The Bright Book of Life: Novels to Read and Reread

by Harold Bloom

Overview

America's most original and controversial literary critic writes trenchantly about forty-eight masterworks spanning the Western tradition—from Don Quixote to Wuthering Heights to Invisible Man—in his first book devoted exclusively to narrative fiction.

In this valedictory volume, Yale professor Harold Bloom—who for more than half a century was regarded as America's most daringly original and controversial literary critic—gives us his only book devoted entirely to the art of the novel. With his hallmark percipience, remarkable scholarship, and extraordinary devotion to sublimity, Bloom offers meditations on forty-eight essential works spanning the Western canon, from Don Quixote to Book of Numbers; from Wuthering Heights to Absalom, Absalom!; from Les Misérables to Blood Meridian; from Vanity Fair to Invisible Man. Here are trenchant appreciations of fiction by, among many others, Austen, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, James, Conrad, Lawrence, Le Guin, and Sebald.
 
Whether you have already read these books, plan to, or simply care about the importance and power of fiction, Harold Bloom is your unparalleled guide to understanding literature with new intimacy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525657262
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/24/2020
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	672,451
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

HAROLD BLOOM lived in New Haven and was a Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, where he taught for over sixty years. Before that, he was Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. His more than forty books include Possessed by Memory, The Anxiety of Influence, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, The Western Canon, The American Religion, and The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime. He was a MacArthur Fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Gold Medal for Belles Lettres and Criticism, the Catalonia International Prize, and Mexico's Alfonso Reyes International Prize. He lived in New Haven until his death on October 14, 2019, at the age of eighty-nine.

Hometown:

New York, New York and New Haven, Connecticut

Date of Birth:

July 11, 1930

Date of Death:

October 14, 2019

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Education:

B.A., Cornell University, 1951; Ph.D., Yale University, 1955

Table of Contents

Preface The Lost Traveller's Dream xi

1 Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes 3

2 Clarissa Samuel Richardson 22

3 Tom Jones Henry Fielding 33

4 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 39

5 Emma Jane Austen 46

6 Persuasion Jane Austen 52

7 I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) Alessandro Manzoni 61

8 The Red and the Black Stendhal 66

9 The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal 71

10 The Vautrin Saga: Old Goriot, Lost Illusions, The Splendor and Misery of the Courtesans Honore De Balzac 76

11 The Captains Daughter Alexander Pushkin 82

12 Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte 93

13 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray 101

14 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 112

15 Bleak House Charles Dickens 152

16 Our Mutual Friend Charles Dickens 156

17 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 161

18 Les Miserables Victor Hugo 166

19 A Sportsman's Notebook Ivan Turgenev 172

20 First Love Ivan Turgenev 181

21 The Cossacks Leo Tolstoy 190

22 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 197

23 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 215

24 Hadji Murat Leo Tolstoy 229

25 The Return of the Native Thomas Hardy 238

26 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 244

27 The Princess Casamassima Henry James 254

28 The Ambassadors Henry James 258

29 Nostromo Joseph Conrad 261

30 The Secret Agent Joseph Conrad 268

31 Under Western Eyes Joseph Conrad 273

32 The Reef Edith Wharton 277

33 The Rainbow D.H. Lawrence 286

34 Women in Love D.H. Lawrence 291

35 Ulysses James Joyce 300

36 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 354

37 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 377

38 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 387

39 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 391

40 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner 411

41 The Death of the Heart Elizabeth Bowen 427

42 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 434

43 The Left Hand of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin 447

44 The Dispossessed Ursula K. Le Guin 460

45 The Loser Thomas Bernhard 466

46 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 472

47 The Rings of Saturn W. G. Sebald 485

48 Book of Numbers Joshua Cohen 504

Afterword The Changeling 511

Editorial Reviews

"Fresh insights and renewed joys... fervent... dedicated... [Bloom] candidly analyzes what he considers a novel’s shortcomings and where he differs with other critics’ assessments. [His] ardent celebration of novels is tinged with the inevitable losses of old age... Warm recollections of a singular literary life."
—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

06/01/2020

Though this bright book of literary commentary is iconic, often controversial literary critic Bloom's final work, it's still a first for him in its strict focus on narrative fiction. It swoops through 52 masterpieces from Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.

Library Journal

2020-11-03
An erudite critic recounts the pleasures of rereading.

In his latest posthumous literary memoir, eminent critic and scholar Bloom (1930-2019) remarks on the fresh insights and renewed joys that awaited him when, nearing the end of his life, he reread 48 novels. Organized chronologically—from Don Quixote, published in 1615, to Joshua Cohen’s Book of Numbers, published 400 years later—the essays often contextualize Bloom’s readings: when, where, and why he read certain novels; what teachers and readings enriched his perceptions; and how his responses changed or remained consistent over time. Although he read Moby-Dick as a child and Dickens as a young teenager, Bloom mostly read poetry before becoming obsessed, as he puts it, with Thomas Hardy at the age of 15; through Hardy, he found his way to D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and E.M. Forster. Bloom’s selections draw heavily on the Western canon, mostly British and European writers, including Samuel Richardson, whose Clarissa Bloom reread every other year; Jane Austen, whose Persuasion, Emma, and Pride and Prejudice all “seem equally grand”; Stendhal, whose “vision of life is rather like a masked ball or a carnival performance”; Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Thackeray, whose Vanity Fair Bloom first read just before starting college at Cornell. Bloom admits to having read “only twelve” of Balzac’s novels, and of Wharton’s novels, he writes about the “sinuous and disturbing” The Reefrather than her better known The House of Mirth. A fervent admirer of Ursula Le Guin, to whom the volume is dedicated, he commemorates their brief but intense epistolary friendship. He candidly analyzes what he considers a novel’s shortcomings and where he differs with other critics’ assessments. Bloom’s ardent celebration of novels is tinged with the inevitable losses of old age: illness, physical diminishment, and the deaths of friends, mentors, and colleagues. Other novels under consideration include Tom Jones, Ulysses, The Magic Mountain, To the Lighthouse, and Blood Meridian.

Warm recollections of a singular literary life.

Kirkus Reviews