One important point to make about Bloom’s theory of influence is that is entirely contingent on what future artists will take up as an influence. Bloom has once said in an interview that it is quite possible that Yeats will not survive due to his lack of influence amongst contemporary poets.

I have also heard, through interviews with other younger writers familiar with Bloom, their surprise at his wide knowledge of contemporary writers. Although Bloom may seem to center his energy on a limited number of figures his actual range of reading is incredibly broad (the guy at one time could read 1000 pages an hour, AND remember most of it). It reminds me of a bet put on GK Chesterton, whose critics thought he was snobbish too, and only read the “classics” while dismissing popular books he had never read. Chesterton then went out and read 100 of the most popular books and was able to answer any question relating to them by his critics. When asked what he thought about the experience he stated it was an easy task since they were all so very similar.

As for the above exchange, a quote from Leonardo da Vinci seems appropriate:

“Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.”

Again, thank you, sir, and good day.

My dear, you really are obtuse–what’s more fascinating, though, is that you seem to delight in your stupidity.

You’re so friendly. Really a sign of intellect.

(1) Shakespeare was NOT a populist. Decidedly not. First of all, the word “populist” has political connotations–indeed is explicitly political–and refers to a movement that sprang up in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States, which had its roots in all sorts of peasant revolts, from the smallest in Flanders to ostensibly the largest, the French Revolution. Shakespeare was not a populist. If he were (oh, there’s that subjunctive whose Ms. Rowling so assiduously denies) a populist (whatever the hell your definition of that word is), he would not be remembered today in the light that he is.

You continue to fail to understand the most simple things. It’s sad, really. Though it is kind of hilarious how you try to make Shakespeare into this grand intellectual hero who wrote only for you, who was never popular with the lower classes, and who never wrote a single poo joke. (How exactly do you explain Shakespeare’s fondness for what you would surely term crass and vulgar comedy?)

Given me the Quentin Compson in Harry Potter, give me the memorable protagonist in a single Stephen King novel that does not sink under the weight of the never-ending roulades of gore and vulgarity apropos of nothing?

Why am I even arguing with you when you clearly know nothing of King’s work? Clearly you imagine King to be a writer who writes about nothing but violence and gore; this is absurd at best, willfully ignorant at worst. ARGUE FROM THE TEXT, not out of your own prejudice.

The point is there isn’t. Their characterization is shallow and based on the laziest archetypes, their symbolism mealy-mouthed or nonexistent, their style completely devoid of originality (nothing in Harry Potter says, hey, Rowling wrote this and not X), and their dialogue filled with bromides that approach more the way people speak on TV than in reality.

This is so absurd that it cannot be answered. You are simply projecting your own ideas onto these writers. You seem to have read some Rowling and hated the experience (or rather wanted to hate it, because you were told to), but you’ve certainly never read King, or read only one of the short stories (which are not his forte).

As for characters that will be remembered – I don’t know, I guess there’s Harry Potter. And Dumbledore. And several other characters from Rowling’s work. But that’s what you don’t want to admit, that’s what kills you. Just like it killed the pretentious academics of one hundred years ago that the characters of Dickens should be remembered.

Where is Beckett’s famous aporia? Where is Joyce’s wild prose? Where are Saramago’s sinuous sentences or Faulkner’s vivid imagery and stream-of-consciousness? Where Woolf’s patience and ellipsis? Nowhere.

Actually, there is plenty of King’s clean and elegant prose, his power to realistically capture spoken language, his complex treatment both of the frailties and strengths of humanity, and an optimism tempered with the knowledge that life is often painful and tragic. There is philosophical and theological depth, there are adult considerations of parenthood and sexuality, and there is a great deal of thought about the nature of art. But you wouldn’t know that.

And since you mention Blake’s peculiar spellings and omissions sometimes of apostrophes from contractions and genitive cases, I love it. I also love it when Emily Dickinson, who was profoundly influenced by him, does the same thing–and the way she–hyphenates–so–often–which–is–something–distinctive about her poetry.

I’m not sure it’s something to love or hate, but good for you.

These things are ORIGINAL. The serious writer strives for ORIGINALITY–

Indeed they do. I don’t know a single writer whose work can be compared to King’s Dark Tower.

and feels a profound sense of anxiety in entering the pantheon of serious writers because of the pervasive sense that every original idea has already been spoken for

Really? Let’s take Blake. Do you think this absurd generalisation applied to him?

