Novelists And Novels

Bloom did not choose only the conventionally accepted "best" or "greatest" work of the writers under study (an exercise that is bound to be controversial anyway). When he wrote "Hesse" he wrote about "The Glass Bead Game", not "Steppenwolf" or "Siddhartha". His 21 pages of Kafka devoted only four to "The Trial", arguably Kafka's best known work. Bloom's bias shows through in many ways. It is obvious he lavishes Faulkner and patronizes Hemingway. It is a vast collection of essays on some of the finest writers and their works. In that regard, Philip Roth might have found himself a stranger in a strange land, but Bloom saved him that embarrassment with a splendid essay on Roth's "Zukerman Bound".