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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

On Saturday, September 17th, I had the pleasure of meeting with Harold Bloom in his New York apartment.

Harold Bloom is in his 80s.

He's one of America's great living literary critics.

Well, perhaps one of the three greatest.

And the sounds you're about to hear are in a New York apartment.

The backgrounds are the sounds of a busy

New York. And I'm talking to a man who defined a certain kind of literary criticism. It is what he

calls literature as a way of life. His life has been centrally concerned with literature. He's

written about everything from his beloved romantic poetry where he began to Shakespeare to the

Western canon. He's written about religion. He's done everything that there is to do to be the essence of a literary man.

He defines literature as a way of life in his very being. Unlike his previous book,

The Anatomy of Influence, Literature as a Way of Life, which seems a settled

and masterful book, the shadow of a great rock is audacious and I would like to say even

dangerous, which tells us that a great mind doesn't settle into somnolence or oratundity.

...