Harold Bloom

I have a great admiration for the Shakespearean scholar, Harold Bloom, not least because he stands argumentatively for that which is culturally fine, for that which due to centuries of understanding and study put certain artists above others. In his university in America he opposes those who wish to dilute courses that study great writers with those who may, say, be "relevant to issues" but who are not in the first rank.
But who is to say who is in the first rank and who is not?
Well, anyone who compares the music of The Beatles with that of Beethoven is the sort of person who Bloom would have, I suspect, no time for.
My problem with Bloom is that I find him difficult to read; also, I find some of his Shakespearan tastes not to my liking.
For example, he loves the play "Two Gentlemen of Verona" while I dislike it intensely.
Yet his enthusiasm is appealing even if he sometimes seems to take his admiration for Shakespeare too far. In a review of one of his books ("Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human") I read this: "For Bloom, Shakespeare stands alone not only as the greatest literary genius who ever lived, but the greatest intellect of all time."
There is a story of Bloom travelling in a taxi in Paris on the way to a conference or lecture he was to give. Considerably overweight he was feeling the heat, was miserable and had been suffering with his heart; his wife was chatting to the taxi driver who was telling her about a certain gorilla at the zoo who was expected to "perform" as much as possible so that more gorillas would be born; they are, the driver said, making the animal ill and slowly killing him. Bloom cut in and said: "Do you mind changing the subject - I'm beginning to identify with that gorilla."