Thursday, April 9, 1987TThe Battalion/Page 5
I DON'T Tk»
WU NEED
WSFHeukh
-JA&M professor successful
with novels, fiction stories
Campbell enjoys role as mentor to students
By Tracy Staton
Reporter
A group of 11 students is seated at
a large table in a local restaurant.
Since few of them are acquainted,
uncertainty lingers in the air. They
have been brought together by a
man who hopes to cultivate their in
terest in writing fiction.
[ Dr. Bob Campbell, associate pro
fessor of English at Texas A&M, sits
at the center of one side of the table.
He plans to start the discussion by
talking about rejection slips.
He opens a manila folder, brings
out three types of rejection letters,
and begins to dissect each phrase.
As he ejqrlains the shades of
meaning he finds, the students start
to relax.
The creative writing teacher has
received many such letters since he
began his career in 1967, but not all
responses to his submissions have
been negative; he has published
three novels and numerous short
stories under the pen name of Ewing
Campbell.
His most recent work is an anthol
ogy of stories entitled, “Piranesi’s
Dream.”
Several students begin asking
questions — about agents, cover let
ters, thank-you notes — and Camp
bell answers them eagerly. He enjoys
his role as mentor to aspiring writ
ers.
“I like helping young people who
are serious about writing, who feel
they have something to say,” Camp
bell says. “I enjoy what l am doing
and I believe in it — that is, I believe
in the end result, which is the wri
ting.”
Fortunately, Campbell’s attitudes
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stories.
“I tend to write gloomy fiction,”
he says. “My work is not sunny and
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Dr. Bob Campbell lectures his creative-writing class. Photo by Trac y & ton
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dry.”
A contributing factor to the mel
ancholy tone of Campbell’s work
may be his childhood, which he
spent in a city that stifled him. An
other factor could be his college edu
cation, which was sporadic because
of the jobs he had to take to pay for
bis schooling.
Although he served two years in
he Army, no government funds
were available to help pay for his ed
ucation.
He quit school several times to
work until he earned enough money
to return.
“I took whatever type of work I
could get,” Campbell says. “I shin
gled roofs, unloaded boxcars and
worked on the docks.”
,, These various jobs appear in his
lllVSS riCti ° n - r
■ r One of his novels, “Rincon I rip-
tych,” uses material from his experi-
nces as a longshoreman in Corpus
Chris ti.
•ationsreW "September Crickets,” a short
given some®? itory from “Piranesi’s Dream,” is set
the hotel Southernaire, where he
worked in Hattiesburg.
Campbell’s books adorn the
ofBlackE«» shelves of libraries across the state
and nation, but not in the Sterling C.
Evans Library.
The writer s;
The writer says he is better known
nationally and internationally than
locally.
He cites the Texas literary estab
lishment’s emphasis cm Texan tradi
tion as the reason for his lack of rec
ognition.
“People in Texas focus only on
Texas and don’t realize how this sin
gle-mindedness looks f rom the out
side,” he says. “Texans are so narcis
sistic that they are unaware how
absurd these attitudes are.”
These attitudes could be stifling
Texas literature, he says.
“The state literary establishment
studies Texas writing as if it had no
connection with the outside world,”
he explains. “It makes the writing
parochial and incestuous, feeding on
itself instead of allowing itself to be
influenced by the best international
writers.”
On a smaller scale, the English de
partment at A&M is guilty of the
same type of prejudice, Campbell
shys.
“We should be encouraging stu
dents to take every opportunity they
can to expose themselves to impor
tant works,” he contends. “However,
the modern languages department
wanted to offer a course on ‘Don
Quixote’ during the spring semester
of 1986.
“The English department ob
jected because some people felt the
course would be imposing on the de
partment’s ‘turf.’ The department
has no specialist on Cervantes (au
thor of ‘Quixote’) and does not teach
the novel as part of any other cour
se.”
Several novels that were part of a
literature class Campbell taught dur
ing the fall of 1986 were heavily in
fluenced by “Don Quixote,” he says.
If his students had studied th novel
prior to his class, he says, thccourse
could have been more stimuUing.
“The more background ^student
has, the more knowledge he can
bring to a class,” he says. “Vhen stu
dents are better students, are bet
ter teachers.”
In addition to his cretdve writing
course, Campbell teachs freshman
composition and litenture classes
and approaches evey class as a
learning experience.
“Part of my challeige as a teacher
is to learn from myilasses,” he ex
plains. “I am contimally looking for
knowledge, especialy in my creative
writing course, bcause it is of
greater interest to ne.”
Because he njoys learning,
Campbell sees hinself as a student,
rather than as a tocher.
“Just as sorm people see them
selves as fat altlough they are slen
der,” he says, “by self-image is that I
am a student in tead of a teacher.”
He is enactirg this self-perception
by taking a conversational Spanish
course offered at no charge to the
University faculty.
“I am just as excited as a young
kid,” the 4i-year-old says with a
smile. “My goal is to be fluent in
Spanish bythe end of the semester.”
This god is not far from Camp
bell’s reaqi.
He ha/co-translated a book from
Spanish/o English and has lived for
extended periods in Mexico.
He sill visits the country occasion
ally, tilveling most often to a colo
nial vilage called San Miguel de Al-
lende
Dicing one of his trips to the vil-
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See Campbell, page 12
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DILLARD’S
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