{"id":18122,"date":"2026-06-14T15:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T19:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=18122"},"modified":"2026-06-14T15:11:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T19:11:11","slug":"episode-679-heather-cass-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-679-heather-cass-white","title":{"rendered":"Episode 679 – Heather Cass White"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 679:
\nHeather Cass White<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/secure\/virtualmemories\/Episode_679_-_Heather_Cass_White.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: Spotify<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | RSS<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cA letter is a joy of Earth \u2014 It is denied the Gods \u2014,\u201d sez Emily Dickinson (#1672), and THE MAN WHO READ EVERYTHING: The Literary Letters of Harold Bloom<\/a> (Yale University Press) proves it! Heather Cass White<\/a> rejoins the show to talk about editing Harold Bloom<\/a>‘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 \u2014 Alvin Feinman, Northrop Frye, AR Ammons, John Hollander, John Ashbery, James Merrill, Henri Cole<\/a>, and Ursula K Le Guin \u2014 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 (and my practice of checking off books from The List at the end of The Western Canon<\/a>), where he fell on Ashbery vs. Ammons, and whether marriage is the true subject of literature. We also discuss how her next book on the correspondence of Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore is the opposite of this one, her go-to books to teach American fiction, why she dropped out of Knausgaard before the finish line, how students have & haven’t changed over a quarter century of teaching, her late arrival to Surfjan Stevens’ music, how I solved her long-standing question about a moment from Bloom’s memorial, and a lot more. (Also, I talk about the Knicks A LOT in the intro; jump to 14:20 go to right to the conversation.)<\/em> Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read THE MAN WHO READ EVERYTHING: The Literary Letters of Harold Bloom<\/a>!<\/p>\n

“The real fun of being an editor, to me, is that it turns into a de facto literary detective.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n