[UPDATE: In 2016, I recorded a conversation with Harold Bloom for The Virtual Memories Show! I also recorded episodes with his friends and colleagues John Crowley, Sandy McClatchy and Langdon Hammer.]
So, wait: I never told you about the time I called Harold Bloom? Geez! I’ve been blogging 6 years now; you’d think I’d have gone through all of these stories by now! My bad.
Back when I was failing at publishing books (c. 2002 in my 1998-2004 run of failure), one of my authors (Samuel Delany, if you must know) thought it would be wonderful if we’d bring Walter Pater’s Plato & Platonism back into print.
I figured there may be a specialized audience (read: academics and intellectual deviants) out there, and tried to suss out if I could get away with a short print run, even though it would push unit costs a bunch higher. I’d learned from previous failures that it would help to have some sort of hook for the book, instead of just running ads announcing,
“If you’ve couldn’t get enough of Marius the Epicurean,
you don’t dare miss the astonishing reissue of Plato & Platonism!”
or,
“If you thought you knew post-1893 aesthetics . . .
YOU DON’T KNOW PATER!“
My author told me that a lot of his smartypants literary contemporaries were enamored of Pater and this book, so I thought I could try to get one of them to write an introduction to it. He mentioned Guy Davenport as a likely prospect, so I wrote him a line.
Mr. Davenport respectfully declined, but thought it was wonderful that someone was bringing the book back into print.
Next, I wrote to publishing innovator Jason Epstein, who made some comments in Book Business that marked him as a Pater devotee. He too shot me down, but wished me luck.
(I wasn’t aware of any curse laid upon Pater’s lectures, but Mr. Davenport died a few years after my request, while Mr. Epstein’s wife was victim of a hoax anthrax letter in 2001, later went to prison over the Valerie Plame scandal, and was vilified for her NYTimes reporting on WMDs in Iraq.)
I decided to try Harold Bloom. I’d read his praise for Pater in numerous books and interviews and, since he wrote a bazillion books, guides and introductions, I thought I had a chance.
Having no idea how these things work, I called the department where he taught at NYU; they told me he was currently at Yale. So I called there and said, “I’m a publisher and I’d like to speak to Prof. Bloom about a Walter Pater book I’m planning to reissue.”
The secretary said, “He’s not teaching today. Would you like his home number?”
“. . . Uh, sure,” I told her. It was then that I realized “I’m a publisher” is a spell of great power.
Looking at the number scribbled on my pad, I thought of past literary figures I’ve called out of the blue: William Gaddis, David Gates, Grant Morrison, Marcus Greill, Ron Rosenbaum . . . none of them were quite as daunting as Harold Bloom. After all, he was The Guy Who Read (and Wrote About) More Books Than Anydarnbody.
Would he grill me on Pater, of whom I’d have to admit I hadn’t read more than 30 pages? Would he be as disappointed in me as Greill Marcus was when I admitted I hadn’t finished Lipstick Traces? Would he be as flat-out stunned as Mr. Gaddis was when he found out that his number was in the phone book? Would he call me “dear,” as he seemed to do with every interviewer, regardless of gender?
I had to fall back on my version of “they’re just like us.” In this case, I reflected on Bloom’s lifelong support of the New York Yankees. I told myself, “When you were drunk on Colt 45 in a Dallas hotel room, jumping up and down and cheering as Charlie Hayes caught the final out of the 1996 World Series, Harold Bloom was also cheering and . . . well, maybe not jumping up and down, drunk on Colt 45, but definitely celebrating.”
I dialed. He answered.
“Hi, my name is Gil Roth. Is this Prof. Bloom?” I asked. He confirmed that it was. I took a deep breath and launched into my pitch, making sure to let him know that I’d published several legit authors, even though “I’m a publisher” had changed into “I’m a small press publisher” (how could I lie to him?). He was pleasantly surprised to learn that someone would bring back Plato & Platonism and expressed some admiration for the author who’d suggested it to me.
“But,” he averred, “I’m so backed up with work for my new series of critical books, my dear, that I’m afraid I simply cannot write an introduction for you.”
“I understand.”
“Why, even if you were to offer me the opportunity to write an introduction to the illustrated history of Sophia Loren, I’m afraid I would have to turn you down.”
You don’t mess with a man of his era (b. 1930) when it comes to Sophia Loren.
I thanked him for his time and his subsequent offer to blurb the book, wished him well, gave him a “Go, Yankees!”, and hung up.
I never did publish that Pater, but you can download an e-version any old time.
[UPDATE: In 2016, I recorded a conversation with Harold Bloom for The Virtual Memories Show! I also recorded episodes with his friends and colleagues John Crowley, Sandy McClatchy and Langdon Hammer.]
“They’re not reading, Ray”
Actually, I do enjoy this story more every time I hear it! Sure, I’ve been a part of the pointy-end of American foreign policy, but you got to talk to HAROLD BLOOM.
Yeah, but you got to fire missiles and rockets at stuff, which is also pretty awesome.
Never heard the Bloom anecdote, but I enjoye dit immensely. I’m sure Bloom deserves his rep. in general, but having read one of his books (OMENS OF THE MILLENNIUM), I’m unimpressed. He’s not a very good writer and much of the thinking in that particular book is sloppy. He makes no distinction, for example, between “knowledge” and “information” although clearly there are important differences. In his intro to Tolstoy’s HADJI MURAD, he calls the novella the greatest in Western literature; did he forget Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS? Tolstoy’s novella doesn’t remotely approach the genius of Conrad’s. In fact, I didn’t find anything “great” about it at all. I thought it was fairly average. Bloom also did an inquiry into Judaism and Christianity and offhandedly said something like, “Jesus almost certainly lived.” Which means he can’t have examined much of the evidence to the contrary in any detail–and there’s a lot of it. I also found his take on MOBY-DICK–exactly what is I can’t remember now–seriously and demonstrably off. So … whatever else he is, Harold is definitely human.