SOURCE: “Mempo Giardinelli and the Anxiety of Borges's Influence,” in Chasqui, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, May, 1994, pp. 83-90.

In the following essay, Stone discsses Borge's influence on Mempo Giardinellis short story “La entrevista”.

Almost twenty years ago, Harold Bloom began his landmark study of the concept of intergenerational influence among authors with the opening comment: “Borges 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...