Harold Bloom, author of 'Anxiety of Influence,' dies at 89

NEW YORK -- Harold Bloom, the eminent critic and Yale professor whose seminal "The Anxiety of Influence" and melancholy regard for literature's old masters made him a popular author and standard-bearer of Western civilization amid modern trends, died Monday at age 89. Bloom's wife, Jeanne, said that he had been failing health, although he continued to write books and was teaching as recently as last week. Yale says Bloom died at a New Haven, Connecticut, hospital. Bloom wrote more than 20 books