Author Harold Bloom dies at 89

Harold Bloom, the critic and Yale professor whose seminal “The Anxiety of Influence” and melancholy regard for literature’s old masters made him a popular author and standard-bearer of Western civilization amid modern trends, died Monday at age 89.

Bloom’s wife, Jeanne, said that he had been failing health, although he continued to write books and was teaching as recently as last week.

Bloom (photo) wrote more than 20 books and prided himself on making scholarly topics accessible to the general reader.

Although he frequently bemoaned the decline of literary standards, he was as well placed as a contemporary critic could hope to be.

He appeared on best-seller lists with such works as “The Western Canon” and “The Book of J,” was a guest on “Good Morning America” and other programs and was a National Book Award finalist and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

A readers’ poll commissioned by the Modern Library ranked “The Western Canon” at No. 58 on a list of the 20th century’s best nonfiction English-language books.

His greatest legacy could well outlive his own name: the title of his breakthrough book, “The Anxiety of Influence.” Bloom argued that creativity was not a grateful bow to the past, but a Freudian wrestle in which artists denied and distorted their literary ancestors while producing work that revealed an unmistakable debt.

He was referring to poetry in his 1973 publication, but “anxiety of influence” has come to mean how artists of any kind respond to their inspirations.

Bloom’s theory has been endlessly debated, parodied and challenged, including by Bloom. The book’s title has entered the culture in ways Bloom likely never imagined or desired, such as The New York Times headline that read “Jay-Z Confronts the Anxiety of Being Influential” or the Canadian rock band that named itself “Anxiety of Influence.”