Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812997832
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 544
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND KIRKUS REVIEWS Hailed as “the indispensable critic” by The New York Review of Books, Harold Bloom—New York Times bestselling writer and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University—has for decades been sharing with readers and students his genius and passion for understanding literature and explaining why it matters. Now he turns at long last to his beloved writers of our national literature in an expansive and mesmerizing book that is one of his most incisive and profoundly personal to date. A product of five years of writing and a lifetime of reading and scholarship, The Daemon Knows may be Bloom’s most masterly book yet. Pairing Walt Whitman with Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson with Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne with Henry James, Mark Twain with Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens with T. S. Eliot, and William Faulkner with Hart Crane, Bloom places these writers’ works in conversation with one another, exploring their relationship to the “daemon”—the spark of genius or Orphic muse—in their creation and helping us understand their writing with new immediacy and relevance. It is the intensity of their preoccupation with the sublime, Bloom proposes, that distinguishes these American writers from their European predecessors. As he reflects on a lifetime lived among the works explored in this book, Bloom has himself, in this magnificent achievement, created a work touched by the daemon. Praise for The Daemon Knows “Enrapturing . . . radiant . . . intoxicating . . . Harold Bloom, who bestrides our literary world like a willfully idiosyncratic colossus, belongs to the party of rapture.”—Cynthia Ozick, The New York Times Book Review “The capstone to a lifetime of thinking, writing and teaching . . . The primary strength of The Daemon Knows is the brilliance and penetration of the connections Bloom makes among the great writers of the past, the shrewd sketching of intellectual feuds or oppositions that he calls agons. . . . Bloom’s books are like a splendid map of literature, a majestic aerial view that clarifies what we cannot see from the ground.”—The Washington Post “Audacious . . . The Yale literary scholar has added another remarkable treatise to his voluminous body of work.”—The Huffington Post “The sublime The Daemon Knows is a veritable feast for the general reader (me) as well as the advanced (I assume) one.”—John Ashbery “Mesmerizing.”—New York Journal of Books “Bloom is a formidable critic, an extravagant intellect.”—Chicago Tribune “As always, Bloom conveys the intimate, urgent, compelling sense of why it matters that we read these canonical authors.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Few people write criticism as nakedly confident as Bloom’s any more.”—The Guardian (U.K.)
The Daemon Knows
Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812997832
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 544
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND KIRKUS REVIEWS Hailed as “the indispensable critic” by The New York Review of Books, Harold Bloom—New York Times bestselling writer and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University—has for decades been sharing with readers and students his genius and passion for understanding literature and explaining why it matters. Now he turns at long last to his beloved writers of our national literature in an expansive and mesmerizing book that is one of his most incisive and profoundly personal to date. A product of five years of writing and a lifetime of reading and scholarship, The Daemon Knows may be Bloom’s most masterly book yet. Pairing Walt Whitman with Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson with Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne with Henry James, Mark Twain with Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens with T. S. Eliot, and William Faulkner with Hart Crane, Bloom places these writers’ works in conversation with one another, exploring their relationship to the “daemon”—the spark of genius or Orphic muse—in their creation and helping us understand their writing with new immediacy and relevance. It is the intensity of their preoccupation with the sublime, Bloom proposes, that distinguishes these American writers from their European predecessors. As he reflects on a lifetime lived among the works explored in this book, Bloom has himself, in this magnificent achievement, created a work touched by the daemon. Praise for The Daemon Knows “Enrapturing . . . radiant . . . intoxicating . . . Harold Bloom, who bestrides our literary world like a willfully idiosyncratic colossus, belongs to the party of rapture.”—Cynthia Ozick, The New York Times Book Review “The capstone to a lifetime of thinking, writing and teaching . . . The primary strength of The Daemon Knows is the brilliance and penetration of the connections Bloom makes among the great writers of the past, the shrewd sketching of intellectual feuds or oppositions that he calls agons. . . . Bloom’s books are like a splendid map of literature, a majestic aerial view that clarifies what we cannot see from the ground.”—The Washington Post “Audacious . . . The Yale literary scholar has added another remarkable treatise to his voluminous body of work.”—The Huffington Post “The sublime The Daemon Knows is a veritable feast for the general reader (me) as well as the advanced (I assume) one.”—John Ashbery “Mesmerizing.”—New York Journal of Books “Bloom is a formidable critic, an extravagant intellect.”—Chicago Tribune “As always, Bloom conveys the intimate, urgent, compelling sense of why it matters that we read these canonical authors.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Few people write criticism as nakedly confident as Bloom’s any more.”—The Guardian (U.K.)
