March 7, 2026
Canon wars: Bloom and doom
The Influence of Anxiety: Harold Bloom and Literary Inheritance
Academics eye-roll, readers swoon: Bloom’s ghost reignites the canon wars
TLDR: A new piece revisits Harold Bloom’s loud legacy—big claims, bigger crowds—while comments split between fans who say he made classics thrilling and skeptics who call him a grandstanding gatekeeper. One standout quip invoked Lem’s Law to argue Bloom got people to actually read, proving the canon fight still matters.
Drop Harold Bloom’s name and you get fireworks. The article relights the feud over the late critic who crowned Shakespeare the “invention of the human,” wrote pop hits like Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, and blasted university trends as a “school of resentment” in The Western Canon. In the comments, the mood split fast: Team Canon cheering Bloom’s grand, gutsy readings; Team Context rolling eyes at the pedestal-building. One top-liked quip invoked Lem’s Law about nobody reading or remembering—then called Bloom the glorious exception.
Readers outside academia chimed in with warm confessions: Bloom was their gateway to big books and big feelings. Meanwhile, academics (or those channeling them) mocked the “Shakespeare invented people” bit as classic Bloomian drama. Memes riffed on that line all over again—think therapist jokes and “he invented my homework anxiety.” Others latched onto the anecdote from novelist Joshua Cohen about Bloom asking why D. H. Lawrence was “missing” from his work, reading it as Bloom playing literary dad—half mentor, half gatekeeper. For some, that’s charming; for others, it’s proof of canon cosplay. Whatever you think, the thread turned into a balcony brawl about who gets to say what matters: the old-school taste-maker with a cult following, or the scholars who say taste needs history and power analysis. Either way, Bloom’s still pulling a crowd—and an argument.
Key Points
- •Harold Bloom faced academic skepticism, with his claim that Shakespeare “invented the human” often mocked, while his late-career books targeted mass audiences.
- •Bloom’s “divorce” from the Yale English department in the 1970s preceded his role as a public critic of academic literary theory, branded by him as the “school of resentment.”
- •The Western Canon (1994) solidified Bloom as a figurehead for discontent with university English departments in the U.S. and U.K.
- •Outside academia, readers often appreciate Bloom’s work, though such support may be muted in professional academic settings due to prevailing fashions.
- •A 2018 LARB interview with Joshua Cohen highlights Bloom’s biography and his emphasis on literary “influence,” with a discussion comparing influences like D.H. Lawrence versus Bellow, Malamud, and Roth.