I posted yesterday about the first story I ever heard about Harold Bloom. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this story. It is a long-ago story from nearly two decades ago, but the character I imagined in my mind stuck. The pompous old wind bag, as they say in Disney movies about fat kings (see: Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty).
But there was more to find out. More conversations to be had. The offending specter of the old guard. A man who opposed the very blood and viscera of my mid-late 90s SUNY education, which was steeped in social politics. Feminist readings, Marxist readers. Lacan, Faucault, de Saussure, Derrida. Reading against the grain. I remember that sentence. Reading against the grain.
And I loved it. I fell for it. Because I wanted to see the secret codes hidden in texts. How the books we all read reflect our hegemony. How power structures reside in grammar. According to de Saussure, an early 19th century Swiss linguist, we only understand words negatively. In other words, by what they are not. Yeah, you know what? There is no way I am going to do Saussurian theory any justice here. You can google him.
People who Bloom has fought bloody batttles against and also befriended personally. He has said:
"After fighting the New Criticism so endlessly, I suddenly found myself fighting the Deconstructionists, another group of people who were and are my personal friends. Except for one—I don't talk to Derrida anymore, for all sorts of complicated personal reasons that I wouldn't want to bring up. But I continue to badly miss Paul de Man, whom I deeply love as a person, though we always fought and couldn't agree on anything."
So, now I had to think of Leo (Bloom) as a more complex creature. A man who could distinguish the argument from the arguer. Who could even love those who disagreed with him.
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