How Long Would It Take to Read the Western Canon?
Harold Bloom 1930-2019
I managed to get through my teen years without reading The Great Gatsby. Shocker—I know. Every red-blooded American is expected to have read this classic somewhere between Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird, but, alas, I never took part in this literary rite of passage.
My guess? I watched the movie and bullshitted a book report—no doubt doing my damnedest to charm my teacher, who undoubtedly told her husband, “Another jackass is trying the same old trick.”
In some circles, admitting this is akin to saying you’ve never had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or lit a bottle rocket on the Fourth of July, or—God forbid—taken your cap off for the National Anthem at a baseball game.
But such is life. So many books … so little time.
Along that vein, a terrifying thought soiled my mood a few months ago. I was reviewing Harold Bloom’s Western Canon and got to thinking—if I embark on reading all the books on his infamous list, how long would it take?
So off I went, burrowing into a rabbit hole filled with bibliophilic equations.
I read about 300 words per minute. And the average page in a book contains about 300 words.
So, it stands to reason, I can knock out one page per minute—or 60 pages per hour. Bloom read 400 pages per hour and retained almost everything!
That said, there are exceptions to the rule. Case in point: I just finished Robert Caro’s first volume on LBJ, and I read The Great Gatsby afterwards. Well … “read” isn’t the right word—more like suffered through.
Going from Caro to Fitzgerald was VERY difficult. Fitzgerald is an all-time great—I get it—I wouldn’t say anything to the contrary. But I’m a Caro fan. A fanatic, really. Honestly, I suffered through The Great Gatsby. I couldn’t wait to get back to Caro and LBJ. Luckily, I read it in two short sittings.
Anyway, if you’ve read Caro, you know there is NO WAY IN HELL there are only 300 words on a page. He averages between 400 and 450. And there are times when you’d swear on a stack of Bibles it’s double—because the man crams at least twice as much information into a sentence as any other writer.
The Great Gatsby, on the other hand, averages 180 words per page.
Let’s split the difference: 425 plus 180, divide by two—we’re back to 300 words per page.
Back to Mr. Bloom and his Canon: there are roughly 1,700 books on it, ranging from the Theocratic Age (The Holy Bible) to the Aristocratic Age (Dante) to the Chaotic Age (Kipling).
If my math is correct, that’s about 500,000 pages. And if I read one hour a day, it would take 6,944 days—or almost 19 years—to read Bloom’s Canon. Meaning, I’d be 65 years old when I’m done! And that assumes I don’t miss a day—and I don’t read anything else.
Even worse, Caro isn’t on the list!
So I sulked. I fell into that all-too-familiar trap of self-pity. How can a man possibly read one hour a day for 19 years in a row without so much as enjoying, oh, I don’t know, maybe The Wall Street Journal or The Beats? Or, dare I say…an Archie comic book or an old issue of Playboy.
The answer’s obvious: he can’t. Even if I split up my time and did one day on, one day off, we’re looking at 38 years. And since I’m 46 years old, I’d be in my mid-80s before I wrapped it up.
I’m still considering it though. You only live once—so why not?
I’ll have to keep thinking about it. But time is of the essence – I ain’t gettin’ any younger.
For the time being, I’ll keep reading Caro …
and Wolfe …
and Kerouac …
and McCullough …
and Hunter Thompson …
and The Wall Street Journal …
and hiding the fact that The Great Gatsby isn’t the only classic I haven’t read.
P.S. The Great Gatsby is included in Bloom’s Canon.
*Composed, Edited, and Published in Austin, TX