Some writers may feel a sense of profound anxiety. Others feel confidence in what they do, in their vision. To generalise is to be an idiot.

Where is this originality in Rowling’s prose?

Everywhere.

In King’s?

Everywhere.

It doesn’t exist.

Because you say so? Because Harold Bloom says so? You haven’t even read King, and neither has Bloom.

And please do not be patronizing–you really have no grounds to be.

You’re being condescending, the first response of the intellectually stale. You keep accusing me of being stupid, thereby attempting to highlight your own intellectual prowess. It’s pathetic.

I have a degree in Russian literature

I don’t give a shit about your degree, kid. I know too many people with degrees, and I spent too much time at university, to care about such things. I care only for arguments from logic and for evidence. You have neither so far.

so your haranguing me about Tolstoy’s anxieties concerning Shakespeare (felt likewise by everyone from Milton to Joyce) is really quite pointless and more than a bit self-congratulatory.

It is not pointless or self-congratulatory, because it has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with your arguments. You keep trying to make this personal. It is not. You cannot really attack my arguments, so you attack me instead.

Why is it in response to my criticism that Rowling’s themes are superficial and childish you feel the need to reference Eddie Izzard of all people? Really? That is the weapon you opt to wield in a literary discussion?

Yes. If I’m going to quote someone, why not quote a genius?

Rowling does write about mundane things–which would be fine, a lot of writers do it, but the problem is she writes about mundane things mundanely.

You say so. I disagree. How do you prove that you are right? By your divinely bestowed better taste?

Such is the mawkishness, such the shameless (and probably unwitting) lugubriousness of her writing, which skips gleefully from one cliché to another, that it becomes almost comical–like “Dumbledore’s” glum pronouncements, which read like bad fortune cookies.

You know, now you’re sounding hilariously close to one of those pretentious self-absorbed critics Fry & Laurie were so fond of making fun of. And again, I would like you to actually argue from the text, because what I remember of the books is a complex and touching deconstruction of the typical “wise mage” – who turns out to be a fallible human after all.

Darkness is not a theme, for goodness’s sake; that is stultifyingly broad. There is darkness explored in good literature–like Emma Bovary’s cloisteredness, her desire for freedom which she satisfies through her adulterous relationship with Rodolphe and Léon; like, well, the ultimate tale of revenge, “Paradise Lost,” which examines no less than the fall of man; the tedium that constantly courts Bernardo Soares in Pessoa’s masterful “The Book of Disquiet” or the immorality and anonymity of life in the city that assails Malte Laurids Brigge in Rilke’s “The Notebooks”–but it is not carried out as Rowling does it–to wit, superficially.

Name-dropping again, are we? How does this prove anything? I am not impressed by your ability to post short summaries of texts you have read. And why do you think you need to explain what Paradise Lost is about?

Rowling takes darkness, which is difficult to say with a straight face, prima facie; her point of departure is that it exists–that there are good guys and bad guys and that good wins in the end.

You’re simplifying to a terrible degree. Rowling makes a big point that it’s *not* just good guys versus bad guys – in fact, your argument seems to indicate you have only read the beginning of the story, if at all. The reality is that the only truly “evil” character in the novels is Voldemort himself, and I don’t see what is wrong with that. The essential question is why others choose to follow him, or not – and the answer to that question is considerably more complex than you think, as evidenced by the story of the Malfoy family.

She does not plumb the depths of darkness, she skims over the surface of it.

Wrong. Quite simply wrong. There you go.

Revenge is bad but so are discrimination and wizard-vs.-muggle supremacy, etc. etc., and so the story goes, trying desperately to latch on to something that will make it ’serious’ without realizing that it can never be serious ipso facto because it consists of stitched-together platitudes and archetypes and conceits extracted directly from Lewis and Tolkien.

Your literary knowledge is failing you again. There are many who have imitated Lewis (a terrible writer) and Tolkien (a brilliant one), but there is very little that Rowling’s work has in common with them, especially with Tolkien. Neither in style nor in subject matter (nor in mythological inspiration) do the Potter books have much in common with The Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion, and it’s rather foolish to think so. Unless, of course, you believe that anything that features wizards, from The Tempest to Le Morte d’Arthur, is the same.

It’s, simply put, dreadfully executed.

Your opinion, based mostly on hot air.

