An archetype of the worst that creative writing professors can be, Arsenault is a blatantly bad teacher and a committed drunk, who ought to be kept far away from students. But to them, he is a swashbuckling hero, and when this small-town university denies him tenure, his student acolytes take up their cudgels and fight.

…Arsenault expects everyone to tolerate his eccentricities, most especially his drinking, along with his frequent absences and omissions. He has a habit of not showing up for class and of skipping office hours. An attention junkie, he requires constant approbation.

Narcissistic to an extreme, he is vicious in his appraisal of other Canadian poets, dividing them into two camps, "hucksters" and "the real thing," with himself trumping true authenticity. He performs an endless aria of the "I'm a misunderstood genius" opera.

…I would not dare to gesture toward any actual persons, living or dead, on whom the character of Arsenault, his black despair, his drinking, his manipulation of students, might be modelled. In some ways, the character is reminiscent of the Maritime poet John Thompson, whose work is quoted in the epigraph. [There must be a word for this rhetorical gesture -- saying you wouldn’t dare do something and then immediately doing it.]