: 1-84115-039-8
Barcode: 9781841150390

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