In 2003...

>In 2003, Harold Bloom wrote in the Boston Globe that there were only four great American novelists alive and working: Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Philip Roth.

Is this true? Does it really not get any better than these four?

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>Don DeLillo
Man, aging and dementia is sad. Bloom really lost it towards the end

>Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Philip Roth.
Yeah he's more or less right.

TFW no DFW

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>Asked about novelist David Foster Wallace, who took his own life in 2008, but who has a new book out, “The Pale King: An Unfinished Novel,” put together from manuscript chapters and files found in his computer, Bloom says, “You know, I don’t want to be offensive. But ‘Infinite Jest’ [regarded by many as Wallace’s masterpiece] is just awful. It seems ridiculous to have to say it. He can’t think, he can’t write. There’s no discernible talent.”

>It’s all a clear indication, Bloom notes, of the decline of literary standards. He was upset in 2003 when the National Book Award gave a special award to Stephen King. “But Stephen King is Cervantes compared with David Foster Wallace. We have no standards left. [Wallace] seems to have been a very sincere and troubled person, but that doesn’t mean I have to endure reading him. I even resented the use of the term from Shakespeare, when Hamlet calls the king’s jester Yorick, ‘a fellow of infinite jest.’

>“It’s sort of a dark time. Imaginative energy I think is very difficult to summon up when there are so many distractions. There’s a kind of Grisham’s law [in literature]; the bad drives out the good.”

Based

>Thomas Pynchon
>novelist

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Interest. As someone who has read and enjoyed DFW I honestly can't say I disagree that much. Dude is unreadable at times. However, there are some parts of the Pale King that are amazing

what a pseud

Definitely wrong about Roth

Why, when Roth is the best of the bunch?

Pynchon > McCarthy > Roth > DeLillo

Muh shiksas
Muh goy cattle
Muh embarrassing relatives

Roth was an extremely good writer. He is underrated these days, /pol/tards hate him for being a Jew and libtards hate him for being politically incorrect.

Out of those only McCarthy and Pynchon are real pals.

What's hilarious is that American Pastoral is the quintessential right wing boomer book

Which books have you read?

I’ve read The Plot Against America, American Pastoral, and The Human Stain.

I’m about to write an essay about his central theme: existential betrayal.

American Pastoral > Mason & Dixon > Underworld > The Human Stain > Gravity’s Rainbow > Blood Meridian > Portnoy’s Complaint > White Noise > Slow Learner > Mao > The Crying of Lot 49 > The Plot Against America

None of you have read Libra and it shows.

Is it good?

it was good but if thats the peak of America then you people are f*cked

Based. And I thought the pale king was amazing

>great
>American

I tend to enjoy Bloom’s analysis but Jesus Christ what a fucking snob. Peak boomer academy in my opinion.

Portnoys Complaint and Sabbath’s Theater

Cause he said a book you like is trash? Get a grip.

He’s definitely wrong about Roth living.
The Jew is stone fucking dead

>In 2003

He just died in 2018.
Do a google before you open your stupid fucking mouth

Bloom should be ignored primarily because he actually takes Kabbalah seriously, and praises Leaves of Grass for initiating a new age of spirituality in America. Literally an occultist.

you know things have gone sour when this old pasta generates unironic ass-chapping

And Isaac Newton should have been ignored because he was an alchemist.

Get a load of this goy who doesn't want to reveal the sephirot

This is your brain on materialism folks.

13788290
actual retard?

blessed trips wasted on a moron

This guy knows all 500 pages of paradise lost by heart. He's basically a literary monk. Wish I had his genetics.

He also admits to skimming books he reviews (he calls it "speed reading")

where does he review books?

Goodreads

figures

What is that pic? Moar pls....

letter written by pynchon
you can search warosu and google for more

delillo's best novel, as in not experimental and just him going to town with his strongest suits (set-pieces, military-political angles, conspiracy etc)

You sound so fucking gullible.

What about Gass?

don't mind if I do

At the time Tom Wolfe was still alive. Wasn't he highly rated?

Bonfire of the Vanities had good reviews. His later novels weren’t quite as well received.

Roasties BTFO once again.

DFW would be really entertaining to have alive right now.

No he was considered middlebrow.

Well he definitely thought other writers were good from that era. Whether he thought anything by someone younger than Tony Kushner is good is a good question.

Actually he praised Joshua Cohen's Book of Number's. So that's one millennial he approves of.

>DeLillo
Midwit
>McCarthy
Okay, but only on account of blood meridian
>Pynchon
True
>Roth
Lowbrow at best, just a friend of Bloom.

What about Sabbath's Theater?

His one truly great book. Overrated due to Bloom’s critical praise though.

P sure Bloom had a public dispute with Gass or some shit. After all, they were both competing on the same turf, except Gass was a bonafide artist whereas Bloom was essentially a schoolboy. Bloom tends to skip over the post-Nabokovians in general (probably from his inability to wrestle with Nabokov) except for Pynchon, who has the benefit of being his friend. His comments on Gaddis and Barthelme, for example, are limited if not virtually nonexistent.

Pynchon > McCarthy > DeLillo >>> Roth

I don’t believe for one second that Bloom’s old ass actually read all of Infinite Jest so his take on Wallace is irrelevant.

Did Bloom ever actually meet Pynchon? I know Pynchon is said to have met a lot of writers, though.

I’m pretty sure I’ve read something somewhere about them talking on the phone. I know for a fact he was friends with Roth, and still maintains regular correspondance with McCarthy. Pynchon would make further sense given his wife was a major New York editor.

This. This was from his era of ressentiment. Pretty sure Bloom stopped reading contemporary lit after Mason and Dixon.

He claims to have read Joshua Cohen's Book of Numbers. Might have read it in advance of Cohen's interview, though?

Let's be real, he's probably friendly with Delillo too.

One guy's opinion.
I like some of Delillo's stuff. Delillo's stuff made me want to read more.

Haven't read the other three, not sure I care if I do unless somebody wants to recommend each author's absolute best work.

obviously false, as i was alive and in 4th grade in 2003
fucking retard

>nderworld > The Human Stain > Gravity’s Rainbow > Blood Meridian > Portnoy’s Complaint > White Noise > Slow Learner > Mao > The Crying of Lot 49 > The Plot Against America

Is Libra worth it? I was going to read Mao II or Libra and never got around to it.

Slow Learner?

didn't read the other user's post, my bad man
is it his best?

Gravity’s Rainbow
Blood Meridian
American Pastoral

goddammit bloom is one ugly motherfucker just look at his stupid smelly lip. Sitting next to him would be my own personal hell as I'm sure he smells like very VERY rancid shit and piss

No love from Bloom for the ace, Mr. Kennedy, William Kennedy? If the city of Albany were to be destroyed, it would be possible to rebuild it by reading Kennedy’s novels.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=TWQzXPZFojk

>in the end, it turns out i was the fellow of infinite jest