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.
A Spite That Knows No Bounds
Gratingly awful global scold Greta Thunberg’s latest stunt is to turn on her own motherland. Sweden has been very good to her, but the former social-democratic paradise’s mugging by the realities of uncontrolled immigration do not sit well with the keffiyeh-clad rabblerouser. “For years, Sweden took more asylum seekers per capita than any other country in Europe,” writes Fredrik Karrholm in The Spectator. “Now asylum numbers have fallen to their lowest level since 1985.”
