I suppose it's hoping for too much to expect to find sense in the increasingly bizarre and self-centred pronouncements of Harold Bloom, but even by the standards of the literary world, this (via ALDaily) is special:
Of course, the United States is in a terrible condition, we have a kind of fascist regime here – I think it's the real truth about it and you can quote me on that. A few years ago, when I was in Barcelona receiving the national prize of Catalonia, I remarked when somebody asked me a question about president George Bush: "He is semiliterate at best, to call him a Fascist would be to flatter him." He has now sufficiently grown in depth that you are no longer flattering him by calling him a Fascist – it is simply a descriptive remark.
It's almost a parody of the self-regarding man of letters - "when I was in Barcelona receiving the national prize of Catalonia". Oscar Wilde reincarnated as a witless narcissist. I love "you can quote me on that". Hold the front page! Literary Giant Calls Bush a Fascist!
He thinks there's still some hope for the US in its Asian immigrants - the new Jews - but not for us English: the reviews of his "Hamlet: Poem Unlimited" weren't good enough, apparently:
This is still a vibrant and living culture, whereas the English are incorrigible. They have no minds at all. That little book had a mixed reception in the United States, a terrible reception in England, a very good reception in other countries. The Italian, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Scandinavian readers want to understand me, the English don't. I really don't want to go there again, it's an absolutely dead culture. It no longer has any poets, it no longer has any novelists, it cannot produce a composer or a painter anymore. The French are not much better.
Well, that's us told.
'Hark the Harold (of) Anglos sing'
..........sorry, I couldn't stop myself ;)
Posted by: DaninVan | October 29, 2005 at 08:12 AM