By Amanda Marcotte
the Carillon

I've had a terrible problem all my life. It's this uncomfortable nagging itch. The doctors can't do anything about it, the vodka doesn't help, and no matter how many times people say it's only in my mind, it torments me day after day.

It's not my fault--it can happen to anyone. At least I've admitted it; that's right folks, I've got a bad case of the Writing Itch. This scourge has been chipping away at the sanity of humans since that first ancient carrier of the disease started to scrape his thoughts on some rock in hopes of curing his itchy ailment.

Lately, the only cure to my problem is the salve of writing a good story, the cooling and cleansing properties of reading a well-written book, or talking with fellow writers about those who have scratched before us.

If you have this wonderfully terrible compulsion you might be interested to hear what some seasoned and not-so-seasoned scrapers have to say about the art and other master scrapers who influenced the way we scratch today.

Ken Mitchell and Andy Stubbs from the English Department at the University of Regina, Greg Burbidge, an English student, Gail Bowen, an English professor at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, and the Carillon's own Editor-in-Chief, Emmet Matheson, took time to talk about their writing influences and habits, as well as their current works-in-progress.

The Questions

1. What writers have had the biggest influence on your own writing and why?
2. What book had the biggest influence in changing the way you see the world?
3. How often do you read for enjoyment? When you do, where is your favorite place? Do you like munchies when you read?
4. If you had to extol the value of one Saskatchewan writer, who would it be?
5. What writer had the most insight or foresight for his/her time?
6. In terms of originality, who are the best writers of all time?
7. Are you currently working on any writing projects? What is one of your favorite pieces that you've written?

The Answers:

Ken Mitchell of the English Department at the U of R answers:

1. John Steinbeck and Erskine Caldwell, a pair of American writers who demonstrated to me that good literature came from down-to-earth characters in regional locales. Mark Twain (Huck Finn) had a similarly powerful influence.
2. Miguel Cervantesı Don Quixote.
3. I read compulsively every day, all day, in no fixed location. I like to read in coffeehouses. No eats; lots of fluid.
4. The greatest Saskatchewan writer was James Sinclair Ross.
5. Joseph Conrad, in Heart of Darkness, wrote the greatest work of the 20th century in 1896. He understood the forces of imperialism and racism, and, in effect, predicated their consequences.
6. I guess Iıd have to say Shakespeare, while William Blake runs a close second.
7. I am currently completing a stage play The Hunter Memorial; and a novel, whose title is not yet determined. My favourite piece of my own work is the story ³The Great Electrical Revolution², but ³²The Shipbuilder² for stage works.

Andy Stubbs, an English professor at the U of R writes:

