A Few Stray Words About Shakespeare

 While in prison, I read Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom. I am not learned enough to comment on the correctness of Bloom's argument, but his argument was enthusiastic enough to make me pay attention and accept it provisionally.

Ultimately, even to Bloom, Shakespeare’s uncanny power in the rendering of personality is ‘perhaps beyond explanation’. That won’t, of course, stop him trying. His problem is that ‘life itself has become a naturalistic unreality, partly because of Shakespeare’s prevalence.’ But if Shakespeare’s consummate achievement is, in a word, to ‘enlarge’ us, it is Bloom’s to perform the same service for him.

Amy Miller's Why Writers Should Hang Out With Shakespeare from Writer's Digest lacks the expansiveness of Bloom, is far more concerned with writerly advice, but is not really much less emphatic about Shakespeare's relevance. Here are her points, I leave off her explanations.

1. Your audience may be smarter than you think. 
2. His stories are always ripe for a reboot. 
3. Some of Shakespeare’s best lines come when people are talking to themselves. 

It may be that last one I have the most trouble with. I try to hard to sound like the people around me.

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