The Anxiety of Influence by Harold Bloom
Published 1973 · 55,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is The Anxiety of Influence to read?
The Anxiety of Influence scores 77 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 75 out of 100
- Coined technical vocabulary layered over dense allusion to Western literary tradition.
- Sentence structure: 70 out of 100
- Abstraction: 82 out of 100
- Operates at the level of structure and psychological archetype.
- Information density: 78 out of 100
- Every page introduces new distinctions and revisionary ratios.
- Narrative indirection: 25 out of 100
- Bloom's argument proceeds through analogy, aphorism, and deliberate indirection.
- Symbolic density: 22 out of 100
- The revisionary ratios take on quasi-mythological weight.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- The argument is itself an anxiety-inducing performance of strong misreading.
- Resolution withholding: 25 out of 100
- Ends on a deliberately unresolved note about the fate of belatedness.
- Structural complexity: 42 out of 100
- Six revisionary ratios developed across interlocking chapters.
How The Anxiety of Influence is regarded
The Anxiety of Influence holds a literary regard score of 87 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.