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812997832
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 544
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND KIRKUS REVIEWS Hailed as “the indispensable critic” by The New York Review of Books, Harold Bloom—New York Times bestselling writer and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University—has for decades been sharing with readers and students his genius and passion for understanding literature and explaining why it matters. Now he turns at long last to his beloved writers of our national literature in an expansive and mesmerizing book that is one of his most incisive and profoundly personal to date. A product of five years of writing and a lifetime of reading and scholarship, The Daemon Knows may be Bloom’s most masterly book yet. Pairing Walt Whitman with Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson with Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne with Henry James, Mark Twain with Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens with T. S. Eliot, and William Faulkner with Hart Crane, Bloom places these writers’ works in conversation with one another, exploring their relationship to the “daemon”—the spark of genius or Orphic muse—in their creation and helping us understand their writing with new immediacy and relevance. It is the intensity of their preoccupation with the sublime, Bloom proposes, that distinguishes these American writers from their European predecessors. As he reflects on a lifetime lived among the works explored in this book, Bloom has himself, in this magnificent achievement, created a work touched by the daemon. Praise for The Daemon Knows “Enrapturing . . . radiant . . . intoxicating . . . Harold Bloom, who bestrides our literary world like a willfully idiosyncratic colossus, belongs to the party of rapture.”—Cynthia Ozick, The New York Times Book Review “The capstone to a lifetime of thinking, writing and teaching . . . The primary strength of The Daemon Knows is the brilliance and penetration of the connections Bloom makes among the great writers of the past, the shrewd sketching of intellectual feuds or oppositions that he calls agons. . . . Bloom’s books are like a splendid map of literature, a majestic aerial view that clarifies what we cannot see from the ground.”—The Washington Post “Audacious . . . The Yale literary scholar has added another remarkable treatise to his voluminous body of work.”—The Huffington Post “The sublime The Daemon Knows is a veritable feast for the general reader (me) as well as the advanced (I assume) one.”—John Ashbery “Mesmerizing.”—New York Journal of Books “Bloom is a formidable critic, an extravagant intellect.”—Chicago Tribune “As always, Bloom conveys the intimate, urgent, compelling sense of why it matters that we read these canonical authors.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Few people write criticism as nakedly confident as Bloom’s any more.”—The Guardian (U.K.)
Daemon
Author: Daniel Suarez
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101007516
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 482
Book Description
Daniel Suarez’s New York Times bestselling debut high-tech thriller is “so frightening even the government has taken note” (Entertainment Weekly). Daemons: computer programs that silently run in the background, waiting for a specific event or time to execute. They power almost every service. They make our networked world possible. But they also make it vulnerable... When the obituary of legendary computer game architect Matthew Sobol appears online, a previously dormant daemon activates, initiating a chain of events that begins to unravel our interconnected world. This daemon reads news headlines, recruits human followers, and orders assassinations. With Sobol’s secrets buried with him, and as new layers of his daemon are unleashed, it’s up to Detective Peter Sebeck to stop a self-replicating virtual killer before it achieves its ultimate purpose—one that goes far beyond anything Sebeck could have imagined...
