I don’t remember the precise circumstances of first encountering Harold Bloom, but I can recall with much fondness my positive and warm feelings toward him. I remember, for instance, watching an interview given by Charlie Rose and being mildly transfixed by Bloom’s style of speaking, furrowed brows, and lugubrious looking face. But more than anything, I was impressed by his profound and extraordinary knowledge of literature.
I was hooked on Bloom — and I’m glad to say so. Bloom may well be the kind of intellectually domineering and elitist figure that can turn a person off to reading, but for me he did the opposite. It was probably because of him that I read a number of books and writers I might otherwise have foregone; and, more significantly, he helped cultivate in me an active and committed reading life. Bloom, I think it’s fair to say, had a serious influence on me. But as much as I admire and acknowledge Bloom’s merits, and as much as I am in complete awe of his enormous literary erudition, I found Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? to be an overall disappointing, at times frustrating, read.
Published in 2004, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? is an older book; Bloom has since written half a dozen others, including his intimate analysis of the works of, for him, the twelve most sublime American writers (The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime, 2015). Bloom’s lifelong interaction with these authors is on sparkling display, and the result is nothing less than a highly engaging read. The Daemon Knows—in style, tone, and even ideas—is not drastically different from this book, or indeed many of his works, which generally speaking I enjoy.
But with a book like Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? and the vital question it poses (and attempts to answer), I suppose my criteria of evaluation are different, and perhaps this helps explain why I appreciate a number of Bloom’s books but found this one rather insipid.
Bloom writes in the opening of the book that it “rises out of a personal need, reflecting a quest for sagacity that might solace and clarify the traumas of aging, of recovering from grave illness, and of grief for the loss of beloved friends.” I take Bloom at his word when he writes this and expect that what he’s about to say over the next three hundred pages will somehow reflect this to a significant degree. For me, it does not. Perhaps my expectations from the beginning were too geared toward the practical realm of wisdom; though, even if they were, it seems like Bloom could have (at more points in the book) related his discussions more directly back to the things he wrote at the beginning. Similarly, it seemed strange to me that Bloom did not spend more time discussing what ‘wisdom’ is and what it can help us do or become. I’m not requiring of Bloom that he provide a tight definition of ‘wisdom’ in the vein of some analytic philosopher, but more discussion on this matter would have been appreciated.
These matters aside, there are obvious merits to the book. As Bloom traverses through the Western literary tradition in order to seek out and compare sources of wisdom, we receive insightful discussions on Plato and Homer, Johnson and Goethe, Cervantes and Shakespeare, Montaigne and Bacon, Emerson and Nietzsche, and others. Bloom spends a sizeable part of the book discussing ancient wisdom literature — it’s from the Book of Job that Bloom draws the title of his book — as well the “ancient quarrel” (the feud between philosophy and poetry), a topic that resurfaces throughout. Most of these discussions are informative and insightful, though my particular favorite is Bloom speaking on Montaigne and Bacon. It’s here in the discussion of these two deeply introspective essayists (combined with Bloom’s teacherly guidance and analysis) that I found myself experiencing the kind of conversation I had hoped to find when picking up Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?
That said, there are still some frustrating things about the book (in addition to those mentioned above). Perhaps the biggest annoyance is Bloom’s frequent barbs at various groups, be it the Bush crowd, the “School of Resentment,” or other groups that Bloom loathes. It’s not so much that these barbs are awful or without truth — I sympathize with more than a few — it’s that they distract from the otherwise contemplative tone and topic of the book. At any rate, Bloom has expressed these sentiments many times elsewhere.
Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? is a bold book tackling a big question — though one that Bloom is more than qualified to guide us on when it comes to sources of wisdom in the Western literary tradition. This should not be denied. But between Bloom’s penchant for hyperbole, out of place stabs at one or another faction, and, more than anything, an impetus for the book which curiously never gets appropriately explored, I never felt as if I knew quite what kind of book I was reading. Literary colossus that he is, though, one never reads a book by Bloom and comes away empty-handed.
Spectatio 