Nie: An interview with Chris Crutcher

Real life served up with straight-from-the-high- school-hallways honesty. This is writing Chris Crutcher style. Crutcher, 57, grew up in Cascade, Idaho, and now lives in Spokane, Wash. His writing style has earned him countless awards, faithful fans and a perennial spot on banned-books lists everywhere. But that's okay with Chris; he'll take it all. When you're the self-described "King of the Mild Frontier," it comes with the territory.

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Atkins: I howled with laughter while reading your latest book, King of the Mild Frontier. Heck, even the inside flap of the book is funny. But at the same time, there's a bittersweetness to your recollections. What led you to write this (as you put it) "ill-advised autobiography?" Any problems with friends and family who appeared as "characters" in this book?

Crutcher: I started writing it as an answer to the question many authors hear over and over: Where do you get your ideas? Of course, remembering one thing led to remembering another and King was what came out. I had a lot of fun writing it.

No problems so far. I did read pieces of it at my brother's retirement party a while back. There was nothing he could do to me at the time . . . there were witnesses. As I read the book over, I realize there is as much left out as there is written, so I may have to do a sequel.

Atkins: Athletic Shorts is one of my favorite Crutcher novels. What made you come up with the unique concept for the book? Bringing back characters from your other books as well as your introduction to each story are unusual in short story collections.

Crutcher: Actually, laziness had as much to do with it as anything. With the exception of Angus Bethune, each character was already pretty well drawn in my head. That made the stories a lot easier to tell because I didn't have to make up all new characters. I also got a head start on plot, because the incidents in the short stories had already been alluded to in SOME way in the earlier novel. But that idea also allowed me to go deeper with each story because some of the preliminary creative work was already done.

As for the intros, I wrote those because of the content in Telephone Man. My editor and the publishing company were a little uneasy about my using all the racial epithets, knowing that even Huckleberry Finn was being banned in certain places because Huck used the language of his times. I wanted to take the heat off the publisher, and it felt good to interject my real self in that intro. For balance I decided to write an intro for each of the stories. I was surprised at how satisfying that was: to be able to feel as if I was talking to the reader as myself instead of through a character.

Atkins: In that introduction to Telephone Man you write, "I have fears in writing a story about racism." Would you explain what you mean? I've heard some criticism about this issue directed at your book Whale Talk.

Crutcher: As indicated above, that probably wasn't a completely true statement. I didn't have fears as such, but rather wanted to clear away some of the possible bad reaction. Telephone Man was a reflection of his father's racist views, and he was a guy without the capacity for self-censorship. He was innocently presenting the true, ugly face of bigotry as it came from his father.

As far as the criticism of Whale Talk along racist lines, let them criticize away. I live in a part of the country where white separatists and bigoted survivalists abound, and there is a certain tolerance for it, if not agreement. Mark Fuhrman (controversial L.A. homicide detective in the O.J. Simpson case) has a drive-time talk radio show on the biggest AM station in the Inland Empire. The Rev. Butler, he of neo-Nazi fame, used to have his compound just 40 miles from here. So I make no apologies about the content of that story. In my years as a therapist I have worked with a significant number of minority families, so I have a sense of what it is like for them here. We have a lot of work to do.

Atkins: You make no attempt to hide the fact that you were a nonreader growing up. And I guess that's putting it politely, right? What kind of a reader are you now?

Crutcher: Actually, I'm a pretty good reader now. I don't read as much as I'd like because I tend to feel guilty that I should be writing. But I do read quite a bit, and as I look back I wish I had never given it up for so long. My nonreader status was more a sign of rebelliousness than anything else. Both my parents were great readers, as was my high school English teacher. I feel a little foolish looking back now, thinking it was cool to keep myself illiterate. And some of it was ego. I think I wanted people to believe I could be smart without reading. Hey, I was young.

Atkins: After writing as many successful young-adult novels as you have, you still work part-time as a family therapist. Why? How does this work affect your writing?

Crutcher: It keeps me in touch with the truth about being alive on planet Earth; it keeps me humble. And it gives me sources for stories. A bigger part is that I feel incredibly fortunate for my opportunities as a writer. Most of the therapy work I do now is pro-bono because I can afford to do it, and because when I was being paid as a therapist there was a part of me that was galled at the idea that people have to pay for personal skills and information that should have been their birthright. So part of it is payback. There is a way to achieve grace (and I have a LONG way to go), but it requires balance. You get stuff, you give stuff.

Atkins: Your characters often struggle with anger and rage. This is true of Lionel Serbousek who appears in Stotan and again in the story "Gone Fishin' " in Athletic Shorts. Would you comment on this?

Crutcher: Sure. There is almost no human who doesn't at some time struggle with anger and rage. It's part of trying to make sense of life. Those of us who believe we have no anger usually have a pretty good dose of depression. Give me anger any time.

Atkins: I take so long to read your work because so often I find myself rereading, marking, muttering out loud lines you've written. From "Gone Fishin' ": "There is a case to be made that from the time of birth, when we lose a warm, enclosed safe place to be, our lives are made up of a series of losses and that our grace can be measured by how we face those losses and how we replace what is lost." How could someone who hated to read, copied papers previously written by his older brother and turned them in for writing assignments possibly write such beautiful, powerful prose?

Crutcher: I can only appreciate that you see it as beautiful, powerful prose. It is the ultimate compliment. Enough humility. When I was growing up I saw every letter of the alphabet, as well as most words, as having color and hue and weight and a sense of wetness or dryness. I thought everyone saw words that way. I'm not sure how that works into my work, but I know it does, because when I get to the fine-tuning, it always takes over.

Atkins: You've won two lifetime achievement awards and your work always appears on the American Library Association's list of Best Books for Young Adults. Many of these same books also appear on lists of most frequently banned books.

Crutcher: Yeah, two lifetime achievement awards should make me a serious geezer. I think my work gets banned because it focuses on some really tough questions, and because it is always based in reality. Many adults think they can protect kids by keeping them ignorant, by pretending certain unpleasantness doesn't exist. I don't believe that's true, and I see over and over again from my work as a therapist that it causes kids not to trust their parents, and therefore to back away from telling them the truth. All of us would be well-advised to talk about those tough subjects. It's okay to tell kids we are uncomfortable talking about them. It's okay to tell kids we don't have all the answers. It's okay to tell kids we're afraid. Life is messy. It needs to be examined.

Atkins: When a reader closes the cover after reading one of your books, what would you like for him or her to take away from the experience?

Crutcher: I want them to have been entertained. I want the characters to remain in their consciousnesses. I want them to consider the possibility of being more accepting and more tolerant. I want them to have laughed, cried and gasped.

- Holly Atkins teaches seventh-grade language arts at Southside Fundamental Middle School in St. Petersburg

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