UpDate - Vol. 11, No. 32, Page 7
May 21, 1992
American West is setting for English professor's new novel

     Sandwiched in between two neatly stacked metal bookcases, English
professor Cruce Stark rocked slightly in a swivel chair, ready to
discuss his new novel, Chasing Uncle Charley.
     "Everyone thought it was a Western," Stark said, referring to a
critic's comparison of the book to Lonesome Dove. "It's a growing-up
story with a Western motif."
     The novel, which will be published late next month by Southern
Methodist University Press, is about adolescent Bo Jackson's search
for the shy town schoolteacher who fled to the West because he
mistakenly thought he had killed a man. Stark said his father-in-law,
a Texas rancher, provided the initial inspiration for the novel with
his "big tall tales."
     Stark's interest was sparked, he said, by one particular tale
about a favorite uncle who ran off to Indian country because he
thought he had committed murder. After discovering that the story
ended with the uncle's return home 20 years later, the professor says
he was disappointed.
     Questions formed in his mind. "What if he didn't want to come
back home?"
     "I was very much interested to think that you can't get across a
boundary line you think you can't cross," he explained, his hands
emphasizing his words.
     Stark infused his writing with Western cliches, like good-hearted
prostitutes and Mexican desperados-folk characters he has been
familiar with since his childhood in a town of only 600 people in
Mississippi.
     Although he genuinely feels that his background has given him "a
real sense of place," he pokes fun at certain aspects of it.
     "You didn't ask if you belonged to a church, you asked which
church you belonged to," he says of life in the Bible Belt.
     He remembers small towns as "gossipy" places where everyone knows
everybody else and each incident becomes a story. Stark said this past
experience with narrative form has helped make him a writer.
     Chasing Uncle Charley is Stark's first published work. Another
novel, never published, marked his break from writing literary
criticism. He said colleagues initially did not accept his decision to
write fiction because it went against an academic tradition of writing
scholarly literature. He now affectionately describes them as
"wonderfully mean" critics who encouraged him by reading all his rough
drafts.
     "Once they realized where my commitment was, they gave me
support," he said. " I can't imagine doing what I'm doing without
writing."
     When Stark decided to write his most recent book, he also relied
heavily on the support of his wife, Nancy, his "first reader."  He
also acknowledged the role she and his two daughters played in keeping
his "priorities in order."
     He often squeezed "a couple of hours every day " of writing in
between work and family meals. Yet while writing, Stark said, he
needed to completely isolate himself.
     "My wife felt it was like living with a mistress," he said.
     The novel's journey from the word processor to the book stands
was fraught with many detours. After producing a finished manuscript,
Stark searched for a publisher.  He estimates that his book went out
at least 20 publishers before Southern Methodist University Press
accepted it three years ago. "
     With Chasing Uncle Charley not yet in the bookstores, Stark is
already trying to find a publisher for his third novel, Wisdom of
Serpents. He said it is a departure from his other works in that it
focuses on a single set of characters. " Each book is a different kind
of risk," he said with a shrug.
     When asked if he would ever try to write for a mainstream
audience, he paused for a moment. Leaning back in his swivel chair, he
pulled the philosophy of Grendel author John Gardner out of his head.
"Write the kind of story you like to read," he said with conviction.
     -Casye Launer