[Brackets in the following excerpt do not signify editorial changes.—Ed.]

Harold Bloom's terminal case of transumption has been brought on by too much "strong reading," a morose exercise for which according to his statement Emerson and Freud bear part of the blame, and which Bloom doesn't scruple to characterize as "not less aggressive than sexual desire." Reading. Wow. Tell it to your local librarian. (Academic criticism is dead, of which Professor Bloom is the latest assassin and heir: The Breaking of the Vessels is his latest and most desperate book, a scant hundred pages, as thin as an instruction manual for a stationary bicycle but far more aggressive, the glummest and grimmest funerary Bloom yet to get laid—if you'll pardon the expression—on the tomb of academic criticism.)

Meanwhile, as a slow (though strong) reader confronted by a crux, I'm not sure whether Bloom is presenting...