We are sad to learn of the death of Professor Harold Bloom, who was one of the founding patrons of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. He taught at Yale University for 64 years, conducting his final class just a few days before his death at the age of 89.

Harold Bloom was one of the most distinguished literary critics of the last century. His major books, such as The Anxiety of Influence (1973) and The Western Canon (1994), informed several generations of students and scholars.

His many works include an edited collection of essays, Anthony Burgess: Modern Critical Views (New York: Chelsea House, 1987), in which he described Burgess’s Inside Mr Enderby as ‘the most undervalued English novel of our era.’

Bloom took a particular interest in Burgess’s writing about Shakespeare, especially his fictionalised account of Shakespeare’s life, Nothing Like the Sun — ‘a splendid novel […] the only successful novel ever written about Shakespeare.’ He compared the achievement of this book to James Joyce’s Ulysses. Elsewhere, he wrote that Burgess’s fictional character Enderby was a creation of Falstaffian dimensions.

Bloom often met Burgess and enjoyed his company company when they were both teaching in the United States in the 1970s. In his book on Falstaff, Bloom documents lively conversations about Shakespeare’s plays and their characters.

After Burgess’s death in 1993, Bloom corresponded with Liana Burgess, and he supported her idea to create an educational charity in memory of her late husband. He was pleased to accept Liana’s invitation to become an honorary patron of the Burgess Foundation, and he was an energetic supporter of Burgess’s writing through his critical books, the most recent of which appeared only last week.

In 1999 Bloom gave an interview to the Independent in which he described a memorable encounter with Burgess in the early 1970s:

There is a mystical pact between me and Tony. I met him in New York, and he introduced me to his favourite drink, Fundador, Barcelona cognac. One morning I had bought a bottle, and was walking home, and suddenly like an apparition in front of me, blinking in the sunlight, is Mr Anthony Burgess, with his shirt open to his navel, and wearing carpet-slippers and no socks and clearly not having slept the night before. He said, ‘Bloom, Bloom, is that you? What have you got in that paper bag?’ I said, ‘Improbable as it may seem, it is a bottle of Fundador.’ He said, ‘My God, there is a God, this proves it, hand it over immediately.’ I watched with wonder as he took one of the longest drinks I had ever seen, and shuddered after each draw. He handed it back, and I said, ‘No, you owe me a bottle.’ He said, ‘It is a sacred obligation, and if it should happen that we do not meet in this life again, when you reach the other shore I will be waiting for you, be it purgatory or heaven, and there I shall stand on the other shore with a bottle of Fundador.’ Well, I have not yet reached the other shore, but I frequently think he will be waiting for me with the Fundador.

We wish Harold Bloom well on his journey to the other shore.

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