Mark Morton, author of The Headmasters and Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities (nominated for a Julia Child Award), is also the author of three other nonfiction titles, The End: Closing Words for a Millennium (winner of the Alexander Isbister Award for nonfiction); The Lover’s Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex (republished in the UK as Dirty Words), and Cooking with Shakespeare. He’s also written more than 50 columns for Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture (University of California Press) and has written and broadcast more than a hundred columns about language and culture for CBC Radio. Mark has a PhD in sixteenth-century literature from the University of Toronto and has taught at several universities in France and Canada. He currently works at the University of Waterloo. He and his wife, Melanie Cameron, (also an author) have four children, three dogs, one rabbit, and no time.
What animal scares you the most?
Wood ticks and leeches. I am absolutely terrified of little creatures that attach to me and then start sucking out my lifeblood (or as General Jack D. Ripper calls it in Dr. Strangelove, my “vital essence”). If I see even an unattached wood tick or leech, a full-body cringe sweeps through me, and I have to repress a guttural vocalization. It’s a very pesky fear, because it means I’m afraid to hike through trees and long grass, or to wade into ponds and lakes. But I leveraged this fear in my novel The Headmasters. The headmasters are alien creatures that look like plate-sized wood ticks. They attach themselves to the backs of humans and slide their coils through your skull and into your brain—by doing so they’re able to control that human for about eighteen hours a day. I feel sorry for my characters that I’ve created such a repulsive overlord for them.
Have you ever had any paranormal experiences or premonitions?
Oh my gosh, I haven’t told this to anyone in decades, because when I did, people either wouldn’t believe me or thought I was delusional. I was about twenty and living in a bachelor apartment in an older building in Regina, Saskatchewan. I went to bed as usual, fell asleep, and then found myself being awakened by a grizzled old man who was shaking my shoulder and saying, “Hey, buddy–hey, buddy, how did you get in here?” I was still half asleep and looked around and saw that it was my apartment–except it wasn’t. It had the same layout, but the furnishings were all different, the most noticeable of which was a leather saddle sitting ominously on a wooden frame.
I realized I was in the apartment either directly above or below my own. In retrospect, I’m astonished that the old guy didn’t grab a frying pan before waking me, but he didn’t seem alarmed, just puzzled. I told him I must have sleepwalked (which I’d never done before) from my apartment and wandered into his. He said no–he always locked his door, and when I glanced up at the door chain, it was indeed in the door frame’s chain plate. I was also, ahem, totally naked, which was odd because I always went to bed in a t-shirt and sweats. So, from a rational perspective, what I must have done was gotten up in a sleepwalking state, taken off my clothes, wandered up the building’s stairs to the next floor, opened the door of my upstairs neighbor, who for some reason left his door unlocked, walked in without awakening my neighbour (his bed was right beside the rug on which I was laying), and fallen back to sleep.
Alternatively, I “ghosted” up through the ceiling and onto my neighbor’s floor. Which is the simpler explanation? The latter, I think. Anyway, the old guy lent me a pair of his pants, and I went back to my apartment, got into my own clothes, and lay back down on my bed. It was two in the morning, but I couldn’t fall back to sleep. For the next couple of weeks–I’m not kidding–I tied my right hand to the bedpost. I didn’t want to wander away again–or ghost through the ceiling.
What is your greatest fear?
My greatest fear is that something will happen to my children. For many years, I had the irrational belief that nothing bad could happen to them while they’re in my presence. But when they left the house or were driving somewhere on a highway, my body would tense with anticipatory fear. This has gotten better over time because the kids are adults now. But the main thing is that I’ve trained myself to adopt a more fatalistic attitude: what will be, will be. There’s no point in living with dread if the ostensible cause of the dread is out of my control.
So that change in me has allowed another fear to rise to first place in my head: marionettes. I’m scared to death of marionettes, with their jiggly limbs and ungazing eyes. They should be banned.
“I’m scared to death of marionettes, with their jiggly limbs and ungazing eyes. They should be banned.”
What’s the scariest book you’ve ever read? Is there a particular scene that really haunts you still?
Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite. It’s about a serial killer who sees his murdering and dissecting of young men to be an art. In my Goodreads review, I called it a “bold, daring, audacious, obscene, and immoral book.” In retrospect, I don’t know if I want to call it an immoral book—I don’t think any genuine art can be immoral, even if it’s horrifying, shocking, and ghastly to read, view, hear, or experience. As for a particular scene that haunts me still – yes, there is, but I honestly don’t want to think about it. Poppy Z. Brite has written a novel that few other authors would dare to write.
Which evil, murderous persona most matches your personality and why: slow-walking psychotic serial killer; vampire stalking victims in the wee hours of the night; rich megalomaniac with grand plans to take over the world; centuries-old demon witch looking for revenge; or Hyde-like, fueled with rage and no impulse control?
Is “no comment” an option? No? Okay then, I think I would have to choose Mr. Hyde. I sometimes fear that under the “Mark Morton” I present to others, a different Mark Morton lurks, one who’s not as nice, one who’s envious, vengeful, meanspirited – in other words, all the things that I don’t think I am, but maybe they’re just one bad experience or one bad apocalypse away from coming out.
We all have a shadow side. Sometimes this peeks out in mean little thoughts that sneak out of our Id and into our Ego, but which our Super Ego immediately pushes back into the dark oubliette in the depths of our mind. That’s no doubt why the notion of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has remained in the Zeitgeist for more than a hundred and fifty years, even if most people have never even read that novel. Hyde is the part of ourselves that we work hard to hide.
What is your favorite monster/villain?
My favorite monster is the creature that Dr. Frankenstein creates. To me, he epitomizes the human condition: We’re born into this world as a blank slate, and then experiences both good and bad get written upon us. If we’re unlucky enough to have a lot of bad experiences – or a few extremely bad experiences like Frankenstein’s monster – then it’s not surprising that our “self” becomes twisted and cruel. No one is born evil. Even baby Hitler was just a baby – a cute, helpless, hungry, six-pound human.
People often say death is their greatest fear. What are your feelings about death/dying?
I’m not afraid of dying per se, but I am terrified by the prospect of “not being” – of not existing, of having no awareness, no consciousness – to be nothing. But even that last phrase doesn’t convey the dread of it, because to call it “nothing” is to call it something. It doesn’t make sense, of course, because if I have no being, then there won’t be any “me” to feel anything. But it’s the prospect of that that terrifies me. Dread. It’s a dark place, an awful abyss in my thoughts that I don’t dare approach very often. It’s like having a horrible beast in a cage. Don’t approach. Stay away. I’d turn back if I were you.
What person living today terrifies you the most and why?
The person I fear most, in terms of what he might eventually do to the world, is Donald Trump. I’m not a psychologist, but I think he’s got severe antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), which describes people who have little empathy, are impulsive and deceitful, and never feel remorse. Sadly, this is likely why he’s achieved a modicum of success in the real estate business. The thought of Trump being the U.S. President again — especially now that he has so many perceived enemies and grudges against other politicians, and when he feels he has to double down on his previous statements and actions toward Muslims, Mexicans, refugees, immigrants, and so on — fills me with dread. Handing him the presidency again would be (in my humble opinion) like giving a sixty-pound, tantrumming five-year-old a chainsaw. Is Trump that different from the many fictional villains who might be described as having ASPD? Alex from Clockwork Orange? Shugar from No Country for Old Men? The Joker from Batman? Bateman from American Psycho? I’m Canadian but I’ve travelled extensively in the U.S., and every American I have met has been nothing but kind and generous. So I’m baffled how Trump can be so popular. Why elect a monster?
What’s something you’ll never do because you’re too scared?
Things that might seem spooky would never scare me: I’d happily sleep in a graveyard under a full moon on Friday the 13th, as long as I was warm and had some black licorice. However, things that involve heights – like taking a helicopter over the Grand Canyon, going for a hot-air balloon ride, wearing stilettos – those things terrify me, and I would never undertake them. Heights make me feel like I have no control – because, if I start to fall, I don’t have control, gravity does. I can be told all the stats in the world about how driving on a highway is more likely to result in one’s death than flying, but I don’t think data has ever coaxed anyone out of a phobia!