You mention G.K. Chesterton, a writer I admire a great deal. He deals with darkness in a different way, though, as in “The Man Who Was Thursday.” Who is Sunday, who never reveals himself?

Did you read the book to the end?

And in portraying as he does the machinations of each of the other anarchists, each trying to subvert the other, what point does he make? Does Rowling do anything remotely like this? Of course not. And of course that’s the whole point.

Actually, I suspect that Chesterton would have been quite fond of Rowling’s work, with its moral questions and underlying belief that the struggle for good is meaningful, if difficult. They are actually quite alike, except in that Rowling generally writes better sentences than Chesterton, who often tended to rush his writing a bit. But I suppose that’s blasphemy, isn’t it?

It is a bit sanctimonious of you to accuse me of saying you haven’t read such and such a thing, and then do the exact thing to me–I have read Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth” and I find her to be a bit torn as to what she wants to do exactly–whether she wants to write a sprawling social novel in the tradition of Dickens and Thackeray, or whether she wants something more Joycean or, for a more contemporary example (one cited as a major influence for his category by Wood, especially for Foster Wallace) Pynchonian.

Interesting how you can understand a writer only in terms of other writers. Not very conductive to originality, of course.

or even in fact building any kind of critique beyond mentioning him

The fact that he doesn’t go into a specific analysis does not prevent Wood from clearly criticizing DeLillo.

because your anti-intellectual bent is such that it blinds you to anything that isn’t readily digestible and syrupy enough

This is hilarious. You really want me to be anti-intellectual, don’t you? Then why am I arguing using literary arguments? Why did I spend so much time studying academic subjects? Why do I even know who Harold Bloom and Theodor Adorno are?

Because I’m not anti-intellectual, that’s why. You would love to believe so, but you are just embarrassing yourself. When have I argued that good art must be syrupy and readily digestible? Never. I have spoken only of unnecessary obfuscation, of the kind of dreadful pretentiousness that confuses obscurantism with depth and popularity with a lack of quality.

My favourite poet is and remains William Blake. Is his work easily digestible? Is his work syrupy?

I have no quarrel with the classics, or with intertextuality, or with challenging prose. I wouldn’t spend so much of my time dealing with all these things if I did, and they certainly wouldn’t be such a presence in my own work.

My quarrel is with those who argue in bad faith, from prejudice instead of the text. My quarrel is with those who fashionably despise everything popular without thought, without analysis; who cannot see beauty or art unless they’ve been told to.

You keep trying to portray me as an uneducated idiot, but I’m as widely read as you are, I have an academic background, and I’ve heard everything you’re saying before. I simply object to it, not out of anti-intellectualism, but because I find it to be intellectually lazy and badly thought-through. Can you understand that? I disagree with you on intellectual and artistic grounds.

Please do not attempt to intimate that I have not read something which I have read on more than one occasion (despite my not being especially fond of Wood), and moreover to say that because I draw different conclusions about a work that I have only read the reviews or critical reaction.

Well, it’s hard to think otherwise when most of your talking points have no connection to the reality of the texts you are quoting and/or attacking.

You have yet to use any arguments that boil down to more than “I don’t like these writers and you are an idiot.” Your obsession with attacking me personally – rather than attacking my logic – simply reinforces the weakness of your perspective.

I suspect that, like Bloom, you have read very little of King or Rowling, and simply place them in the vast category of Popular Fiction, which you despise – like television.

Let me leave you on a little story. I’ve spent the last four years teaching people about academic writing, stressing the importance of clarity and simplicity, of clear arguments and consistent logic. I could’ve used your posts as a clear example of how not to write – endless lists of names and summaries to prove your intellectual worth, personal attacks in arrogant language that in no way support or strengthen your thesis, and a complete lack of anything resembling actual arguments. Behind the obfuscation lies nothing but childishness and aggression, as if you were suffering from some kind of intellectual inferiority syndrome.

We could go on ad nauseam, but what would be the point? All you have to say is that you think me intellectually inferior to yourself for liking two authors that you despise, and for believing that there is no causal connection between complexity of form and quality of content. Incapable of arguing with me on an intellectual level, you seek to argue from authority – namely, the authority of being able to cram as many names and references into your posts as will fit, and disparaging my ability to think instead of the results of my thinking.

You’re a fanatic, and I tire of fanatics.

I would like to thank you for your delightful and much-needed words. You have indeed made my day more pleasant. Have you considered a career as a stand-up comedian? I believe talent such as yours should be shared with the world.

