Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds was published by Warner Books in 2002 and is Bloom’s most ambitious attempt at comprehensive literary assessment since The Western Canon — a survey of one hundred figures organized according to the ten Sefirot of Kabbalistic tradition, each Sefirah representing a different aspect of creative power (Wisdom, Beauty, Splendor, Foundation, etc.).
The organizational scheme is characteristically Bloomian: eccentric, learned, and defensible only on its own terms. But it provides a framework for one hundred brief essays that range from the ancient world (Homer, Plato, the Yahwist) through the twentieth century (Beckett, Borges, Calvino, García Márquez). Each essay is two to five pages — too short for sustained argument but long enough for Bloom to identify what he considers each writer’s essential quality, their relationship to tradition, and their place in the constellation of genius.
The compression forces Bloom into a mode of critical aphorism that suits his gifts: his characterizations of writers are memorable and provocative (Whitman as “the American religion incarnate,” Kafka as “the Jewish Dante,” Borges as “the culmination of labyrinths”). The book functions as both a reading guide (Bloom is always recommending specific works) and as a critical testament — the final summation of a lifetime’s reading by one of the most voracious readers of the twentieth century.
Collecting Genius
First edition (Warner Books, New York, 2002): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $15–$35
- Signed copies: $50–$125