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Harold Bloom vs. J.K. Rowling

Famed literary critic and Yale professor Harold Bloom took a break from analyzing Shakespeare in 2000 to deign to acknowledge the increasingly popular Harry Potter books. Attempting in vain to nip the Potter craze in the bud, Bloom said all kinds of nasty things about series author J.K. Rowling, including that her “mind is so governed by clichés and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing,” lashing out again in a 2003 column for the Boston Globe. Rowling has generally declined to respond to Bloom’s comments (except to insist that she could never write a novel as a response to critics). Then again, Rowling’s sales probably speak for themselves.