Saskatchewan News Index
Top News Stories

Arts

Almost Autobiography Mixes 'Actuality, Illusion'

Saskatoon Star Phoenix
December 15, 1984. p.[?]

As Canadians scan the shelves of their favorite book stores this Christmas, W.O. Mitchell's new novel, Since Daisy Creek, is certain to draw considerable attention.

Mitchell admits it's the most autobiographical of all of his novels, beginning with the terrifying experience of a grizzly attack, growing into a strong father-daughter relationship, building into a tribute to Canadian universities and its teachers and filled, like he says, "With a strange amalgam of actuality and illusion."

The novel's main character is an irreverent, salty-tongued, sometimes disillusioned professor of English.

The fictional Canadian university in which the story is set isn't one of four where he has taught but he suspects the folks at one university might recognize the setting and perhaps themselves.

The terror of the story, an encounter with a grizzly, was based on a hunting expedition that he and a couple of friends took years ago at Dolly Creek, Alberta, and it was a sight he'll never forget.

"You can't fake that stuff, you work out of your actual stored past."

And in the novel, the disillusioned professor worries about coming up empty at idea time.

That's a touch of reality.

Because while Canadians are picking Mitchell's Since Daisy Creek off the shelves, Mitchell will be plotting the steps of his next book, simply because "he fears a block."

"I encountered a two-year block once before. Even a great writer like John Steinbeck did. Fifteen years, as I recall. And when you fall into a block, you worry about how long it's going to last and whether the next book will show that you've lost something.

"The next novel won't be a sequel but it will contain some of the same characters. And maybe it's going to contain the convocation to end all convocations. It's a convocation which winds up in chaos when one of the graduates, wearing nothing but his gown and mortar-board, decides to flash."

Mitchell has marched hand-in-hand with the Canadian publishing industry, admitting there "was a little luck in the beginning, strong support from publishers who always lived in a precarious position" but he believes Canadian writers are now enjoying a golden age.

Mitchell was born in Weyburn of Scottish-Irish parents, contracted tuberculosis at the age of 12 and being unable to participate in the games that boys play, he became an observer. In 1931, he intended to be a doctor but further trouble with the tuberculosis in his wrist caused him to change his educational scheme of things.

He left the University of Manitoba without a degree, went to Europe on a tramp steamer, came back and enrolled at the University of Washington where he took a course in short story and play writing and eventually returned to his studies in philosophy at the University of Alberta.

Luck for Billy Mitchell goes back to something that happened in an Alberta classroom supervised by "a tricky old fox, R.H. Salter, one of the four teachers I recognized at the start of the new book.

"It was a time when Atlantic Monthly sent our invitations to classes to buy their publication at reduced rates. They claimed to have the best American short stories and the stories would be beneficial for classroom instruction.

"The professor wrote back, told them the Atlantic Monthly was no good to him because he had students who were much better writers. When they asked for some samples, it gave me a break I needed. As it was, I wound up teaching only two years at that point in my career and I settled into writing."

Mitchell met his future wife, Myrna Hertle, while selling encyclopedias and it was a turn of good luck because they were married in 1942, the same day he sold his first story, You Gotta Teeter.

He decided to settle down in High River in 1943 and concentrate on a career as a freelance writer. Four years later, he sold Who Has Seen The Wind. And that opened up some opportunities in Toronto, first as fiction editor of Maclean's and then with the exceptional series, Jake And The Kid, which ran eight years on CBC Radio and was transformed into television episodes as well.

But everything Mitchell did in the early years was like a slice out of life he has witnessed on the Prairies.

Jake And The Kid was a reflection of Crocus, "the fastest growing town in the West," with 80-odd characters.

Jake, the kid, Old Daddy Johnson, Malleable Brown and Miss Henchbaw were all parts of people he'd met.

"They were fragments or a composite of real person. They had to be if they were to mean anything to the listeners."

Who Has Seen The Wind was the story of a boy's growing up in a small town, surrounded by the Prairie sights and by characters like a hard-drinking, hard-swearing uncle and a local bootlegger whose still explodes in the church basement.

As recently as last week in Vancouver, Mitchell was spinning yarns about Who Has Seen The Wind.

He remembered, years ago, when Ladies' Home Journal ran Who Has Seen The Wind as a serial. One episode ended with an explosion in the basement of the church and the readers were left in suspense.

"I got more letters from North Carolina, Washington, and from all over. I couldn't believe there wasn't a bloody church in all of North America that didn't have a janitor who blew up a still."

As Mitchell reflects on some 40 years of writing, he praises the efforts of Hugh Ayers, John Gray and Jack McClelland, who were the publishers, "who gambled with the dough and started the Canadian industry on its way to a golden age."

"A writer's annual income still isn't much more than an average of $7, 000 but Canada has first-rate writers, who are getting a chance to market their stuff, and best of all, we're being recognized around the world.

"My stuff has been translated into Russian, without me knowing about it, and I haven't got a ruble to show for it.

"I've been translated into French, German, Spanish, and I've found out that teachers and students in France, Germany, and Italy, are better informed about Billy Mitchell than perhaps the students back in Canada. My understanding is that the Europeans consider Canadian writers more romantic and exotic than the Americans."

Mitchell teaches two semesters a year at the University of Windsor, hoping to encourage young people to pursue the art.

And what does he tell them?

"You better know why you're writing. And it better not be to get published and it better not be for money. It better be because you're loving-hearted and because you're writing for it's own sake."

W.O. Mitchell hasn't been terribly lucky with films but he's a testy character who believes in visual writing and suggests "I'm very good at it."

He considers the original script for Alien Thunder, produced in Saskatchewan in 1972, as some of the best writing he's ever done but became terribly upset when "a hack from New York" was hired to redraft his collection of stories into a collection banalities.

He was a little more pleased, but not totally, with the 1978 production of Who Has Seen The Wind, which was filmed by Allan W. King in Arcola.

He's been promised something substantial for his work, Back to Beulah, but two producers have let the project go down the drain.

So, rather than trusting and depending upon outside sources, Mitchell has created a company, Meadowlark Films, which he hopes will be the answer to his dreams. His partner is Eric Till "one of the great Canadian directors and I simply won't go into a film project without him."

Back To Beulah is a strong possibility. The screenplay is ready, Till is committed, Angela Lansbury and Carole Shelley are lined up as stars "and all we're needing is the final word from some sources who want to put up the money."

But while he waits for Back To Beulah to spring to screen life, Mitchell has plunged into a feature movie, tentatively called By Appointment, which will be shot partly in London, England, and partly in Fort Walsh and its surrounding Cypress Hills, Saskatchewan, territory this summer.