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English professor reveals interesting life |
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Wednesday, 29 November 2006 |
by LINDSAY CRAVEN
Lifestyles Editor
He has published four books of poetry and two novels, was an extra in a cult horror movie classic and developed a steadfast family life and career.
He is Joseph R. Bathanti, an English professor at Appalachian State University.
Bathanti grew up in Pittsburgh, Pa. He is the son of a steel worker and a seamstress.
His family lineage hails from Europe with three grandparents who are natives of Italy and France.
“I grew up in a now vanished little Italy in Pittsburgh, a neighborhood
called East Liberty,” Bathanti said. “Everybody that lived in the
neighborhood was Catholic and Italian and working class, nobody’s folks
had really gone to college at that point. And I didn’t really know that
there were people who weren’t Catholic and Italian and who didn’t root
for the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Pittsburgh Steelers.”
Bathanti remembers his childhood as wonderful aside from school.
He said he hated school because it was taught by Catholic school nuns and they “didn’t like each other very much.”
Bathanti went to private Catholic schools for his first 12 years.
He later went on to graduate from the University of Pittsburgh with a
bachelor’s and master’s degree in English and a master’s of fine arts
in creative writing form Warren Wilson College.
“[Majoring in English] was something that I could do without wanting
to…I love it. I mean I really love it. It’s not like work,” he said.
Appalachian State University first welcomed Bathanti five years ago.
He first started as a replacement professor for fiction and non-fiction English classes.
He was contacted by English associate professor Susan Weinberg, but he
says it has always been a mystery as to how she found him.
“I remember there was a couple in Blowing Rock who were supporters of
the [Visiting Writers] Series and I think they had gone to a reading
that [Bathanti] had given and they kept saying ‘there’s this wonderful
poet down at Mitchell Community College and you’ve got to meet him,
you’ve got to get him up here to do a reading,’” Weinberg said. “I
remember they invited him to an annual fundraiser reception and I met
Joseph and his wife there and he was just so great. So we wound up
inviting him to do a reading as part of our Visiting Writer’s Series.”
Bathanti is happy for opportunity to teach at Appalachian.
“Being at Appalachian and teaching at Appalachian has been, in a lot of
ways, life changing in so many wonderful ways for me and my family,”
Bathanti said. “Being part of the university, being part of the
community has breathed new life into my career.”
In addition to teaching, Bathanti is also an avid writer. His first book of poetry, “Communion Partners,” was published in 1987.
Bathanti published his first novel in 2001, “East Liberty,” and released his most recent novel this year, “Coventry.”
“I initially started writing…because I was trying to impress girls to tell you the truth,” Bathanti said.
“When I was about 16 I started kicking it around, and this was in 1969
when I think sentiments had changed about what a boy could do. It was
suddenly OK to be a sensitive fellow, this happened suddenly and the
sensitive girls liked the sensitive fellows.
“I sort of feel like I just began pretending to be a writer and then I
really wanted to write because I was English major. And I was so
enthralled with books and just read, read, read, read and I think
that’s sometimes an end product of being an English major and reading a
lot of books, after a while you think, ‘well I wonder if I could do
that?’” Bathanti said.
Bathanti said he never really took writing seriously or dedicated
himself to it until he came to North Carolina in 1976. It was then when
he began making it a daily habit and practiced it. He attributes his
stubbornness as the main reason he has become a confidant writer.
“[His work] is tremendous, it’s wonderful,” Weinberg said. “I
especially love his nonfiction and I’m just starting his novel and I
like that his fiction is very poetic and I loved his first novel for
the intensity of the language…He can write about some very heavy
subjects and still have some humor about them and just help you see how
they’re part of a bigger picture.”
Another interesting aspect of Bathanti’s life is his part as an extra in the cult classic, “Evil Dead 2.”
“I was living…in Anson County,” Bathanti said. “I was the writer in residence at a really tiny college.
One day I was checking my mail in the lobby of the college and a
fellow came in and said they were making a movie and who wanted to be
in the movie and I don’t even think I knew what it was I just said, ‘I
want to be in the movie.’ So it turned out that it was “Evil Dead 2.”
“So I worked for one day, like 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and I was a medieval
knight. I had plastic armor but I had a real sword and it was very
primitive, very, very low budget, low tech, I mean it was shoestring,”
Bathanti said. “The people who came after me didn’t even get plastic
armor they were honest to goodness wrapped in Reynolds Wrap, aluminum
foil. My job really was to run around, scream and yell, wave a sword
while sucking in all this dust and try not to get trampled by horses.
For my toil, I got $25 in cash and two cans of Budweiser.”
Bathanti also has established himself as a family man.
He has a wife of 29 years and two sons: one is a sophomore at Wake
Forest University and one is a freshman at Watauga High School.
Bathanti has simple hopes for his future.
“I just want to keep writing books and teaching and traveling and be a happy family man,” Bathanti said.
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