Yours truly,

Verena Kyratzes

(1) Shakespeare was NOT a populist. Decidedly not. First of all, the word “populist” has political connotations–indeed is explicitly political–and refers to a movement that sprang up in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States, which had its roots in all sorts of peasant revolts, from the smallest in Flanders to ostensibly the largest, the French Revolution. Shakespeare was not a populist. If he were (oh, there’s that subjunctive whose Ms. Rowling so assiduously denies) a populist (whatever the hell your definition of that word is), he would not be remembered today in the light that he is. Shakespeare characterized with economy; he did not offend the reader with excessive description of the character and operated through ellipsis–take Hamlet, for instance, whose true thoughts, despite all of the monologues, are never really disclosed to the reader, nor the true motivation for his revenge. Or Iago or Don John, characters Coleridge dubbed “motiveless malignances,” about whose rationales for their actions there are only scattered hints that sometimes belie one another so that the reader is left to make up his own mind. Or Sir John Falstaff, whose past is only partly dredged up in “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” and who remains a mischievous mystery throughout Henry IV… Where in Harry Potter are there characters of this magnitude, sketched with such mastery? But of course to ask that Rowling do something like that would be unfair, so let’s lower the bar. Given me the Quentin Compson in Harry Potter, give me the memorable protagonist in a single Stephen King novel that does not sink under the weight of the never-ending roulades of gore and vulgarity apropos of nothing? What character will be remembered as a cultural icon, either for good or ill, in the way Madame Defarge has been, or Miss Havisham, or Fagin, or, for American examples, Harry Angstrom or, to speak finally of a real populist, Tom Joad? The point is there isn’t. Their characterization is shallow and based on the laziest archetypes, their symbolism mealy-mouthed or nonexistent, their style completely devoid of originality (nothing in Harry Potter says, hey, Rowling wrote this and not X), and their dialogue filled with bromides that approach more the way people speak on TV than in reality.

Where is Beckett’s famous aporia? Where is Joyce’s wild prose? Where are Saramago’s sinuous sentences or Faulkner’s vivid imagery and stream-of-consciousness? Where Woolf’s patience and ellipsis? Nowhere. And since you mention Blake’s peculiar spellings and omissions sometimes of apostrophes from contractions and genitive cases, I love it. I also love it when Emily Dickinson, who was profoundly influenced by him, does the same thing–and the way she–hyphenates–so–often–which–is–something–distinctive about her poetry. These things are ORIGINAL. The serious writer strives for ORIGINALITY–and feels a profound sense of anxiety in entering the pantheon of serious writers because of the pervasive sense that every original idea has already been spoken for. Harold Bloom writes of this–in fact, it is his main line of discourse. Where is this originality in Rowling’s prose? In King’s? Again, nowhere. It doesn’t exist. There’s nothing that challenges any boundaries–and that’s because neither is a serious writer, and so neither strives for originality. And please do not be patronizing–you really have no grounds to be. I have a degree in Russian literature, so your haranguing me about Tolstoy’s anxieties concerning Shakespeare (felt likewise by everyone from Milton to Joyce) is really quite pointless and more than a bit self-congratulatory. Which is not to say self-congratulation is a bad thing–it’s only bad when it is as hopelessly, risibly misplaced as it clearly is in your situation.