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101007516
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 482
Book Description
Daniel Suarez’s New York Times bestselling debut high-tech thriller is “so frightening even the government has taken note” (Entertainment Weekly). Daemons: computer programs that silently run in the background, waiting for a specific event or time to execute. They power almost every service. They make our networked world possible. But they also make it vulnerable... When the obituary of legendary computer game architect Matthew Sobol appears online, a previously dormant daemon activates, initiating a chain of events that begins to unravel our interconnected world. This daemon reads news headlines, recruits human followers, and orders assassinations. With Sobol’s secrets buried with him, and as new layers of his daemon are unleashed, it’s up to Detective Peter Sebeck to stop a self-replicating virtual killer before it achieves its ultimate purpose—one that goes far beyond anything Sebeck could have imagined...
The Daemon Knows
Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198753594
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 543
Book Description
In The Daemon Knows, celebrated American literary critic Harold Bloom turns his attention to the writers of his own national literary tradition, from Walt Whitman and Herman Melville to William Faulkner and Hart Crane. The distillation of a lifetime lived among the works explored in these pages, this book is also one of Bloom's most profoundly personal to date.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198753594
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 543
Book Description
In The Daemon Knows, celebrated American literary critic Harold Bloom turns his attention to the writers of his own national literary tradition, from Walt Whitman and Herman Melville to William Faulkner and Hart Crane. The distillation of a lifetime lived among the works explored in these pages, this book is also one of Bloom's most profoundly personal to date.
Daemon Voices
Author: Philip Pullman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525562958
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 490
Book Description
From the internationally best-selling author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, a spellbinding journey into the secrets of his art--the narratives that have shaped his vision, his experience of writing, and the keys to mastering the art of storytelling. One of the most highly acclaimed and best-selling authors of our time now gives us a book that charts the history of his own enchantment with story--from his own books to those of Blake, Milton, Dickens, and the Brothers Grimm, among others--and delves into the role of story in education, religion, and science. At once personal and wide-ranging, Daemon Voices is both a revelation of the writing mind and the methods of a great contemporary master, and a fascinating exploration of storytelling itself.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525562958
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 490
Book Description
From the internationally best-selling author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, a spellbinding journey into the secrets of his art--the narratives that have shaped his vision, his experience of writing, and the keys to mastering the art of storytelling. One of the most highly acclaimed and best-selling authors of our time now gives us a book that charts the history of his own enchantment with story--from his own books to those of Blake, Milton, Dickens, and the Brothers Grimm, among others--and delves into the role of story in education, religion, and science. At once personal and wide-ranging, Daemon Voices is both a revelation of the writing mind and the methods of a great contemporary master, and a fascinating exploration of storytelling itself.
The Bright Book of Life
Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1984898434
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 545
Book Description
America's most original and controversial literary critic writes trenchantly about forty-eight masterworks spanning the Western tradition—from Don Quixote to Wuthering Heights to Invisible Man—in his first book devoted exclusively to narrative fiction. In this valedictory volume, Yale professor Harold Bloom—who for more than half a century was regarded as America's most daringly original and controversial literary critic—gives us his only book devoted entirely to the art of the novel. With his hallmark percipience, remarkable scholarship, and extraordinary devotion to sublimity, Bloom offers meditations on forty-eight essential works spanning the Western canon, from Don Quixote to Book of Numbers; from Wuthering Heights to Absalom, Absalom!; from Les Misérables to Blood Meridian; from Vanity Fair to Invisible Man. Here are trenchant appreciations of fiction by, among many others, Austen, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, James, Conrad, Lawrence, Le Guin, and Sebald. Whether you have already read these books, plan to, or simply care about the importance and power of fiction, Harold Bloom is your unparalleled guide to understanding literature with new intimacy.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1984898434
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 545
Book Description
America's most original and controversial literary critic writes trenchantly about forty-eight masterworks spanning the Western tradition—from Don Quixote to Wuthering Heights to Invisible Man—in his first book devoted exclusively to narrative fiction. In this valedictory volume, Yale professor Harold Bloom—who for more than half a century was regarded as America's most daringly original and controversial literary critic—gives us his only book devoted entirely to the art of the novel. With his hallmark percipience, remarkable scholarship, and extraordinary devotion to sublimity, Bloom offers meditations on forty-eight essential works spanning the Western canon, from Don Quixote to Book of Numbers; from Wuthering Heights to Absalom, Absalom!; from Les Misérables to Blood Meridian; from Vanity Fair to Invisible Man. Here are trenchant appreciations of fiction by, among many others, Austen, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, James, Conrad, Lawrence, Le Guin, and Sebald. Whether you have already read these books, plan to, or simply care about the importance and power of fiction, Harold Bloom is your unparalleled guide to understanding literature with new intimacy.
