Bloom, Crane, Frank, Spengler - Blake Smith

My latest, and last, essay for Tablet is out now in their new print edition. I wrote it last summer, during the brief moment I thought Kamala might win, but dreading four more years of Trump—and not at all suspecting just how bad they would be. The essay is, exoterically, on Harold Bloom (whose birthday it is today) and Hart Crane, tracing how the former developed many of his signature ideas through a reading of the latter. My original, long version, pasted below, traced as well Crane’s relationship to Waldo Frank and Oswald Spengler, whose theories about the West falling into cultural stagnation and political dictatorship haunted the writing of The Bridge. Just as my own fears about sterility and tyranny haunted my writing of this essay… and are why (along with all the other obvious reasons) this will be my last for Tablet. If a few years ago it seemed to me (perhaps now clearly wrongly) useful or at least interesting to try to articulate there a thinking about liberalism and a critiq

My latest, and last, essay for Tablet is out now in their new print edition. I wrote it last summer, during the brief moment I thought Kamala might win, but dreading four more years of Trump—and not at all suspecting just how bad they would be. The essay is, exoterically, on Harold Bloom (whose birthday it is today) and Hart Crane, tracing how the former developed many of his signature ideas through a reading of the latter. My original, long version, pasted below, traced as well Crane’s relationship to Waldo Frank and Oswald Spengler, whose theories about the West falling into cultural stagnat