A new book by America-s leading literary critic on the uses of deep reading. Practical, inspirational and learned, How to Read and Why is Bloom-s manifesto for the preponderance of written culture.In the vastly influential The Western Canon, Harold Bloom outlined what we should read to understand a greater depth of the individual self. How to Read and Why continues the argument and focusses on how we use literature in order to gain deeper self-awareness. Poems, stories, novels, plays and parables are all analysed as forms of writing as immersion, the language of individuality and inwardness: Shakespeare-s sonnets, the short stories of Hemingway and de Cervantes, the novels of Proust and Calvino, Sophocles-s Oedipus Rex and Mark-s Gospel. Harold Bloom also addresses the idea of why we read: increased individuality, respite from visual bombardment, a return to -deep feeling- and -deep thinking-.How to Read and Why is an essential book for any reader, an introduction to the world of writt
