Introducing Phil
I got to know Phil Anthropod in an undergraduate creative writing class in 1962. I was a student of English literature and Journalism. Phil was a campus free spirit; a party animal and wannabe hippy before that term was invented. Although we became life-long friends, Phil would always be many things I never was.
I first met Phil the year before in a freshman communications course. I had come to college — this college in particular — to study theater and literature with a plan to become a high school English teacher and direct school plays like my high school mentor. In that seminal Fall Quarter, I came to realize that I would never be the college actor I had hoped. Phil was in the same communications course and we worked together on our assignments. He helped me see that while I wasn’t meant to be an actor, I did have a penchant for writing. This first manifested itself in a series of metaphysical essays I wrote in that course. Phil also encouraged me to volunteer for the student newspaper, The College Chronicle, where I spent the next four college years. I did a variety of feature articles as a freshman, wrote more and served as Features Editor my sophomore year, Editorial Editor my junior year and Editor in Chief my senior year in college, all the while writing pieces for most issues. Meanwhile, Phil started on the first of many unsuccessful projects — a musical about college life in the 1960s, and some intense, metaphysical undergraduate poetry.
Since college, Phil has drifted in and out of my life, most times making the briefest of visits, but occasionally staying for days at a time. One night in the early 1980s while my wife was out of town on an accreditation visit, there was a knock at the door. It was Phil stopping by to show me one of the many comedy sketches he wrote over the years. It was a radio drama satirizing the Reagan Presidency. I was able to talk him into letting me produce this, which I did after recruiting three other actors to join me in the production. We opened and closed in one night on the main stage of a local settlement house gym. Phil’s radio play — which of course I received credit for — was a great hit and he was invited to write a sequel for the annual meeting of a women’s golf club, which he did without complaint.
Recently, Phil stopped by briefly to tell me that he was making real progress on his novel about Appalachian architecture and the future of rural community. I had first learned that Phil was thinking about this project nearly two decades before. For most of that time, Phil was occupied with other things but apparently he found time to make notes somewhat regularly. For most of this time, I only saw him annually as he stopped by after Thanksgiving every year to ghost write a Christmas Letter for our family in semi-free verse. In all, Phil wrote more than 25 of these annual Christmas letters for us, and naturally, I received credit for all of them. After finishing the last one, he told me in his distinctive, laconic manner, “My friend, I’ve said everything I have to say about Christmas in your family. The branches of my Christmas tree are actually quite dry and the needles are falling off.” I took credit for these annual contributions by Phil, since I knew he was embarrassed by them and considered this kind of work-for-hire to be on a level with writing greeting card captions.
Throughout my career as a journalist, nonprofit administrator, editor and college professor, I wrote a great many things. Writing in each of these fields is generally viewed in very utilitarian terms — communicate your message in the clearest, most efficient manner possible, and don’t sweat the language or the quality of the writing. Unfortunately, every time I would attempt to do this, Phil would show up and seat himself just behind me reading over my shoulder, all the while offering critiques on the vocabulary, internal rhymes, metaphors, and a seemingly unlimited number of other literary minutia.
Once Phil’s literary advice even had a major impact on my career. In 1987, I had drafted an abstract for a paper to be presented at a conference I had never attended before. The proposed paper was called If Not For Profit, For What? Between the time I submitted the abstract and the date of the conference, the conference chairman called to inform me that that he liked the idea of the paper, but the title would not work because it was already the title of a just-published book authored by another of the expected conference participants. Since I was not then active in the field of nonprofit studies, I had not even been vaguely aware of this new book. As a got off the phone, I asked Phil, who had appeared at my office door as if on cue, what I should do. Over the next half hour, he sketched out an alternative idea while I listened. The new title would be one of my best known and most cited . . . And Lettuce is Nonanimal. It was still to be the same paper, about the meaninglessness of the negative term nonprofit, but Phil’s idea for the title made all the difference. It also led to a new introduction in which I laid out, in mock seriousness, the case for why lettuce should be characterized as a non-animal, because it had none of the characteristics of animals. My new colleagues immediately got the point and the paper — presented on my 45th birthday, no less — was an instant hit, at least as these things go in scholarly circles.
Phil often helped me in ways like this, although he was always pretty self-sufficient in his own writing. I cannot take credit for any of the characters Phil has invented here. Phil told me the last time we talked that he had gradually gotten to know, and become good friends with Ralph, Rosemary, Adam and some of the others. “You know,” he mused, “It’s really true what they tell you in creative writing workshops. At first it was a real effort just to try to name and flesh out these characters. For the longest time, I couldn’t even remember their names and I didn’t really understand how they related to one another. Then, in the quiet hours late at night and early in the morning I just started to hear them talking to one another and all I had to do was write down what they said. After that, things just sort of fell into place. Each time a new character appeared, I just listened to what they told me, and what the others had to say about them.”
That last statement sort of sums up Phil’s writing philosophy in a nutshell. We both hope you enjoy what he has written here.
I would like it known also that I had no influence whatsoever on Phil’s decision to equate a new, forward-looking community in Appalachia with the Garden of Eden, although I do sort of like the ending he came up with. I’m not entirely certain I think it was a wise choice to name the current members of the Sennett family Adam, Evie, Cane (a nickname short for Hurricane) and Abelard (nicknamed Abbe). And, who is this little sister, Sable? Where did she come from? And how come Phil doesn’t tell us ore about her?
The Medium version of Phil’s novel is a work in progress and there may, at times, be a variety of editorial changes, and the occasional new section, or even chapter added.
Roger A. Lohmann
Morgantown WV
