The Transom: The Man Who Wrote Himself to Death

Upon reflection, it would seem that writing oneself to death might be a complicated proposition, but I once knew a scholar who succeeded in doing it. He applied himself diligently to the task and put himself six feet under in fairly short order. Because I edited one of his several books, I was witness to some of the process. He spoke to me about a great many things having no bearing whatsoever on the editing of his manuscript, thereby granting me early insight into the intricacies of faculty life. Formerly, I had thought of the academy as a dog-eat-dog environment characterized by publishing or perishing; he revealed to me a dog-eat-self world of publishing and perishing nevertheless.

The man who wrote himself to death claimed to be a compulsive scribbler, but I think there was more to it than that. He was driven by ambition, and eventually ambition possessed him. Writing was the avenue he chose to attain the status he desperately craved. He did not wish merely to be a respected scholar. He sought to be an exalted one, adorned and bedecked with honours, awards, and titles. He wanted to be a big cheese, a nabob, a wheel, a panjandrum, an academic somebody. If he published enough books and articles, he believed they'd take him to the pinnacle of his profession.

He'd be elevated by printed matter.

He was, I learned, a country boy who had known Depression-era toil. Service during World War II delivered him from farm labour and provided him with a college education. The campus environment appealed to him more than the fields and furrows of the outback, and he decided to remain in it. Persistence took him to a mediocre graduate school and earned him both a PhD and a job at a small college, where he was too busy teaching to write anything until he was nearly forty years old. He wrote an article and observed that publication was a splendid way to attract local attention. The floodgates opened, and he published extensively in obscure places until the early 1960s, when his first book appeared.

That first book, well enough received in his discipline, led to a better job on a larger campus. Putting two and two together, he concluded that more books would lead to even better jobs. His name would be on every set of academic lips north of the Panama Canal, he believed, owing to his quite obvious gift of scholarly gab. He would become a prolific author – no trick at all for a fellow who already had a book and a whole bunch of articles.

He explained how he worked by showing me some manuscripts in various stages of preparation. He hammered away on an old typewriter, producing copy that he would then revise with a red ballpoint pen. Thereafter, he would retype everything and repeat the process. This he might do several times before he was satisfied with the results. When new technologies became available for word processing, he did not embrace them: Learning to use a new gizmo would have taken time from his schedule of composing, emending, and mailing manuscripts to publishers of various sorts.

As time passed, his desire to see his name in print intensified to the point of obsession. Articles, books, edited collections, introductions to reprints, forewords to other people's books – all these things he considered 'assignments,' even when nobody assigned them. He cared nothing for the reputations of journals or publishing houses. A book was a book, no matter who issued it; and an article was an article, no matter where it appeared. He was fiercely proud of everything he published; and whenever he published, he let everyone within earshot know about it. 'If you don't blow your own horn,' he once told me, 'nobody else will do it for you.'

The better jobs he wanted did not materialize. What recognition he did receive might have satisfied others, but it was not enough for him. Greater success waited just around the proverbial corner, and he was sure...