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This book contains incisive comments on thirty-nine short story masters from different countries and styles. With his unique insight, Bloom introduces the famous writers who shaped the art of short stories and their representative works in detail, from the pungency of realism, to the subtlety of impressionism, to the vitality of expressionism, and the nightmarish and grotesque visions of Kafka-Borges... The commentary perspective and selection of works are unique, showing the infinite diversity and possibilities of short story creation.

Bloom regards confrontational heroism as the core feature of "epic" works, breaks through the classification norms of traditional styles, and incorporates many epic works in world literature into the overall critical framework of this book, including "The Iliad", "The Odyssey", and "Beowulf". " And other traditional epic poems, as well as classic long poems full of heroic spirit such as "The Canterbury Tales", "Paradise Lost", and "The Waste Land", as well as ambitious prose works such as "Moby-Dick", "War and Peace", and "Ulysses", as well as "The Tale of Genji" from the East. Through careful reading of the text and sorting out the relationship between writers, Bloom extracted a rather unique epic tradition, that is, the process in which younger writers and older writers continue to engage in confrontational competition through texts in the long history, get rid of "anxiety of influence" and create their own style.

"The Anatomy of Influence" is Harold Bloom's complete explanation of the essence of his poetics, a kind of spiritual autobiography in a deep sense. He leads us through the labyrinthine paths woven by the writers and critics who have inspired and inspired him over the years, posing a lasting reflection on life with the Western canon: Why am I so obsessed with questions of influence? How do my reading experiences shape my thinking? Why do some poems resonate with me and others not? What is the purpose of literary life? Through the analysis of Bloom's favorite literary masters such as Shakespeare, Whitman, Emerson, Yeats, etc., This book reveals to us: What are great literary works? How did it become so great and why is it so important?