INTERVIEWER: Can you explain to me your concept of the solitary reader? That’s who you say you address your books to.
HAROLD BLOOM: It’s not a concept. It’s just a fact. There are solitary readers all over the world. I don’t have any special insight into this. I do not know why it is that certain young people, from the beginning, are loners—perfectly sane—who want to go and be alone with a very good book. Again, it’s the saving remnant. It’s a sort of strange grace and of course I’m profoundly thankful for it. So you don’t have to ask me what I mean by the solitary reader.
Read the rest here.
Discussions on Professor Bloom's latest book, The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life.
The Curmudgeonly Sage reciting Wallace Stevens' "Tea at the Palace of Hoon"
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