Review by Booklist Review
Angels are everywhere: novels, movies, T-shirts, mugs, calendars, postcards, jewelry, sunglasses and literary and religious critic Bloom considers the obsession more childish than childlike. It is fallen angels, demons, and devils, however, that he is concerned with. Satan is the star figure of the tribe, and his literary career began long before his tour de force in Milton's Paradise Lost. Satan was a Persian invention of Zoroaster's, predating Jesus by more than a thousand years. Of course, Bloom discusses the effect the Romantics had on the portrayal of the idea of Satan: George Gordon, Lord Byron, was and is the Fallen Angel proper. From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Tony Kushner's Angels in America, Bloom believes that all people are fallen angels and that that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Erudite and entertaining, this brief book constitutes a bracing riposte to the run of precious angel books that glut the market. A dozen of Podwal's watercolors and line drawings elegantly illustrate.--Sawyers, June Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
The prolific Bloom (humanities, Yale Univ.; The Western Canon) adds to the popular literature on angels, taking the reader on a light jaunt through historical representations of fallen angels, from those in the Tanakh to those of Tony Kushner's Angels in America. Accompanying this wide-ranging narrative are a dozen-plus watercolors, line drawings, and illuminated letters. The book does not pretend to be a comprehensive, scholarly tractate on the subject. Had Bloom been writing from the rabbinic tradition, he would have more extensively explored encounters with angels in the oral law or in rabbinic works. Instead, he mostly relies on literary references and examines fallen angels from a historico-literary and theologico-literary perspective. It is with regards to theology that Bloom may be cited as not devoting enough attention to a crucial issue. Though he briefly acknowledges that "the Satans of the Four Gospels are essentially what we now term instances of anti-Semitism," this is an issue he fails to address adequately. Perhaps a book such as this, mass-marketed for the jolly holiday season, is not the place for such an investigation. For what it sets out to do, however, Bloom's book succeeds. A delightful read recommended for public libraries.-David B. Levy, Brooklyn, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
