Say the name “William Burto” to any student of the University of Lowell South Campus in the 1960s, 70s or 80s, and many will surely remember the amazing Dr. Burto, head of the English Department.
It was Bill Burto who made the ULowell English Department second to none in the region. If you could not afford Harvard’s English Department, ULowell’s was a great second.
Bill Burto would bring Chaucerian expert David Landman, the great American literature scholar, Joseph Zaitchik, two brilliant young women, Judith Anderson and Mary Kramer, film critic Arthur Friedman, and many others who made the department what it is today.
It was Dr. Burto who told me to take an art history course, within which I met Liana Cheney whose knowledge of art startled me. She could look at a work of art, a sculpture, a work of architecture, and tell you the movement, the historical period, the artist, the date, the style, and connect it to the literary period. She could tell you the life story of Matisse, as well as Warhol. Dr. Cheney would remake the Art Department
I had such admiration for her. But Bill Burto stole the show unlike any college professor I ever had. Even his colleagues knew they stood in the shadow of a giant.
Bill Burto edited many English anthologies and authored many articles. He kept his students spellbound with his vast encyclopedic knowledge of art, music (particularly opera), philosophy, languages, world culture, and religion. It seemed to me as a 20-year-old that there wasn’t anything this man did not know.
So it was natural for me to go to him as a junior undergraduate and ask, “Dr. Burto, would you mind reviewing my writing and giving me an evaluation?”
To which he replied in a furrowed eyebrow look, “Certainly!”
Then, with a serious look he said, “You must be ready for an honest evaluation.”
I wasn’t.
A few days later, Dr. Burto caught up with me. We met. He said to me, again with furrowed brow, in his inimitable manner, “Mr Veves, Homer says to put away thy pen for nine years.”
Whether Homer said it or not, if Bill Burto said it, I listened.
“I want you to put away your pen for at least a year. I want you to read all you can. The great books. Read foreign authors. Good writers were first great readers.”
I never forgot what he told me.
I didn’t seriously write again except for the usual term papers, master’s thesis, and trying my hand at a dissertation. (I earned an ABD: All But Dissertation.)
By the late 1980s, I had my first great writing accomplishment – my first scholarly research article on educational policy was published.
By now, I knew a bit of something about teaching and schools. I was learning: Write about what you know.
Then in the late 1990s I started writing again about what I really knew about. Horses – riding them, and the people who rode. I never looked back as I authored articles and stories in equestrian newspapers, giving up public school teaching to make my hobby my livelihood.
Any great writer will tell you to write about what you know. But it was the advice to read prolifically that eventually turned me into a writer.
Without realizing it, whether it be subconsciously or subliminally, the more reading we do, the more we are exposed to writing styles. Dr. Burto imparted this to me.
From political treatises like Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” to narrative styles like Dickens or Hardy, to stream-of-consciousness like Joyce or Proust, to seemingly disjointed styles like Mailer or Faulkner, to narratives written in dialect like Zora Neale Thurston, and cultural fiction commentaries in Morrison, Baldwin, Borges, or Ellison, we develop our own voice after reading the masters.
As I tell my partner who is off to Provence for a summer of painting, “You didn’t learn to be a great artist without first looking at the best.”
So it is with writing.
Almost 20 years ago, it was Jean McDougal Tattan, then the editor of the Haverhill Gazette and now publisher of children’s literature, who helped edit me. It was slow. But I found a niche for what I liked to write about and was good at.
It wasn’t until Tracey Rauh, however, the current Eagle-Tribune editor, that I truly felt I had become a writer. Behind every writer is an even better editor. One cannot honestly evaluate one’s writing, for one is too close to it. Find a good editor.
Being a writer, an artist, a dancer, a horseback rider, a detective, or a teacher is the journey of a lifetime.
As Dr. Burton explained to me almost 50 years ago, you learn first from the best. There were giants long before you arrived.
Michael Veves, 70, of Haverhill, writes on a variety of subjects. He welcomes comments and can be reached at vevesmichael@gmail.com.