Always fun to read Bloom. Three weird essays. His overview of Kabbalah is poisoned by his use of his own terminology (belatedness, influence, defensive, etc.), which should have been reserved for the second and third essays. Oh well. He's nothing if not self-aware: "The Talmud warns against reading Scripture by so inclined a light the the text reveals chiefly the shape of your own countenance. Kabbalah, like the poetry of the last two centuries, reads Scripture only in s inclined or figurative a defensive mode." This, of course, is precisely how Bloom reads Kabbalah. We come to read about Kabbalah and criticism, but both are overshadowed and overwhelmed by the shape of Bloom's round face.