Harold Bloom is talking about Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, but I liked his cranky-old-man response to his being critical of "politicization of teaching literature":

Critical, young man, is hardly the word. I stand against it like Jeremiah prophesying in Jerusalem. It has destroyed most of university culture. The teaching of high literature now hardly exists in the United States. The academy is in ruins, and they've destroyed themselves.

Replace the periods with exclamation points and add some flying spittle, and that's how I imagine Bloom really responded.

Comments

[Christopher Gorton]

Harold Bloom is my personal hero, seriously, everything he says about literature in academia is, in my humble opinion, spot on.

[michaelsean]

Flying spittle is always the sign of a good stand against something.