Published in 1994, Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages turns 30 this year. In his great book on the great books, Bloom, the Yale professor and eminent literary critic, waged a rearguard action against what he called the “School of Resentment”—the movement to replace the canon of Western works (books celebrated, by leading writers across time, for their aesthetic merit) with political “identity” works (books selected, by today’s activist professors and teachers, based on the race, sex, or other “victim” status of the author). Bloom did not expect to turn the cultural tide. He saw his book as an elegy.
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