The Anatomy of Influence
Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300167601
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 368
Book Description
In this, his most comprehensive and accessible study of influence, Bloom leads readers through the labyrinthine paths which link the writers and critics who have informed and inspired him for so many years.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300167601
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 368
Book Description
In this, his most comprehensive and accessible study of influence, Bloom leads readers through the labyrinthine paths which link the writers and critics who have informed and inspired him for so many years.
Possessed by Memory
Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525520899
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 545
Book Description
In arguably his most personal and lasting book, America's most daringly original and controversial critic gives us brief, luminous readings of more than eighty texts by canonical authors-- texts he has had by heart since childhood. Gone are the polemics. Here, instead, in a memoir of sorts--an inward journey from childhood to ninety--Bloom argues elegiacally with nobody but Bloom, interested only in the influence of the mind upon itself when it absorbs the highest and most enduring imaginative literature. He offers more than eighty meditations on poems and prose that have haunted him since childhood and which he has possessed by memory: from the Psalms and Ecclesiastes to Shakespeare and Dr. Johnson; Spenser and Milton to Wordsworth and Keats; Whitman and Browning to Joyce and Proust; Tolstoy and Yeats to Delmore Schwartz and Amy Clampitt; Blake to Wallace Stevens--and so much more. And though he has written before about some of these authors, these exegeses, written in the winter of his life, are movingly informed by "the freshness of last things." As Bloom writes movingly: "One of my concerns throughout Possessed by Memory is with the beloved dead. Most of my good friends in my generation have departed. Their voices are still in my ears. I find that they are woven into what I read. I listen not only for their voices but also for the voice I heard before the world was made. My other concern is religious, in the widest sense. For me poetry and spirituality fuse as a single entity. All my long life I have sought to isolate poetic knowledge. This also involves a knowledge of God and gods. I see imaginative literature as a kind of theurgy in which the divine is summoned, maintained, and augmented."
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525520899
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 545
Book Description
In arguably his most personal and lasting book, America's most daringly original and controversial critic gives us brief, luminous readings of more than eighty texts by canonical authors-- texts he has had by heart since childhood. Gone are the polemics. Here, instead, in a memoir of sorts--an inward journey from childhood to ninety--Bloom argues elegiacally with nobody but Bloom, interested only in the influence of the mind upon itself when it absorbs the highest and most enduring imaginative literature. He offers more than eighty meditations on poems and prose that have haunted him since childhood and which he has possessed by memory: from the Psalms and Ecclesiastes to Shakespeare and Dr. Johnson; Spenser and Milton to Wordsworth and Keats; Whitman and Browning to Joyce and Proust; Tolstoy and Yeats to Delmore Schwartz and Amy Clampitt; Blake to Wallace Stevens--and so much more. And though he has written before about some of these authors, these exegeses, written in the winter of his life, are movingly informed by "the freshness of last things." As Bloom writes movingly: "One of my concerns throughout Possessed by Memory is with the beloved dead. Most of my good friends in my generation have departed. Their voices are still in my ears. I find that they are woven into what I read. I listen not only for their voices but also for the voice I heard before the world was made. My other concern is religious, in the widest sense. For me poetry and spirituality fuse as a single entity. All my long life I have sought to isolate poetic knowledge. This also involves a knowledge of God and gods. I see imaginative literature as a kind of theurgy in which the divine is summoned, maintained, and augmented."