1. This depends on whether Iım writing articles or something more on the ³creative² side‹if thereıs a difference. Some of the strongest non-fiction writer influences for me were women, Helene Cixous to name one. This is why I got interested in creative non-fiction and tried to get it rolling in the writing classes I was teaching too. I had also run into Deborah Brandt, Linda Flower, others in the writing teaching game. As far as creative writing goes, itıs hard to admit to a single influence because it is always changing. Besides, influence, if too direct, can destroy you as a writer. I find I learn to write by setting up a resistance to writers Iım most attracted to. I deliberately unwrite them in order to try to expose voice(s) in/under my ³own² words. What Iım thinking of as I write a poem, say, is the voice of the listener‹someone outside who is observing what Iım doing as I do it. I donıt know who this is but I do know itıs feminine. And itıs not Mom!
2. This will sound funny, maybe, but Iıd say the Critique of Pure Reason. I took a 3rd-year course in Kant in 1971-72. I loved the feel of my copy (the Kemp-Smith translation) of the book, the colour (black) of the cover, the sharp edges of the pages. A few years later I sat down and started to re-read it, cover to cover. I did this in 2 years, a few pages at a time. During that time it was incredibly important to me to complete that book. Ultimately, Iıd say, it led me into the 18th century, into a year teaching in Germany (though quite a distance from where Kant lived, which wasnıt part of Germany anyway any more). I once heard a rumour‹someone told me‹that Marlene Dietrich read the Critique and lived her life by it. For me, the book made thought tactile: you could see/touch ideas, sense their shape. Seeing and touching are the same thing in the 18th century, by the way. Philosophers and poets agreed on that. The whole connection is of course a swipe from Milton‹his myth of his blindness and how it enabled him to see by feeling.
3. I have to confess I canıt read for enjoyment. Reading seems more like work to me. I donıt trust the ³pleasure of the text.² I suspect the text of trying to trick me so I set myself up to resist itıs whole outreach to me. I sometimes like the thoughts I come up with after reading, or a conversation I might have with someone about a book. But I read books to teach them. If I have to confess to a really hot read in the recent past, Iıd have to say the ³no manıs land² story arc in Batman comics was a real blast.
4. Iım still learning the Prairies from Eli Mandel.
5. William Blake.
6. Well, Iıd hedge a bit on this. ³Originality² is a Romantic concept and value. Before the high Romantics adopted it, the mid-18th century thought of ³original² as meaning more like ³as in the origins of the world.² The word was more a generic designation of writers‹poets‹who imitated the style of the ³first men², the ones who bore first witness to creation (which was thought to have happened 6000 years before). Their writing could be found in the prophetic books of the Old Testament. Having said all that, Iıd say my favourite ³original² poet is Alexander Pope, on the basis of his ³emotional² poem ³Heloise to Abelard² (itıs emotional because itıs about the repression of emotion). But the greatest poem in the language was written not by him but by Gray: the ³Elegy.² Neither can be imitated. Their relationship to language cannot be categorized, captured, repeated, or exhausted by interpretation.
7. Yes, I guess a thing called ³War.² A 5-6 page version of this got published in Fiddlehead a few years back and Iıve revised it a few times since and read it at readings also. Itıs written in my fatherıs voice‹at the time he was in Europe 1943-45 in the RCAF. It comes with pictures he took of the devastation of the western European landscape, a day he spent at Belsen, the whole collapse and (self-)destruction of the Europe whose past we (whoever ³we² is) study and esteem. Iıd like to publish it as a long, multi sectioned/multi-voiced poem with the pictures. Integration of words and pictures has been done before, of course, but Iım working on a new spin. So I tell myself....

Greg Burbidge, an English student at the U of R answers the questions using an unconventional approach:

1. Kids in the Hall. I love writing mocumentaries. Itıs very hard to come up with new material that can top the real life we see around us. All you have to do is scratch the surface and thereıs humor and sarcasm everywhere. Kids in the Hall were geniuses. They thrived in examining the things we take for granted and made fun of our own norms in a way that Americans donıt seem to be able to. Trying to put such cutting-edge wit in a tradional format (the documentary) makes for an interested challenge.
2. I would rather plead a little lenience in this one and ask for writer rather than author. J.D. Salinger. Though I donıt enjoy Catcher in the Rye all that much, the ways in which his other three books flesh out their characters while dealing with odd subject matter that I too think about made me aware of literature like nothing before it. Things after it have made me more self-aware, but this was the first brick in the wall of books.
3. I try to read a little in the afternoon, and then something simple in the evenings. I prefer Paddington over Pooh in the evenings, as Pooh is a bear of very little brains, and Paddington was smart enough to be able to narrate his own stories. The commute to work and back is a good place to read... I was surprised at how fast I could finish a book if I just read it to work and back each day. If Iım not on the bus, then munchies in my room are a neccessity with reading.
4. Iım sure Iıll be proven wrong by other answers that I just never thought of, but Iım not a fan of Canadiana Canadian writing, and that appears to mostly be what comes out of the Prairies. Itıs hard to remain on the cutting edge of your time while living in the Praries.
5. Don DeLillo will sell a lot more books when heıs dead. But personally, whenever I feel alone I read a little of Douglas Couplandıs Generation X. . Whenever I feel like a hypocrite living the life of academia I pull out the book and am immediatly surrounded by old friends, if only in my mind. Itıs not literature by a long stretch, at least it self-conciously tries not to be (if only in a sad attempt to be considered literature), but itıs still one of my favorite reads when Iım lonely. Life After God was a pretty good read too.
6. Little Richard. He Œre-wroteı music and turned it into Rock Nı Roll. What greater accomplishment is there than the evolution of Aerosmith and Jon Bonıs ŒShot Through the Heartı. If that isnıt high literature then set me on fire and push me down hill.
7. I think writing shouldnıt try to make itself great enough to be remembered anymore. With television, the only way to compete is to enter the genre in some way. I think any T.V. show that tries to be memorable is also going to fall short in some way. The favorite pieces Iıve done in the last while are short short scripts (I try to aim for under three minutes, or a comercial break length) that are good but not neccessarily memorable. Something that could turn itself into a cocktail party anecdote, but nothing more. If literatureıs sole purpose is for people to be able to say what books theyıve read while standing around a punch bowl (and I defy anyone to prove it more imporatant than that), than the least literature can do is make itself something that people will want to hear while eating crackers with meat paste on them.