(2) Why is it in response to my criticism that Rowling’s themes are superficial and childish you feel the need to reference Eddie Izzard of all people? Really? That is the weapon you opt to wield in a literary discussion? It doesn’t really answer the question, of course, nor does it make the criticism any less legitimate. Rowling does write about mundane things–which would be fine, a lot of writers do it, but the problem is she writes about mundane things mundanely. Such is the mawkishness, such the shameless (and probably unwitting) lugubriousness of her writing, which skips gleefully from one cliché to another, that it becomes almost comical–like “Dumbledore’s” glum pronouncements, which read like bad fortune cookies. Darkness is not a theme, for goodness’s sake; that is stultifyingly broad. There is darkness explored in good literature–like Emma Bovary’s cloisteredness, her desire for freedom which she satisfies through her adulterous relationship with Rodolphe and Léon; like, well, the ultimate tale of revenge, “Paradise Lost,” which examines no less than the fall of man; the tedium that constantly courts Bernardo Soares in Pessoa’s masterful “The Book of Disquiet” or the immorality and anonymity of life in the city that assails Malte Laurids Brigge in Rilke’s “The Notebooks”–but it is not carried out as Rowling does it–to wit, superficially. Rowling takes darkness, which is difficult to say with a straight face, prima facie; her point of departure is that it exists–that there are good guys and bad guys and that good wins in the end. She does not plumb the depths of darkness, she skims over the surface of it. Revenge is bad but so are discrimination and wizard-vs.-muggle supremacy, etc. etc., and so the story goes, trying desperately to latch on to something that will make it ‘serious’ without realizing that it can never be serious ipso facto because it consists of stitched-together platitudes and archetypes and conceits extracted directly from Lewis and Tolkien. It’s, simply put, dreadfully executed. You mention G.K. Chesterton, a writer I admire a great deal. He deals with darkness in a different way, though, as in “The Man Who Was Thursday.” Who is Sunday, who never reveals himself? And in portraying as he does the machinations of each of the other anarchists, each trying to subvert the other, what point does he make? Does Rowling do anything remotely like this? Of course not. And of course that’s the whole point.

(3) It is a bit sanctimonious of you to accuse me of saying you haven’t read such and such a thing, and then do the exact thing to me–I have read Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth” and I find her to be a bit torn as to what she wants to do exactly–whether she wants to write a sprawling social novel in the tradition of Dickens and Thackeray, or whether she wants something more Joycean or, for a more contemporary example (one cited as a major influence for his category by Wood, especially for Foster Wallace) Pynchonian. Moreover, Wood, in that essay–which I have read, by the way–did not specifically focus on Don DeLillo, but passingly alluded to “Underworld” (at the time of the publication of that article, that was his latest novel) in four instances, not once fleshing the critique, or even in fact building any kind of critique beyond mentioning him–you might, of course, call that pseudo-academic namedropping because your anti-intellectual bent is such that it blinds you to anything that isn’t readily digestible and syrupy enough. Don DeLillo wrote several great novels all of which clock in at fewer than 320 pages–”White Noise,” as I mentioned before, which is on par with the best of Beckett for its sheer tragicomic force, but also “Mao II” and his debut, “Americana.” Please do not attempt to intimate that I have not read something which I have read on more than one occasion (despite my not being especially fond of Wood), and moreover to say that because I draw different conclusions about a work that I have only read the reviews or critical reaction. As for his verdict on Smith, Wood prefers (from what I’ve read by him in “How Fiction Works” and “The Broken Estate”) the low-key novel, stylized but not to outlandish lengths–something like “Mrs. Dalloway” or “Austerlitz,” both of which he writes decent essays about–which again, I have read. He admits she has a vigorous writing style, that she has talent, just doesn’t like what she channels that talent toward. Anything that ends with this rather strident critique is hardly laudatory:

“This is problem-solving, all right. But at what cost? As Irie disappears under the themes and ideas, the reader perhaps thinks wistfully of Mr. Micawber and David Copperfield, so uncovered by theme and idea, so uninsured, weeping together in an upstairs room.” Irie disappears under the weight of the message, goes his tack, the symbolism of her circumstances–which is what I was referring to previously. This is not a rave review; it is perfunctory praise at best that Wood offers Smith. Nevertheless, you’re free to construe it as you will–just not to imply that I haven’t read it.

Although I’ve said I won’t reply further, I really am quite eager to read yours.

“his vivid and heartbreaking characters”

I think in that sentence you say everything one need know about what you want in your novels.

Yes, I do. And you say everything that is wrong with your view of art.

(you conveniently elide the grammatical and syntactical critiques, and that’s because they’re undeniable, but I’ll forgive you this)

First of all, you don’t get to forgive me for anything, you little shit. Who do you think you are? God? You’re just a pathetic troll posting aggressive comments on someone else’s blog. And second, I actually responded to your ridiculous critique. It is not your place to decide what grammatical rules a writer or poet has to follow. Will you blame William Blake for his unusual spelling now? Or Milton for his strange, Latin-inspired sentence structures?

let us just take the first novel. “Stretch [his/her] legs” is used on at least two dozen occasions as a substitute for “walk”; why?

Why not? It all depends on the size of the novel and what an author is trying to accomplish.

The names are quite bizarre, to be sure, but that’s not enough not to recommend a book; what’s worse is the delight Rowling takes in making the names quirky

Oh dear, it’s imagination. We can’t have that, can we?

