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If someone like Madonna, or any other prattling coffee-shop intellectual had arranged their book using the Kabbalah as signposts and touchstones, they would have been lauded as inspirational or revolutionary. That Harold Bloom does it makes one reconsider the way in which one thinks about genius and the markers of greatness. As to the concern that "creative genius needs a more enthusiastic tour guide," one can hardly think of anyone who might have assayed the depths of literature with more gusto (let alone, have read them to begin with). Bloom is remarkably enthusiastic, offering keen, illuminating insights without regard to post-Foucault political/gender/sociological interpretations. For Bloom, the foremost marker of greatness is the revelation of the individual, which he elaborates in his opus "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human." Moreover, the definition of "canon" that he uses is one which does not care whether a writer was male, female, black, white or any combination betwixt. Canon is the measure of a truly aesthetic ideal; indeed, he argues, to be included in the canon is a measure of how beautiful, sublime or subtle a work is. Therefore, the measure of inclusion is the canon itself.