Love Quote by Harold Bloom

Bloom’s jab is aimed less at bad writing than at bad gatekeeping: criticism that treats books as raw material for theory, status, or moral triage instead of as encounters that can actually rearrange a person. The insistence - “it has to start” - reads like a manifesto disguised as advice, a refusal of the idea that criticism is primarily a professional skill. For Bloom, it’s a love affair first, a job second.

The subtext is generational and defensive. Bloom came up in a mid-century culture where the critic was a high priest of the canon, and by the late 20th century he watched that role get crowded by politicized reading, academic specialization, and media-speed hot takes. His answer isn’t “read widely” or “be fair”; it’s “be bewitched.” That’s why he singles out poems: not because novels lack value, but because poetry, in Bloom’s lifelong framing, is the art form least tolerant of bullshit. It demands attention to language itself, to rhythm and metaphor, to what can’t be reduced to a plot summary or a social lesson.

The line about adolescence and the twenties is slyly prescriptive. He’s granting a late start while still implying a deadline: if you haven’t been seized by literature by early adulthood, you’re likely to mistake commentary for contact. Bloom’s intent is to shame the bloodless critic and recruit the vulnerable reader - the one willing to be changed, not just correct.