28 October 2008

Campbell Tatham 1940-2008

Cam Tatham, a good friend to many of us, and one of the most perceptive critics of postmodern fiction, died this afternoon at his home north of Milwaukee. He fought brain cancer--effectively--since the summer of 2007 but took a sudden turn for the worse in the final months of this year.

Cam first published on John Barth before turning to the more significantly minor (in the very best Deleuzian sense) works of FC2 founders and mainstays like Ronald Sukenick and Raymond Federman. With Federman he conducted a lengthy correspondence that helped produce, in part, the novel, _Take It or Leave It_.

For me, he was a mentor through grad school, as well as a very close friend then and now.

We will miss you, Cam.

3 comments:

jdeshell said...

That's very sad. He was a real advocate for experimental fiction. RIP.

Lance Olsen said...

I only met Cam once in person, but visited his class on contemporary fiction at UW-Milwaukee several times via his discussion board, and exchanged emails with him on and off through the last decade or so, and I always found his critical imagination enticingly fierce, his whole being committed to innovative fiction, and his heart all gold. We'll be poorer without him among us.

Steve Tomasula said...

I also only met Cam once, but knew him from his published literary "conversations." In person he was as an intelligent and generous as he was in print. A true human who lived a literary life, a real loss. We are the poorer without him....