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RIP: Burton Hatlen
Burton Hatlen, a literary scholar whose subjects ranged from Shakespeare to Stephen King and whose teachings shaped the minds of four generations of students at the University of Maine, died Monday at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. He was 71.
The cause was pneumonia, said his family. Hatlen had undergone treatment for prostate cancer during the last decade.
"Burt was more than a teacher to me. He was also a mentor and a father figure," said King on Tuesday. Not only did he hone his writing under Hatlen’s careful eye, but during the workshop he and Spruce fell in love and eventually married. "He made people — and not just me — feel welcome in the company of writers and scholars, and let us know there was a place for us at the table."
King, who has published more than 40 novels, often sent his unpublished manuscripts to Hatlen. "He saw so much more of what I was doing than I did," said King, who visited Hatlen a week ago in the hospital. Hatlen wrote several scholarly essays on King’s work, and a handful of King’s characters bear the name Hatlen, including Brooks Hatlen, the prison librarian in the novella "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption." In 1997, when the Kings gave $4 million to their alma mater, they handed the first check — $1 million — to Hatlen to hire arts and humanities professors.
In a postscript to his 2006 novel "Lisey’s Story," King writes a tribute to his mentor. While the words are King’s, they summarize an experience many students had in Hatlen’s classroom: "Burt was the greatest English teacher I ever had. It was he who first showed me the way to the pool, which he called ‘the language-pool, the myth-pool, where we all go down to drink.’ That was in 1968. I have trod the path that leads there often in the years since, and I can think of no better place to spend one's days; the water is still sweet, and the fish still swim."
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The cause was pneumonia, said his family. Hatlen had undergone treatment for prostate cancer during the last decade.
"Burt was more than a teacher to me. He was also a mentor and a father figure," said King on Tuesday. Not only did he hone his writing under Hatlen’s careful eye, but during the workshop he and Spruce fell in love and eventually married. "He made people — and not just me — feel welcome in the company of writers and scholars, and let us know there was a place for us at the table."
King, who has published more than 40 novels, often sent his unpublished manuscripts to Hatlen. "He saw so much more of what I was doing than I did," said King, who visited Hatlen a week ago in the hospital. Hatlen wrote several scholarly essays on King’s work, and a handful of King’s characters bear the name Hatlen, including Brooks Hatlen, the prison librarian in the novella "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption." In 1997, when the Kings gave $4 million to their alma mater, they handed the first check — $1 million — to Hatlen to hire arts and humanities professors.
In a postscript to his 2006 novel "Lisey’s Story," King writes a tribute to his mentor. While the words are King’s, they summarize an experience many students had in Hatlen’s classroom: "Burt was the greatest English teacher I ever had. It was he who first showed me the way to the pool, which he called ‘the language-pool, the myth-pool, where we all go down to drink.’ That was in 1968. I have trod the path that leads there often in the years since, and I can think of no better place to spend one's days; the water is still sweet, and the fish still swim."
>>> Full story
Comments
John
RIP Burt!
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