America's best-known literary critic, the prolific Harold Bloom, defends the Old School from his perch as Sterling Professor of the Humanities and English at Yale.

Born to working-class Orthodox Jewish Russian immigrants, Bloom grew up speaking Yiddish and Hebrew, teaching himself English at age 6. After being awarded a full scholarship to Cornell, he went on to Yale, staying on as a faculty member after earning his doctorate. Over the last several decades, Bloom has become America's chief defender of the literary canon, defending it from what he sees as postmodern Barbarians intent on destroying it. Bloom has pumped out a staggering number of books over the past forty-odd years. In 1973 made his reputation with The Anxiety of Influence and cemented his standing as an intellectual force with The Book of J in 1990. Bloom earned a $600,000 advance for his 1994 book The Western Canon, in which he argued that Shakespeare's work is the artistic heart of Western civilization.

Bloom has been married to wife Jeanne for nearly 50 years; they have two adult sons. Bloom maintains an apartment in Greenwich Village that is, unsurprisingly, crammed with books.

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