Mempo Giardinelli and the Anxiety of Borges's Influence

Abstract

Almost twenty years ago, Harold Bloom began his landmark study of the concept of intergenerational influence among authors with the opening comment: remarks that poets create their precursors.(Anxiety 19) Obviously, Bloom found Borges' remark and its implications to be so far-reaching as to serve as a framing device for an entire book on that subject alone. He goes on to pepper The Anxiety of Influence with repeated references to this and other remarks Borges made on the subject The fact that Borges himself was a master at managing the anxiety of influence in his own writing with his real and invented allusions to the labyrinth of world literature is a central aspect of the critical canon on his writings. Likewise, countless critical analyses have traced the influence of Borges himself upon any number of Latin American authors. The question And what influence has Borges had on your writing? has nearly become standard in any interview since. In fact, Borges himself has been, to use his own words, created as a precursor himself in the fiction of many a literary heir to his heritage. One of most typical of these instances is Mempo Giardinelli's short story La entrevista, written originally toward the beginning of the author's career in 1979 and anthologized after Borges's death in the collection of short stories Antolog?a personal in 1988.