What is wrong with the quirky names, then? What is wrong with delight, other than that you can’t stand it?

, in the throbbing nostalgia she has for a bygone England where in fact the students wore robes

Oh, that old argument. Fantastic. Because the books are completely uncritical of the school environment portrayed, are they? And because clearly the books tell us that things would be better if we went back to those times.

Portraying something does not mean wishing to go actually go back to it.

It’s really quite pathetic, ignoring the fact that her dialogue (and King’s) may be the most painfully artless I’ve ever read,

You seem to have a really terrible sense of realistic dialogue, then. Especially when it comes to King, whose skills in that department are remarkable. Not that you’ve read any of his work.

all about friendship and love and darkness and the like

Oh, you mean about real subjects? Not all about Sebastian rearranging matches?

And yes, if that’s the question you wish to ask, I do detest television;

Bravo, you’re an idiot who cannot distinguish between the medium and the content and knows nothing about the great art that has been created for television over the years.

I do not detest situational comedy, or good comedy in general, and neither does Harold Bloom–he loves the Marx brothers, actually, something you would know had you actually read anything of his.

I do know that. What makes you assume that I don’t? But what’s so much better about the Marx brothers than so much later comedy, though, other than that the Marx brothers were long enough ago to be fashionable with the snotty crowd?

As for Zadie Smith, she’s a writer of what a critic, James Wood, termed “hysterical realism”–where the characters become no longer realistic but so endued in symbolism that they come off as farcical, as vessels for a message rather than actual breathing characters.

Clearly you’ve never actually *read* Zadie Smith, and have read only reviews or academic texts about White Teeth. So you’re talking out of your arse, or rather out of other people’s arses. You have no opinion of your own, but are simply regurgitating the opinions of others.

Furthermore, you didn’t even understand the (good but occasionally rather muddle-headed) essay by Wood, which is not actually about symbolism at all, but about the tendency of modern novels to go for verbal and conceptual pyrotechnics over real character development. And it actually praises Smith as well as criticizing her. Oh, and do you know who is included in the list of people accused by Woods of hysterical realism? Don DeLillo, whom you were praising so highly in your previous post. Shot yourself in the foot there, didn’t you?

How about next time you read the essay before you write? Because you embarrassed yourself a bit there. Arguments should always be on the basis of the text and all that.

Which is what Harry Potter is–Harry, anointed by destiny but not quite brave enough; Hermione, the “smart” girl who can’t even be understood by her bumbling male companions–Lucy from the Peanuts; and Ron, of course, “the bumbling male companion,” the Charlie Brown of the bunch, so pathetic he’s almost cuddly.

I love how you can see things only as abstractions, as neatly categorized clichés that fit your worldview. Of course they can never have depth if you have already decided exactly who they are.

But just to leave you with a little story about Shakespeare, since you seem to think you know anything about him… In the Globe theater, the cheapest seats were standing up right before the stage. They cost one pence. These people were ironically called the “understanders”–both because they literally stood under the stage, and because they were so woefully uneducated that they could not understand and were there only for the duels and war sequences.

Oh no, another thing I knew when I was a kid. You’re impressing me so much.

You are an understander.

I am? You’re the one who is so woefully uneducated that you can only argue by dropping names and repeating what others told you. You couldn’t even admit that you haven’t read Zadie Smith, and had to regurgitate someone else’s words, which you don’t even understand and which, when read, disprove your point. You persist in pretending that I have no literary education or knowledge, and refuse to actually use any arguments or respond to any of my questions or criticisms. Your posts are little but a collection of whiny and pretentious complaints about how you don’t like two writers, and personal attacks upon a person you know nothing about.

The irony finally becomes almost unbearable with your little story about the understanders. You’re exactly what you are describing – unable to see past the duels and war sequences (or the monsters and the magic) to all the beauty and deeper meaning. If you’d lived in Shakespeare’s times, you would have said that Shakespeare “lacked art” and was just a populist, and would have bothered other people with aggressive comments about how Chaucer was really so much better. You’d even be complaining about Shakespeare’s annoying tendency to make up new words, and all the delight he took in it.

Thank you–and there’s no need to respond any further because any breath spent on you is wasted breath.

My dear boy, this is my blog, and you’re the one who is posting comments. I will respond as I see fit, and right now your shallow arrogance is still amusing me. If it ceases to, I will ban you.