So I’m taking a break from the workload, and I found A Literary Award for Stephen King in The New York Times to be a pretty disheartening article. Especially this nonsense from Yale literature god Harold Bloom:
Told of Mr. King’s selection, some in the literary world responded with laughter and dismay. “He is a man who writes what used to be called penny dreadfuls,” said Harold Bloom, the Yale professor, critic and self-appointed custodian of the literary canon. “That they could believe that there is any literary value there or any aesthetic accomplishment or signs of an inventive human intelligence is simply a testimony to their own idiocy.”
And that right there, folks, is why literature is dying: that arrogant, elitist attitude. It shouldn’t be surprising that this is the same attitude behind all the damners of the Harry Potter franchise. Basically, if something isn’t Chandler, Cheever, Shakespeare, Faulkner, Hemingway, etc., it’s not worth reading, and everything else is trash. I’d rather be a popular author any day of the week than a pompous, asinine stuffed shirt like this.
Of course, you watch: if I ever actually produce a popular novel or movie or whatever, the Kenyon alumni bulletin will turn up its little nose and sniff just like Mr. Bloom. What rot.
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