The eminent American literary critic and professor Harold Bloom died on October 14. The ardent defender of the Western Canon warned that making literature subordinate to social justice – or any external cause — destroys intellectual and aesthetic standards. Writing in The Atlantic, Stanley Fish summarizes Bloom’s career, reminding us what we’ll lose by politicizing literary culture.
Yay Brexit!
Brendan O’Neill in Spiked enthuses that Brexit is superior to just about anything else in the world. “There should be street parties” on the 10th anniversary of the popular vote to withdraw from the EU, he writes. “Let the bells peal for that momentous day when in our millions we said No to globalism.” The continuing surfeit of saboteurs and naysayers among Britain’s “idiot elites”, O’Neill snorts, are gripped by Brexit Derangement Syndrome.
