The influence of not-reading

Lic. Nicolás Garayalde (UNC, CONICET, Argentina – UPMF, France)

nicolas_rio3@hotmail.com

In 1975, the American critic Norman Holland claimed, in an article published on the
Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, that Hamlet was his greatest creation.

In 1997, in a preface to the new edition of The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom wrote:
‘We have, almost all of us, thoroughly internalized the power of Shakespeare’s plays, frequently
without having attended them or read them”.

In 1984, David Lodge published a novel in which a student doing his master decides to
write a thesis on “the influence of T. S. Eliot on Shakespeare”.

Each of these claims leads to a set of apparent problems that make us wonder: ‘Who wrote
Hamlet? Is it possible to read Hamlet? Can we influence Shakespeare?

I would like to face these questions, which I find intimately linked, based on a thought
about the concepts of identity (Norman Holland), non-reading (Pierre Bayard) and influence
(Harold Bloom). I believe that on the ground of these concepts, and while attempting to answer
those questions, it is possible to maintain a set of hypotheses: 1) all of us wrote Hamlet; 2) all of us
were influenced by Hamlet, mostly if (or because) we did not read it; 3) all of us have influenced
Shakespeare.

These hypotheses, flirting with paradox, lead us to consider how we understand literature
and the influence in literature.

Nicolás Garayalde (1985) Bachelor of Arts in Modern Literature from Universidad Nacional de
Córdoba (UNC, Argentina). Student of PhD in Literature (UNC). Scholarship holder of the National
Board of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET – Argentina). Assistant member of the
research team “Research problems in Literature and its frontiers: Khôra” in the Research Center at
the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities (Ciffyh – Cba, Argentina). PhD Scholarship holder of
Erasmus and temporary member of the Sociology of Art Lab EMC2 (Émotion, Médiation, Culture,
Connaissance), Université Pierre Mendès France, Grenoble, France. Assistant Professor of Literary
Theory at the School of Letters, FFyH, UNC, Argentina. Author of the book Las conveniencias de
la no-lectura: hacia una pedagogía de la interpretación creativa (The benefits of not reading:
towards a pedagogy in the creative interpretation) 2013, Editorial Comunicarte.