Slate's Bizbox
the book club: New books dissected over e-mail.

Stories and Poems for Highly Intelligent Children of All Ages

the book club
entries
1234
from: Nell Minow
to: Sarah Lyall

An Uninviting Introduction 

Updated Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2001, at 7:21 PM ET

Who are these people and what are they talking about?

Buy the book.

Harold Bloom, by designating his new collection as Stories and Poems for Highly Intelligent Children of All Ages, has locked in a position for selling the gift for every genius grandchild for the 2001 holiday season. (It already occupies a respectable rank at Amazon.) And he makes it all but review-proof. If I don't like it, I must be neither highly intelligent nor the "authentic reader" he assures us will find the works in the book illuminating and entertaining. Disapproval could only be the consequence or even the cause of the "dumbing-down that is destroying our literary culture."

One would have to be a churlish critic indeed (I can't help writing like that--I've just spent two weeks immersed in Great Writers of the 19th century) to object to a book that includes selections from indisputable core canon items like Kipling's Just So Stories and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Aesop's Fables, the Arabian Nights, Lear's nonsense rhymes, selections from Lewis Carroll's Alice adventures, W.S. Gilbert's "Nightmare" patter song lyrics, and fairy tales by Andersen and Grimm.

So, yes, I enjoyed reading it very much. But that requires keeping foremost in mind that while the publisher might like you to think of it as a definitive collection designed to beguile a 21st-century child into reading something written 100 years before Captain Underpants and Lemony Snicket, its true organizing principle is much more personal and modest. Bloom simply says that these are the things he loved as a child that he still loves. He admits that not all of the authors are Great and has as his selection criteria only that the poem or story moved him "out of apathy or weariness into wonder and joy." If I didn't think it would give Bloom something suitably Victorian like gout or apoplexy, I might call this his Chicken Soup for the Precociously Literary Soul. But in consideration of his preference for statelier times, I think of it more as that most idiosyncratic of anthologies, a commonplace book.

Still, I think it is fair to argue with his format and especially with his introduction, which I found discursive to the point of querulousness. Who is he talking to? His editor? It is a little disappointing to pick up a selection like this and conclude from the introduction that the author was much better at enjoying what he read than at learning anything from it about how to engage and delight a reader.

He begins very oddly. Instead of telling us something about his hopes in preparing the book or his affection for the pieces it contains, he simply counts the number and measures the length of the collected pieces: "Here are forty-one stories and tales (many of them quite short) and eighty-three poems (only Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market is at all long)." Continuing on this numerological bent, he brings up Lewis Carroll, only because more of his work is included than that of any other author. But his discussion consists of an explanation that Bloom's favorite Carroll poem, "The Hunting of the Snark," was too long to be included. Nevertheless, we then get the first two stanzas and some thoughts on that poem, instead of a discussion about any of Carroll's poetry that actually made it into the book. He continues with thoughts about why kids don't read the way they used to and why they should, intermixed with a few comments about the collection he is presenting, but he never makes you excited about reading it.

There are some nice things in the introduction. I liked Wallace Stevens' test for writing: It must change, it must give pleasure, and it must be abstract. Bloom explains, "Stevens did not mean 'abstract' as opposed to 'real,' but 'withdrawn from,' taken out from something, from the stale coverings that masquerade as reality." I wish Bloom had showed us how he applied that template or his marvelous description a bit earlier, "rich plangency," to the material he chose for the book.

I could not help but be touched by his conclusion about the limits of friends and families to reach a kind of deep loneliness that can only be soothed and inspired by books. But I so wish that he had used this introduction to inspire and entice those intelligent children of all ages who might come to this book unfamiliar with the authors and a non-contemporary style of writing. I think they will find this introduction uninviting.

They will not feel any more warmly greeted by the book's structure. Its division into four seasons is arbitrary and unhelpful. The book's greatest weakness is its failure to provide any kind of introduction or context to the individual items. I wish he had told us a little bit about each author and the selected work, particularly those that are excerpts from longer pieces.

If you are going to accept as a given the limits Bloom imposes on himself in selecting only writing he loved as a child, it doesn't give you much room to complain about the fact that almost all of the authors are dead white males. I understand that, but I just have to say at this point, come on, tell me how you can put together a collection for children of mostly 19th-century authors and leave out Louisa May Alcott, who was my polar star when I was a child. And, hello, ever hear of a couple of writers named Bronte? Or a lady from Amherst named Dickinson?

Sarah, which were your favorites in Bloom's selection, and what would you put into your own compendium for highly intelligent children of all ages?

the book club
entries
1234
from: Nell Minow
to: Sarah Lyall

An Uninviting Introduction 

Updated Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2001, at 7:21 PM ET
Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES
Washington Post
The Washington Post
OPINIONS
A Grand Tour
David Broder | While the stars align for Obama, McCain is looking like the odd-man-out on foreign policy.
Annette Heuser: A Honeymoon