An Absolutely Dead Culture

I suppose it’s hoping for too much to expect to find sense in the increasingly bizarre and self-centred pronouncements of Harold Bloom, but even by the standards of the literary world, this (via ALDaily) is special:

Of course, the United States is in a terrible condition, we have a kind of fascist regime here – I think it’s the real truth about it and you can quote me on that. A few years ago, when I was in Barcelona receiving the national prize of Catalonia, I remarked when somebody asked me a question about president George Bush: “He is semiliterate at best, to call him a Fascist would be to flatter him.” He has now sufficiently grown in depth that you are no longer flattering him by calling him a Fascist – it is simply a descriptive remark.

It’s almost a parody of the self-regarding man of letters – “when I was in Barcelona receiving the national prize of Catalonia”. Oscar Wilde reincarnated as a witless narcissist. I love “you can quote me on that“. Hold the front page! Literary Giant Calls Bush a Fascist!

He thinks there’s still some hope for the US in its Asian immigrants – the new Jews – but not for us English: the reviews of his “Hamlet: Poem Unlimited” weren’t good enough, apparently:

This is still a vibrant and living culture, whereas the English are incorrigible. They have no minds at all. That little book had a mixed reception in the United States, a terrible reception in England, a very good reception in other countries. The Italian, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Scandinavian readers want to understand me, the English don’t. I really don’t want to go there again, it’s an absolutely dead culture. It no longer has any poets, it no longer has any novelists, it cannot produce a composer or a painter anymore. The French are not much better.

Well, that’s us told.