Gail Bowen, a professor at SIFC, writes in the shadow of a looming book deadline:

1. There are so many, but I like the attention to detail in Carol Shields work. C.P. Snowıs series Strangers and Brothers taught me a great deal about how to write a series and keep it fresh.
2. Robertson Davies because he introduced me to Carl Jung.
3. Not as often as I wish I could. At the moment, I have a deadline for a new book, so my recreational reading is non-existent. We have a wonderful sunny front porch which is my absolute favourite place to read. I donıt munch, but I drink gallons of tea.
4. Maggie Siggins because she has made Creative Non-fiction an art.
5. Aldous Huxley--Brave New World was eerily prophetic.
6. Virginia Woolf
7. I have a new novel out this fall and Iım doing a rewrite of my Peter Pan script for Manitoba Young Peopleıs Theatre. I always like the last one best.

Emmet Matheson, Editor-in-Chief, freelance writer, and aspiring literatus writes:

1. Richard Brautigan, author of Troutfishing in America, In Watermelon Sugar, Willard and His Bowling Trophies, as well as many books of poetry. Like Kurt Vonnegut, reading Brautigan is like sitting down for a drink with someone you admire and trust. His prose is so gentle, yet uncompromising. He doesn't bully you into believing his words like Hemingway does. By contrast, H.L. Mencken's scathing pieces rouse the hellion in me. Despite the fact that he was unexcusably anti-Semitic, he handled the English language like Vince Carter handles a basketball. Mencken's pieces on the Scopes Monkey Trial--swish!
2. At 14, Kerouac's On the Road affirmed a lot of naive ideals I held at the time. More than any other book, it made me want to be a writer. It was a combination of, "Hey this is what I want to do!" and "Hey, I could do this!"
3. I actually get a lot of reading done on the bus. I spend about an hour a day on our lovely public transit system, and without a book, it would seem like an eternity. Plus, it's a very efficient use of my time. Although sometimes I do miss my stop, which can lead to a lot of wasted time.
4. Dan Laporte is one of the most brilliant people I've ever met. I've read parts of a screenplay he's been working on for a long time. It's probably too tragically funny to ever be produced. Laporte is amazing. I expect great things from him.
5. Hands down, George Orwell was the most important writer of the 20th century, although not in a literary sense. Nineteen-Eight-Four and Animal Farm remain immensely relevant today. Nineteen-Eighty-Four might even be more topical in the Information Age than it was mid-century. Down and Out in Paris and London is the most humane look at poverty in the developed world.
6. Originality? Literature is always ripping someone else off. Gertrude Stein is cool because instead of taking her ideas from other writers, she formed her style from the techniques of Cubist painters.
7. Well, right now I'm putting out a little paper, maybe you've heard of it, Amanda. Most of my efforts go that. That and parcheesi. I jest, really. [takes a long slug from a brandy snifter full of Cutty Sark] You know, when I was over on the continent, I met a lovely fellow who wore no socks. What a gas he was. But seriously, I'm in the sketching stages of what I hope will be my first novel. It's hard to say, I may finish another first and in that case this will be my second novel. Now if you'll excuse me I have some butter to churn.