ABSTRACT
The earliest evidence of distinctive human efforts at representation are the engraved lines and cross-hatchings on the surfaces of two small oblongs of ochre, two and three inches long, retrieved from the Middle Stone Age layers of Blombos Cave on the southern coast of South Africa in 1999 and 2000. The problem seems to be that few academic commentators take Bloom seriously, accepting that he means what he says; more accurately, they find it hard to entertain with full seriousness matters Bloom intends should be taken entirely seriously. Bloom Brontosaurus Bardolator has given up on academia, as of late he tells us so forcefully and repetitively. He resigned in protest from the Yale English department as early as 1967. It seems from the professional response to his ‘big’ books, The Western Canon, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, and Genius, that indeed academia at large is no longer sure what to make of him. The youthful Emerson, for whom an empirically elusive present is all-in-all, launches open rebellion against humanity’s perpetual ‘after dinner’s sleep’, composed of tradition, history and ‘facts'.
