Episode 679 – Heather Cass White

Virtual Memories Show 679: Heather Cass White “This was the most fun I ever had making a book. I got to sit on the attic floor, going though Harold’s papers and books, and there were a lot of surprises.” “A letter is a joy of Earth — It is denied the Gods —,” sez Emily Dickinson (#1672), and THE MAN WHO READ EVERYTHING: The Literary Letters of Harold Bloom (Yale University Press) proves it! Heather Cass White rejoins the show to talk about editing Harold Bloom‘s letters for the book, her history with him and what she learned about him over the course of the project, and how the letters revealed a less determined Bloom and how she empathized with the struggles he went through in his career. We get into the people whose correspondence she included — Alvin Feinman, Northrop Frye, AR Ammons, John Hollander, John Ashbery, James Merrill, Henri Cole, and Ursula K Le Guin — and all the writers and critics she wishes she could have included, the books and projects Bloom proposed but never completed (or started) over the years, the fun she had writing the footnotes, the one person Bloom was intimidated to meet, Bloom’s role in the Canon Wars 30-40 years ago (and my practice of checking off books from The List at the end of The Western Canon), where he fell on Ashbery vs. Ammons, and whether marriage is the true subject of literature. We also discuss how her next book on the correspondence of Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore is the opposite of this one, her go-to books to teach American fiction, why she dropped out of Knausgaard before the finish line, how students have & haven’t changed over a quarter century of teaching, her late arrival to Surfjan Stevens’ music, how I solved her long-standing question about a moment from Bloom’s memorial, and a lot more. (Also, I talk about the Knicks A LOT in the intro; jump to 14:20 go to right to the conversation.) Give it a listen! And go read THE MAN WHO READ EVERYTHING: The Literary Letters of Harold Bloom! “The real fun of being an editor, to me, is that it turns into a de facto literary detective.” “Bloom didn’t want acolytes. He didn’t want students who agreed with him. He liked being challenged. Not that ever admitted that he was wrong.” “I’m sure if someone were to write my one-word epitaph, it would be: READER.” “It’s hard to overstate how pernicious the use of AI is in the classroom. . . . It’s like students are being trained into helplessness.” Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS! About our Guest Heather Cass White is an English professor at the University of Alabama. She is the author of Books Promiscuously Read: Reading as a Way of Life, among other volumes. Go listen to my 2021 conversation with Heather and my 2016 talk with Bloom. Me & Harold Bloom in 2016 Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at an undisclosed location in Manhattan on a pair of Shure Beta 58a microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Harold Bloom by Jim Wilson; photo of Heather by Crosby Thomley; double-selfies by me. It’s on my instagram.