The Daemon
Author: Anthony Peake
Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
ISBN: 1848379641
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 440
Book Description
"Anthony Peake is engaged in one of the most important strands of ontological inquiry of modern times, nothing less than unravelling the Gordian knot that is the mystery of our existence." - Bob Rickard, founder editor of Fortean Times Appearing in Greek mythology and popularised by Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, the Daemon is broadly understood as a guiding spirit which exists as one half of your split self. In The Daemon: A Guide to Your Extraordinary Secret Self, Anthony Peake proposes that people consist of not one but two separate consciousnesses - everyday consciousness and that of The Daemon, a higher being that seems to possess knowledge of future events. Drawing upon phenomena such as déjà vu and Near-Death Experiences, he explores the ways that our Daemon breaks through into our consciousness and can subconsciously impact upon our decisions. From the author of Is There Life After Death?, this endlessly fascinating book draws upon the neurology, metaphysics and theology. It also follows the stories of famous figures, including Byron, Geothe, Jean Cocteau and many others, who have 'felt a force outside themselves'. This radical book will change the way you perceive reality, time and ultimately yourself.
Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
ISBN: 1848379641
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 440
Book Description
"Anthony Peake is engaged in one of the most important strands of ontological inquiry of modern times, nothing less than unravelling the Gordian knot that is the mystery of our existence." - Bob Rickard, founder editor of Fortean Times Appearing in Greek mythology and popularised by Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, the Daemon is broadly understood as a guiding spirit which exists as one half of your split self. In The Daemon: A Guide to Your Extraordinary Secret Self, Anthony Peake proposes that people consist of not one but two separate consciousnesses - everyday consciousness and that of The Daemon, a higher being that seems to possess knowledge of future events. Drawing upon phenomena such as déjà vu and Near-Death Experiences, he explores the ways that our Daemon breaks through into our consciousness and can subconsciously impact upon our decisions. From the author of Is There Life After Death?, this endlessly fascinating book draws upon the neurology, metaphysics and theology. It also follows the stories of famous figures, including Byron, Geothe, Jean Cocteau and many others, who have 'felt a force outside themselves'. This radical book will change the way you perceive reality, time and ultimately yourself.
Freedom (TM)
Author: Daniel Suarez
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101184604
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
The New York Times bestseller Daemon unleashed a terrifying technological vision of an all-powerful, malicious computer program. Now, our world is the Daemon's world—unless someone stops it once and for all... The Daemon is in absolute control, using an expanded network of shadowy operatives to tear apart civilization and build it anew. Even as civil war breaks out in the American Midwest in a wave of nightmarish violence, former detective Pete Sebeck—the Daemon's most powerful, though reluctant, operative—must lead a small band of enlightened humans in a movement designed to protect the new world order. But the private armies of global business are preparing to crush the Daemon once and for all. In a world of shattered loyalties, collapsing societies, and seemingly endless betrayal, the only thing worth fighting for may be nothing less than the freedom of all humankind.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101184604
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
The New York Times bestseller Daemon unleashed a terrifying technological vision of an all-powerful, malicious computer program. Now, our world is the Daemon's world—unless someone stops it once and for all... The Daemon is in absolute control, using an expanded network of shadowy operatives to tear apart civilization and build it anew. Even as civil war breaks out in the American Midwest in a wave of nightmarish violence, former detective Pete Sebeck—the Daemon's most powerful, though reluctant, operative—must lead a small band of enlightened humans in a movement designed to protect the new world order. But the private armies of global business are preparing to crush the Daemon once and for all. In a world of shattered loyalties, collapsing societies, and seemingly endless betrayal, the only thing worth fighting for may be nothing less than the freedom of all humankind.
