The Influence of Anxiety: Harold Bloom and literary inheritance
Summary
Sam Jennings surveys Harold Bloom's theory of influence, arguing that writers inherit and reinterpret predecessors through memory and misreading. It analyzes Bloom's Anxiety of Influence and The Western Canon, balancing admiration for his spiritual view of reading with critique of his elitism and anti-multicultural stance. The essay ends with a call to cultivate a disciplined art of memory to resist forgetfulness and to navigate the flood of contemporary influences in creative work.