[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
traditionally manly qualities as competitiveness, aggression, or
for that matter, the ability to command. On the contrary,
Thatcher is castigated for being too harsh, too demanding; for
humiliating men. Manliness, and cultural deference to manli-
ness, must be recovered.
64
Closing the American Mind
Lord s account is carefully phrased, and very telling. The
problem lies not only with women but with today s political
movements on behalf of minorities. These are, however, care-
fully dropped. The modern prince must be content with a word
in the ear, for the modern counselor is too politic to belabor the
costs of civil rights. Nor is Lord eager to go after concerns of
class. He is reluctant to say what the careful reader will notice
soon enough: that leaders should be men drawn from the ranks
of traditional elites.
Bloom s account has none of this reluctance. Throughout The
Closing of the American Mind, Bloom longs for a lost world of hi-
erarchy and exclusion. From time to time, Bloom becomes a pre-
tender to the aristocracy, reminding us that critiques of the bour-
geoisie came from the right as well as the left as he inveighs
against American bourgeois culture. Bloom s criticism of the
bourgeoisie is confounded with a critique of American sexuality.
American students are flat-souled. Their world is devoid of
ideals and unadorned by imagination. . . . This flat soul is what
the sexual wisdom of our time conspires to make universal.
They lack the erotic, they lack longing. Yet as Bloom inveighs
against their absence of erotic longing, a curious transformation
occurs. Bloom turns to that great expert on the fate of longing,
Gustave Flaubert, drawing from Madame Bovary the longest
quotation in his text. The passage describes how Emma Bovary
sees a debauched and once-tyrannical old man, deaf and stutter-
ing, eating from a full plate as drops of gravy trickle from his
65
Closing the American Mind
mouth. Bloom writes: Others see only a repulsive old man, but
Emma sees the ancien régime. Flaubert was more ambivalent,
and more discerning. Bloom sees only through Emma s eyes, but
Flaubert can take our gaze a little farther. When Emma sees the
ancien régime, she may see a man who lived at court and slept in
the bed of queens, but we see, with Flaubert, a repulsive slaver-
ing old lecher, the decay of tyranny into imbecility.
Flaubert also gives us some insight into Bloom s desire. Desire
has been transformed, in this paragraph, from an erotics of sex to
an erotics of status. Like the author of a Regency romance, Bloom
claims to be telling us a story about sex, but gives us instead a
story about money. As any reader of romances can tell you, what
happens in a romance is not simply a story of love but a story of
social advancement. Heroines enter the narrative poor and leave
rich, they enter as commoners and leave as countesses. Danielle
Steel has, if I understand the form correctly, removed the middle-
man and given us simply narratives in which a poor woman be-
comes rich very rich and occasionally powerful.
The fantasy of the romance novel is the fantasy of the excep-
tion. The class system, the peerage, the ranks of the nobility
remain intact. The poor heroine becomes an unexpected heiress,
the plain heroine turns out to be really beautiful, the impover-
ished gentlewoman the beloved of a baronet or a billionaire. Noth-
ing has changed, except exclusion. The pleasure of the heroine s
triumph depends on the institutions that excluded her remaining
66
Closing the American Mind
intact. So it is for Bloom. The world he longs for is one in which
all the old exclusions remain intact, but he is outside no longer.
The Closing of the American Mind offers a series of fantastic
wishes. Bloom wishes for a world without women or, rather, a
world in which women stay behind the scenes, making dinner,
making a home, out of sight, and most emphatically out of mind.
In this world there are no terrifying women scholars. The world
that remains is a world of men, and a world of homoerotic if not
homosexual desire. Bloom wishes to recover a world in which very
ugly men men who stutter and drip gravy on their shirts
become objects of desire. The young man hopes to meet his
Socrates in the Agora ; the desiring eye looks on the decaying
body and sees an aristocrat veiled in flesh. The old exclusive in-
stitutions open, but just wide enough for Bloom, and perhaps for
you, to enter. When you enter, the whole world of exclusive en-
joyments, of once-closed clubs and special privileges, of unde-
served rewards opens before you. You enter a world which once
was and is no longer, but perhaps just perhaps might live again.
Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are, Bloom tells us, not what
they used to be. There is hardly a Harvard man or a Yale man [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl szamanka888.keep.pl
traditionally manly qualities as competitiveness, aggression, or
for that matter, the ability to command. On the contrary,
Thatcher is castigated for being too harsh, too demanding; for
humiliating men. Manliness, and cultural deference to manli-
ness, must be recovered.
64
Closing the American Mind
Lord s account is carefully phrased, and very telling. The
problem lies not only with women but with today s political
movements on behalf of minorities. These are, however, care-
fully dropped. The modern prince must be content with a word
in the ear, for the modern counselor is too politic to belabor the
costs of civil rights. Nor is Lord eager to go after concerns of
class. He is reluctant to say what the careful reader will notice
soon enough: that leaders should be men drawn from the ranks
of traditional elites.
Bloom s account has none of this reluctance. Throughout The
Closing of the American Mind, Bloom longs for a lost world of hi-
erarchy and exclusion. From time to time, Bloom becomes a pre-
tender to the aristocracy, reminding us that critiques of the bour-
geoisie came from the right as well as the left as he inveighs
against American bourgeois culture. Bloom s criticism of the
bourgeoisie is confounded with a critique of American sexuality.
American students are flat-souled. Their world is devoid of
ideals and unadorned by imagination. . . . This flat soul is what
the sexual wisdom of our time conspires to make universal.
They lack the erotic, they lack longing. Yet as Bloom inveighs
against their absence of erotic longing, a curious transformation
occurs. Bloom turns to that great expert on the fate of longing,
Gustave Flaubert, drawing from Madame Bovary the longest
quotation in his text. The passage describes how Emma Bovary
sees a debauched and once-tyrannical old man, deaf and stutter-
ing, eating from a full plate as drops of gravy trickle from his
65
Closing the American Mind
mouth. Bloom writes: Others see only a repulsive old man, but
Emma sees the ancien régime. Flaubert was more ambivalent,
and more discerning. Bloom sees only through Emma s eyes, but
Flaubert can take our gaze a little farther. When Emma sees the
ancien régime, she may see a man who lived at court and slept in
the bed of queens, but we see, with Flaubert, a repulsive slaver-
ing old lecher, the decay of tyranny into imbecility.
Flaubert also gives us some insight into Bloom s desire. Desire
has been transformed, in this paragraph, from an erotics of sex to
an erotics of status. Like the author of a Regency romance, Bloom
claims to be telling us a story about sex, but gives us instead a
story about money. As any reader of romances can tell you, what
happens in a romance is not simply a story of love but a story of
social advancement. Heroines enter the narrative poor and leave
rich, they enter as commoners and leave as countesses. Danielle
Steel has, if I understand the form correctly, removed the middle-
man and given us simply narratives in which a poor woman be-
comes rich very rich and occasionally powerful.
The fantasy of the romance novel is the fantasy of the excep-
tion. The class system, the peerage, the ranks of the nobility
remain intact. The poor heroine becomes an unexpected heiress,
the plain heroine turns out to be really beautiful, the impover-
ished gentlewoman the beloved of a baronet or a billionaire. Noth-
ing has changed, except exclusion. The pleasure of the heroine s
triumph depends on the institutions that excluded her remaining
66
Closing the American Mind
intact. So it is for Bloom. The world he longs for is one in which
all the old exclusions remain intact, but he is outside no longer.
The Closing of the American Mind offers a series of fantastic
wishes. Bloom wishes for a world without women or, rather, a
world in which women stay behind the scenes, making dinner,
making a home, out of sight, and most emphatically out of mind.
In this world there are no terrifying women scholars. The world
that remains is a world of men, and a world of homoerotic if not
homosexual desire. Bloom wishes to recover a world in which very
ugly men men who stutter and drip gravy on their shirts
become objects of desire. The young man hopes to meet his
Socrates in the Agora ; the desiring eye looks on the decaying
body and sees an aristocrat veiled in flesh. The old exclusive in-
stitutions open, but just wide enough for Bloom, and perhaps for
you, to enter. When you enter, the whole world of exclusive en-
joyments, of once-closed clubs and special privileges, of unde-
served rewards opens before you. You enter a world which once
was and is no longer, but perhaps just perhaps might live again.
Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are, Bloom tells us, not what
they used to be. There is hardly a Harvard man or a Yale man [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]