Is there anything more vicious?

Jospeh Epstein, former editor of The American Scholar (fired in 1997; he blamed the postmodernists), recently wrote some new essays, collected some old ones, and stuffed them all into In a Cardboard Belt!: Essays Personal, Literary, and Savage.

Excerpts as excerpted in the stuffed them all">Boston Globe review, attacking old Harold Bloom:

Harold Bloom… looks “as if he were poured into his clothes and forgot to say when.”

Ouch—that’s Mr. Bloom below:

More from Epstein:

With tastes running to “the hot-blooded, long-winded, and apocalyptic,” Bloom is an “academic Dionysian, calling for higher fires, more dancing girls, music, and wine, all from an endowed chair.” If Bloom “came off any more ex cathedra in his judgments, he’d be pope.”

It’s savage because it’s true. But we can spare the laugh without spoiling our conscience—Bloom has written a few savage words in his day. And, even though he makes pronouncements like a drunk on a tear, Bloom (who has, over the years, become less and less a critic and more and more the academic Dionysian) will always be Epstein’s better.