"The Anxiety of Influence" by Harold Bloom

It's a giant in the annals in literary criticism, arguably the most influential work in the field in the last 50 years.

The premise?  That all poets face an anxiety of influence when they develop as artists.  Meaning all authors have a precursor who influences their work--and whose shadow looms large over all of their own production (thus the anxiety).  What is an author to do?  What if you're a short story writer and have been awed by James Joyce all your life?  What happens when you sit down to write your own short stories?  How do you start when you know they'll never be as good as his?  How do you develop your own voice and style when you know there's no surpassing your greatest influence?  How do you dare to do something different (or "swerve" in a different direction, as Bloom would say) when you know the best of the best wouldn't have made such a move?

I think anyone who grows strong in a field faces the anxiety of influence.  When I started teaching, I had a mentor named Mr. Harber (the subject of some of my earliest posts) who was and still is the smartest man I've ever met, and the best teacher I'll ever know.  How do I deal with his long shadow?  Would I ever imagine doing something differently than he would have in the classroom, knowing he was the best of the best?  But does that leave me as his eternal disciple, never to come into my own as an educator?  Would I always just try to be like Mr. Harber, but of course always fail to do so since I'm not him?

Some artists never do escape the influence of their precursors.  The Black Crows will always be a 4th-rate version of the Rolling Stones.  The play "Fences" by August Wilson, good as it is, is still in the shadow of the grandest of all American dramas "Death of A Salesman."

So what's an artist to do?  Arbitrarily try to do something different?  But doing something different just for the sake of being different rarely becomes good art.  So what about unabashedly ripping-off your influences and call it an homage?  Doesn't sound like the purpose of art to me.

What to do?  Thus the anxiety.

Maybe you just don't give up.  Maybe you just rip-off your precursor so much that you get bored with it and your mind finally gives you the right "swerve."  Maybe you do something different just for the sake of being different, and therefore your art is bad and unauthentic for awhile, but you do this "different" art over and over again until it becomes natural and you slowly claw your way to something authentic.

Mr. Harber was my mentor for the first two years of teaching.  I've now taught 16 years beyond that in about six other places . . . so maybe there's something in my teaching that's now my own.  Maybe I've made some of my own rightful swerves.  Maybe.