In his short story "Prior Restraint," to be found in its entirety on this site, OSC refers in the opening paragraph to "a writing class taught by a mad Frenchman at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City." Later, he mentions this professor again as "Armand the teacher, who had not improved on his French accent by replacing it with Bostonian."
From the first time I read this story, I wondered if Card hadn't based this minor character on a real U of U professor. I know that he did take creative writing classes at the U, and that at least one of them was taught by a professor named Francois Camoin, who may have had a French name, but didn't seem to have a single other French attribute. In fact, he struck me more as a New York Jew.
Yes, I took Prof. Camoin's creative writing class. It was the third in the undergraduate series, the first two having been taught by grad students. Prof. Camoin confirmed that he had, in fact, taught OSC. In fact, he said that Card was the only one of his students ever to have actually made a living at writing.
When pressed, he even told the story of the day Card came waltzing into class with a smug look on his face, waving a check he had received for the sale of a story. If I remember correctly, I think he claimed that story was Ender's Game, but that could just be wishful thinking on my part. At any rate, apparently the story had not been well received by either Camoin or the class when Card shared it there, so he was pretty thrilled to show everyone how wrong they were.
Camoin wasn't an OSC fan, or even much of a SF fan, although he admitted to having written a few SF stories himself. He seemed to think that OSC's success was in excess of his talents, and so he didn't seem to take a great deal of pride in the fact that he had been one of Card's teachers. To tell the truth, however, I think that there are probably a certain number of students that take his classes just because of the connection.
If anybody can confirm or deny anything I've written about Camoin, or whether they know if he is the inspiration for the teacher in "Prior Restraint," I'd be glad to hear it.
Posted by Fitz (Member # 4803) on :
I have no idea. Just popped in to say I really enjoyed that story.