Charlie Rose

Buy This Item Charlie Rose  Available from Amazon  $24.95  on 11-28-2008     First, Yale professor and author Harold Bloom discusses his new book, The Western Canon, and the increasing politicization of literary study. Then, animation director Chuck Jones -- creator of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and the Roadrunner -- discusses his retrospective at the American Museum of the Moving Image, the origins of his characters and his career in cartoons. Reader Reviews Bloom appears to promote his book 'The Western Canon'. Canonical works are those , he says, which are essential in the study of the literary tradition. He points to their special cognitive power ( Ability to help us think in a deeper way) their rhetorical ( Metaphorical power) their aesthetic power. He talks about the Canon, and laments the state of Literary Study in America which he says is practiced now in at best ten universities. The 'school of resentment' or polically correct, the pseudo- feminists, pseudo- Marxists, pseudo- historicists have he says replaced any real appreciation of the aesthetic quality of the works. He also attacks those who wish him to use Literature to promote 'moral values'. He will have no such thing either. Neither the Left nor the Right, nor the political and ideological uses of Literature interest him. He talks about the power of the Hebrew Bible but once again puts forth his own idiosyncratic J thesis as if were cannonical itself. He does show a greater degree of humility in admitting that he will undoubtedly make many blunders in his selection of the 'canonical works' of the last half of the twentieth century. Bloom is amusing, immensely knowledgeable and a real pleasure to listen to. He himself knows he is not always right , and he isn't. But his irrepressible love of Literature and his deep understanding of it make any discussion with him a delight for those who care for these things also.

Charlie Rose Available from Amazon Price: $24.95 Updated on 11-28-2008.

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