About this episode

Heather Cass White discusses her experience editing Harold Bloom's letters and the insights gained from the project.

Virtual Memories Show 679: Heather Cass White “This was the most fun I ever had making a book. I got to sit on the attic floor, going though Harold’s papers and books, and there were a lot of surprises.” “A letter is a joy of Earth — It is denied the Gods —,” sez Emily Dickinson (#1672), and THE MAN WHO READ EVERYTHING: The Literary Letters of Harold Bloom (Yale University Press) proves it! Heather Cass White rejoins the show to talk about editing Harold Bloom ‘s letters for the book, her history with him and what she learned about him over the course of the project, and how the letters revealed a less determined Bloom and how she empathized with the struggles he went through in his career. We get into the people whose correspondence she included — Alvin Feinman, Northrop Frye, AR Ammons, John Hollander, John Ashbery, James Merrill, Henri Cole , and Ursula K Le Guin — and all the writers and critics she wishes she could have included, the books and projects Bloom proposed but never completed (or started) over the years, the fun she had writing the footnotes, the one person Bloom was intimidated to meet, Bloom’s role in the Canon Wars 30-40 years ago…

People in this episode

Host: Gil Roth

Guest: Heather Cass White

Topics covered

• literary letters
• editing
• Harold Bloom
• correspondence
• literature
• writing process

Keywords

• Harold Bloom
• literary letters
• editing
• correspondence
• Emily Dickinson
• literature
• writing

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: THE MAN WHO READ EVERYTHING: The Literary Letters of Harold Bloom, The Western Canon, Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore

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