The Man Who Read Everything: The Literary Letters of Harold Bloom, edited by Heather Cass White, presents a collection of correspondence between the influential critic and contemporary literary figures. Born in 1930 to émigré Jewish parents, Bloom claimed to have learned Hebrew by age three and read Moby-Dick before ten. His academic path led him to Yale University, where he taught for decades.
White notes that Bloom published nearly fifty original books over sixty years as a working literary critic, including several New York Times bestsellers. The letters include exchanges with poets Alvin Feinman, John Ashbery, and Ursula K. Le Guin, as well as critic Northrop Frye. Bloom’s correspondence reveals his intellectual depth but also profound personal struggles.
Bloom once stated he could memorize Wordsworth’s The Prelude in its Penguin edition of 736 pages. He claimed to read a thousand pages an hour and described being emotionally overwhelmed by works like Emily Dickinson. However, his letters frequently express depression, self-doubt, and a sense of intellectual inadequacy.
In correspondence with Northrop Frye, Bloom expressed deep disappointment in the critical reception of his magnum opus, The Anxiety of Influence. Frye remarked that Bloom’s work seemed to be “increasingly isolating himself from the general critical tradition.” Bloom admitted to feeling “gloomy” and questioning whether he was “smart or learned enough.”
Despite winning a MacArthur Fellowship and receiving praise from outlets like The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, Bloom struggled with depression. He once considered writing a modern version of Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Harold Bloom died in 2019 at age 89.