Harold Bloom is a publishing juggernaut unprecedented in literary history. In addition to his own authored works, he has produced/ edited 300 volumes of the “Bloom's Modern Critical Views” series, plus “Bloom’s Guides” (in 68 volumes), “Bloom's Notes” (54 volumes), “Bloom’s Reviews” (29 volumes), "Bloom's Classic Critical Views", “Bloom’s Major Novelists” (22 volumes), “Bloom's Major Short Story Writers” (30 volumes), “Bloom's Major Poets” (39 volumes), “Bloom's Major Dramatists” (21 volumes), and “Bloom's BioCritiques” (39 volumes). As if these were not enough, we also have “Bloom's Period Studies” (14 volumes), “Bloom’s Critical Cosmos Series” (21 volumes), “Bloom's Literary Themes” (16 volumes, that range from Alienation, through Human Sexuality on to The Taboo to The Trickster) and even “Bloom's Literary Guides” (also known as “Bloom’s Literary Places”) – these being guides to such Bloom- visited cities as London, Paris, Rome, Dublin, St. Petersburg, and New York.

Harold Bloom’s role in most of these works is said to be confined to that of editor, although how that role was carried out is open to question. An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education notes that Bloom cut a deal with his publisher, Chelsea House, that would eventually put his name on 600 volumes of literary criticism. “He employed 16 full-time staffers at one stage, as well as scores of freelance graduate students, and at his peak knocked out 15 books a month and three introductions a week.” (note 1 below). That’s a book every two days, weekends included. One is forced to wonder how much attention each “Bloom-edited” book received from the man himself.

Whatever his role, the titles always bear in multiple sizes and font styles Harold Bloom’s famous name (and to what other “Bloom” could they refer? Perhaps Allan Bloom [with whom he is occasionally confused, who had a few moments in the sun back in the late 1980s with his “Closing of the American Mind”]). The hundreds of volumes listed above are presented by Chelsea House as results of Bloom’s efforts from front cover to back cover and many places in between (names of “freelance graduate students” and “full-time staffers” get no mention, even as acknowledgements). Bloom’s name appears on the front and back covers of such works in large print, second in size only to the literary figure under analysis – leaving one to infer that he is to be considered in the same breath as Shakespeare, Dante, and Proust (not to mention Alienation, Taboo, Rome, and St. Petersburg).

On opening any such volume, the reader has no chance to forget the identity of his famous benefactor – this presumably being a marketing tactic by the publisher. The cover of Bloom's Major Short Story Writers series explains (in capital letters) that the work was “Edited With An Introduction By Harold Bloom”, information repeated inside on the first page and once again on page 3. Page 2 lists scores of other available works that have been edited by Harold Bloom. Following a Table of Contents comes a one page biography (only one page) of Harold Bloom, recounting his academic career, listing several of his published books, reminding us some of the many series for which he has served as an editor, and informing the reader that he is both the Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University and the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English at the New York University Graduate School, as well as “the preeminent literary critic of our time.” Then comes a one page Editor’s Note by Harold Bloom (text of which turns out to identical in each volume in the series), followed by a one page Introduction (by Bloom again), and then a short biography of the literary figure under analysis. At this stage, we are through 15 pages of the 75 pages (sans index) that make up this scant volume and are ready to tackle the essay contributions for which the book allegedly has been published.

In the Bloom's Major Short Story Writers, the essays themselves are very short. They consist of very brief extracts from papers published in academic journals. Some are only a paragraph long; others make up half a page, or sometimes as much as 1.5 small pages (each of which has large margins, and some of which are up to 85% empty space). The selections give a hint – or little more -- of the original article’s actual content. They are too brief for extended argument, or for documentary evidence that supports the writer’s point of view (if such evidence exists). They are at best long enough to let the reader know the nature and the conceptual/ ideological perspective of the literary interpretation. One supposes that the excerpts serve as a database for students who will then seek out the original sources, for those points of view that they wish to explore further. For what is provided, the price is a bit steep. Hard cover books in the Bloom's Major Short Story Writers series sell for $12.98 USD apiece (for a small book whose printed pages – 80 pages (40 sheets of paper) are in total barely thicker than the two covers combined). In the Kafka volume of the series, 35 pages (18 such sheets) contain the actual essays; the rest is filler or peripheral material.

Contents of the Kafka volume of the Bloom's Major Short Story Writers series are as follows. Five stories are considered: “The Metamorphosis”, “The Judgment”, “In the Penal Colony”, “A Hunger Artist” and “Josephine the Singer and the Mousefolk”. The plot of each one is summarized, along with a list of characters. Each of the five stories is accompanied by excerpts of 5 “critical essays” – for a total of 25. The essays are said to “represent the best analysis available from a number of leading critics.” The essays offer a range of views, although (as one might predict from Bloom’s own views) influences of the French theorists get short shrift, as do perspectives based on race, class, and gender. Harold Bloom’s introduction focuses on but one of the stories – “Josephine the Singer…” – in which Bloom offers the view that it and Kafka’s other work is best viewed from the perspective of his Jewishness. Kafka scholars will be aware that whether Kafka’s Jewish heritage played much of a role in his fiction is a controversial issue.

As one who has read each of Kafka’s works covered in this book, I found the essays to be of limited utility. Some offered a few insights and helpful ways of looking at the work under consideration. Others offered explanations that seemed to me to be awfully far-fetched explanations. Many I found to be incomprehensible, or barely understandable – perhaps these were written for those with deep academic training in literary analysis. A work focusing on Kafka's short fiction could have been more valuable had the literary critics actually written perspectives that interacted with those of other such critics. For example, a valuable perspective could have been offered by essays considering all sides of the question of whether Kafka's Jewishness affected his writing. Oddly, as I've seen in many other such analyses, literary critics seldom seem to interact with one another -- building on or attempting to refute what others have written. Instead, each such critic reads an author's work in isolation and offers his/ her perspective as if no other such perspective needs to be considered, or ever has been. The situation is utterly alien to what occurs in the natural sciences, where every statement must be justified by reference to literature or new data, and where points of agreement and disagreement are made entirely explicit.

I conclude from this experience that this work (and presumably others of the series) are not of much use to the casual reader, or even the literary enthusiast, as opposed to the graduate student or professor immersed in literary analysis.

Note: The Chronicle article cited above can be found online at the following link:
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Harold-Bloom-by-the-Numbers/127211/ ( )