Whether or not you have read literary critic Harold Bloom, you have likely heard the term ‘anxiety of influence’, coined in his 1970s book of the same name. There and in The Western Canon (1994), Bloom proposes a vision of creativity inspired by Freud, the Romantics, and the Ancient Greeks, in which great men throughout history wrestle one another for poetic supremacy. Creative production is a ... (read more)
Ruth McHugh-Dillon
Ruth McHugh-Dillon holds a PhD in Spanish and Latin American studies from the University of Melbourne, specialising in literary representations of memory and trauma in post-dictatorship societies. She writes, reads, and researches on unceded Wurundjeri land in Naarm/Melbourne.
You are camping with friends, drinking beer and swimming, celebrating your nineteenth birthday. A car pulls up in the forest. Your aunt emerges, and as she walks towards you she calls out, palms pressed as if in prayer. In Spanish filmmaker Icíar Bollaín’s gripping Maixabel (2021), it is enough for a relative to say your name to know that the worst has happened: your world has ended, your fath ... (read more)