There’s a very interesting discussion brewing over at Todd’s place concerning the nature of contemporary literary criticism. Here’s but a snip of something I posted:
I find it more than a little ironic that Derrida, Debord, Sontag and now Baudrillard have all passed on to the big whatever in the sky, and Harold Bloom is still very much among us, and certainly the only literary critic that is known to a mainstream audience. His work is widely studied not just by academics, but by shoppers at Barnes & Noble. Don’t be surprised to see him pop up on The Daily Show one of these nights; how many lit-critters can say that?
You Bloomers out there might remember/enjoy my webcomic over here…
28 July 2009 at 7:24 am
You may have seen it, but Stephen Greenblatt appeared on The Colbert Report (not the Daily Show, sure, but it’s close enough) and was surprisingly funny. He–to me– seems a bit more like a real person than Bloom, though not too less known. I suppose Bloom does have that outside-of-academia appeal that may have eluded Greenblatt, though.