Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom (born July 11, 1930) is an American professor and literary critic.

The "American Sublime"

Bloom's introduction to Modern Critical Interpretations: Thomas Pynchon (1987) features his canon of the "twentieth-century American Sublime," the greatest works of American art produced in the 20th century. Bloom singles out the following works for distinction:

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• Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West
• William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying
• The end of the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup
• "Nearly all" of Hart Crane
• Wallace Stevens's Auroras of Autumn
• Bud Powell's performance of "Un Poco Loco"
• "I Remember You" and "Parker's Mood" as performed by Charlie Parker
• "Byron the Light Bulb" from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow