"Heroically brave, formidably learned. The Western Canon is a passionate demonstration of why some writers have triumphantly escaped the oblivion in which time buries almost all human effort. It inspires hope. that what humanity has long cherished, posterity will also." -- New York Times "This book is terribly important -- if you believe that literature itself is important, quite noble -- if you believe that 'nobility' is still a viable concept in intellectual life." -- Boston Globe "Harold Bloom's large-minded and large-hearted book about the great books has many of the virtues that it sees and shows in the works he so fiercely admires." -- Washington Times "The list. is what will get all the attention, but it is the text preceding that provides the true pleasure.

" -- Entertainment Weekly "[Harold Bloom] has, in a quietly joyous fashion, the chutzpah to put his stamp on the whole of literature from Genesis to Ashbery, rivaling the scope of hero-critics like Sainsbury or Curtius or Auerbach though more giddily adventurous than they were. In one sense the hero of this book, as of all his books, is Bloom himself, modestly bold, genially polemical, dogmatically opposed to dogma, carrying to much in his head and always ready to say what he thinks about it all." -- London Review of Books.