\n\nBloom never pissed me off because there are critics out there, and he\u2019s one of them, who take their ignorance about popular culture as a badge of intellectual prowess. He might be able to say that Mark Twain is a great writer, but it\u2019s impossible for him to say that there\u2019s a direct line of descent from, say, Nathaniel Hawthorne to Jim Thompson because he doesn\u2019t read guys like Thompson. He just thinks, \u201cI never read him, but I know he\u2019s terrible.“\u00a0
Michiko Kakutani, who writes reviews for The New York Times, is the same way. She\u2019ll review a book like David Mitchell\u2019s The Bone Clocks, which is one of the best novels of the year. It\u2019s as good as Donna Tartt\u2019s The Goldfinch,has the same kind of deep literary resonance. But because it has elements of fantasy and science fiction, Kakutani doesn\u2019t want to understand it. In that sense, Bloom and Kakutani and a number of gray eminences in literary criticism are like children who say, "I can\u2019t possibly eat this meal because the different kinds of food are touching on the plate!\u201d
Like okay but King should take ::some:: dings for how he used to introduce chapters with lyrics from the most Boomer-ass classic rock songs
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