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Books : Reference : Other Reference By Subject : Study Guides : Bloom's Notes

• Bloomsbury Essential Guide for Reading Groups

  Susan Osborne

  
  
   

• Blooms notes on I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

  Maya Angelo

  
  
   

• The Handmaid's Tale: Margaret Atwood (Modern Critical Interpretations): Margaret Atwood (Modern Critical Interpretations)

  
  
   

• Bloom's Reviews: Moby Dick (Bloom's reviews: comprehensive research & study guides)

  Herman Melville

  
  
   

• William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" (Bloom's Notes)

  
  
   

• Bloom's Reviews: Death of a Salesman (Bloom's reviews: comprehensive research & study guides)

  Arthur Miller

  
  Arthur Miller's 1949 Death of a Salesman has sold 11 million copies, and Willy Loman didn't make all those sales on a smile and a shoeshine. This play is the genuine article--it's got the goods on the human condition, all packed into a day in the life of one self-deluded, self-promoting, self-defeating soul. It's a sturdy bridge between kitchen-sink realism and spectral abstraction, the facts of particular hard times and universal themes. As Christopher Bigsby's mildly interesting afterword in this 50th-anniversary edition points out (as does Miller in his memoir, Timebends), Willy is closely based on the playwright's sad, absurd salesman uncle, Manny. But of course Miller made Manny into Everyman, and gave him the name of the crime commissioner, Lohmann, in Fritz Lang's angst-ridden 1932 Nazi parable, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.

  The tragedy of Loman the all--American dreamer and loser--works eternally, on the page as on the stage. A lot of plays made history around 1949, but none have stepped out of history into the classic canon as Salesman has. Great as it was, Tennessee Williams' work can't be revived as vividly as this play still is, all over the world. (This edition has edifying pictures of Lee J. Cobb's 1949 and Brian Dennehy's 1999 performances.) It connects Aristotle, The Great Gatsby, On the Waterfront, David Mamet, and the archetypal American movie antihero. It even transcends its author's tragic flaw of pious preachiness (which undoes his snoozy The Crucible, unfortunately his most-produced play).

  No doubt you've seen Willy Loman's story at least once. It's still worth reading.--Tim Appelo, Amazon.com

  
   

• Toni Morrison's the "Bluest Eye" (Modern Critical Interpretations)

  
  
   

• Emily Dickinson (Bloom's Major Poets)

  
  
   

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (Modern Critical Interpretations)

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  
  
   

• Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations" (Bloom's Notes)

  
  
   

• "The Canterbury Tales": Geoffrey Chaucer (Modern Critical Interpretations): Geoffrey Chaucer (Modern Critical Interpretations)

  
  
   

• J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" (Modern Critical Interpretations)

  J.D. Salinger

  
  
   

• Bloom's Reviews: Autobiography of Malcom X (Bloom's reviews: comprehensive research & study guides)

  Alex Haley

  
  
   

• Charles Dickens' "Tale of Two Cities" (Bloom's Notes)

  
  
   

• The Grapes of Wrath: Bloom's Notes

  John Steinbeck

  
  
   

• Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" (Bloom's Notes)

  
  
   

• Bloom's Reviews: "Wuthering Heights" (Bloom's reviews: comprehensive research & study guides)

  Emily Bronte

  
  
   

• Bloom's Reviews: Brave New World (Bloom's reviews: comprehensive research & study guides)

  Aldous Huxley

  
  
   

• Franz Kafka (Bloom's Major Short Story Writers) (Bloom's Major Short Story Writers)

  
  
   

• J.D.Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" (Bloom's Notes)