The Daemon Knows
Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812987462
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 546
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND KIRKUS REVIEWS Hailed as “the indispensable critic” by The New York Review of Books, Harold Bloom—New York Times bestselling writer and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University—has for decades been sharing with readers and students his genius and passion for understanding literature and explaining why it matters. Now he turns at long last to his beloved writers of our national literature in an expansive and mesmerizing book that is one of his most incisive and profoundly personal to date. A product of five years of writing and a lifetime of reading and scholarship, The Daemon Knows may be Bloom’s most masterly book yet. Pairing Walt Whitman with Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson with Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne with Henry James, Mark Twain with Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens with T. S. Eliot, and William Faulkner with Hart Crane, Bloom places these writers’ works in conversation with one another, exploring their relationship to the “daemon”—the spark of genius or Orphic muse—in their creation and helping us understand their writing with new immediacy and relevance. It is the intensity of their preoccupation with the sublime, Bloom proposes, that distinguishes these American writers from their European predecessors. As he reflects on a lifetime lived among the works explored in this book, Bloom has himself, in this magnificent achievement, created a work touched by the daemon. Praise for The Daemon Knows “Enrapturing . . . radiant . . . intoxicating . . . Harold Bloom, who bestrides our literary world like a willfully idiosyncratic colossus, belongs to the party of rapture.”—Cynthia Ozick, The New York Times Book Review “The capstone to a lifetime of thinking, writing and teaching . . . The primary strength of The Daemon Knows is the brilliance and penetration of the connections Bloom makes among the great writers of the past, the shrewd sketching of intellectual feuds or oppositions that he calls agons. . . . Bloom’s books are like a splendid map of literature, a majestic aerial view that clarifies what we cannot see from the ground.”—The Washington Post “Audacious . . . The Yale literary scholar has added another remarkable treatise to his voluminous body of work.”—The Huffington Post “The sublime The Daemon Knows is a veritable feast for the general reader (me) as well as the advanced (I assume) one.”—John Ashbery “Mesmerizing.”—New York Journal of Books “Bloom is a formidable critic, an extravagant intellect.”—Chicago Tribune “As always, Bloom conveys the intimate, urgent, compelling sense of why it matters that we read these canonical authors.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Few people write criticism as nakedly confident as Bloom’s any more.”—The Guardian (U.K.)
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812987462
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 546
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND KIRKUS REVIEWS Hailed as “the indispensable critic” by The New York Review of Books, Harold Bloom—New York Times bestselling writer and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University—has for decades been sharing with readers and students his genius and passion for understanding literature and explaining why it matters. Now he turns at long last to his beloved writers of our national literature in an expansive and mesmerizing book that is one of his most incisive and profoundly personal to date. A product of five years of writing and a lifetime of reading and scholarship, The Daemon Knows may be Bloom’s most masterly book yet. Pairing Walt Whitman with Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson with Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne with Henry James, Mark Twain with Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens with T. S. Eliot, and William Faulkner with Hart Crane, Bloom places these writers’ works in conversation with one another, exploring their relationship to the “daemon”—the spark of genius or Orphic muse—in their creation and helping us understand their writing with new immediacy and relevance. It is the intensity of their preoccupation with the sublime, Bloom proposes, that distinguishes these American writers from their European predecessors. As he reflects on a lifetime lived among the works explored in this book, Bloom has himself, in this magnificent achievement, created a work touched by the daemon. Praise for The Daemon Knows “Enrapturing . . . radiant . . . intoxicating . . . Harold Bloom, who bestrides our literary world like a willfully idiosyncratic colossus, belongs to the party of rapture.”—Cynthia Ozick, The New York Times Book Review “The capstone to a lifetime of thinking, writing and teaching . . . The primary strength of The Daemon Knows is the brilliance and penetration of the connections Bloom makes among the great writers of the past, the shrewd sketching of intellectual feuds or oppositions that he calls agons. . . . Bloom’s books are like a splendid map of literature, a majestic aerial view that clarifies what we cannot see from the ground.”—The Washington Post “Audacious . . . The Yale literary scholar has added another remarkable treatise to his voluminous body of work.”—The Huffington Post “The sublime The Daemon Knows is a veritable feast for the general reader (me) as well as the advanced (I assume) one.”—John Ashbery “Mesmerizing.”—New York Journal of Books “Bloom is a formidable critic, an extravagant intellect.”—Chicago Tribune “As always, Bloom conveys the intimate, urgent, compelling sense of why it matters that we read these canonical authors.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Few people write criticism as nakedly confident as Bloom’s any more.”—The Guardian (U.K.)