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Harold Bloom's Flight to Lucifer in the Jewish Review of Books
30 March 2019

Michael Weingrad writes in the Spring 2019 edition of the Jewish Review of Books on Harold Bloom's one and only novel, The Flight to Lucifer (published in 1979, so this is its 40th anniversary), which was heavily influenced by Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus. The article explores Bloom's obsession with Lindsay's book, Lucifer's flaws as a novel, and Bloom's "anxious relationship" with C S Lewis.

Weingrad concludes that "The Flight to Lucifer is less of an homage to Lindsay than an anti-Perelandra", though I felt, when I read Perelandra, that it owed a lot to Arcturus, so this is all starting to sound a bit circular. The article comes with a nice cartoon of Bloom reading a much-repaired copy of Arcturus, by Mark Anderson (with a detail from the cover of the 2007 Wilder Books edition of Lindsay's novel in the background).

You can read the article at the Jewish Review of Books site, and my own review of Bloom's book on this site.

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