America's leading literary critic on the uses of deep reading. Practical, inspir
ational and learned, How to Read and Why is Bloom's manifesto for the prepondera
nce of written culture. In the vastly influential The Western Canon, Harold Bloo
m outlined what we should read to understand a greater depth of the individual s
elf.
How to Read and Why continues the argument and focusses on how we use li
terature in order to gain deeper self-awareness. Poems, stories, novels, plays a
nd parables are all analysed as forms of writing as immersion, the language of i
ndividuality and inwardness: Shakespeare's sonnets, the short stories of Hemingw
ay and de Cervantes, the novels of Proust and Calvino, Sophocles's Oedipus Rex a
nd Mark's Gospel. Harold Bloom also addresses the idea of why we read: increased
individuality, respite from visual bombardment, a return to 'deep feeling' and
'deep thinking'.
How to Read and Why is an essential book for any reader, an
introduction to the world of written culture, an inspirational self-help book fo
r students and teachers alike.
