The vastly influential 'The Western Canon' outlined what we should read to understand a greater depth of the individual self. 'How To Read And Why' continues the argument and focuses on how we use literature in order to gain deeper self-awareness. Poems, stories, novels, plays and parables are all analysed as forms of writing as immersion, the language of individuality and inwardness: Shakespeare's sonnets, the short stories of Hemingway and de Cervantes, the novels of Proust and Calvino, Sophocles's 'Oedipus Rex' and Mark's Gospel. Harold Bloom also addresses the idea of why we read: increased individuality, respite from visual bombardment, a return to deep feeling and deep thinking.
