Town is central character in "Strip Cuts" by David Drayer
Source:  Tribune Review, March 28 2000
 

 
By Rege Behe
TRIBUNE-REVIEW

The inhabitants of Cherry Run, Pa., long for better times. Seth Hardy is a teen-ager who wants to be a writer, but doesn't know where to start. His father, Earl is a coal miner, soon to lose his job. Other characters - Seth's English teacher Candy Bracknell, town bully Claude Coarsen, and Tim Weaver, whose preoccupation with women always gets him in trouble - are also plagued by a sense of lethargy.

Turns out, they all share the same affliction - all are inhabitants of Cherry Run, where everyone looks forward to The Big Buck Breakfast Special at Sis's Place that heralds the opening of deer hunting season.

"Strip Cuts," by Clarion County native David Drayer, is a series of episodic events tied together by the Cherry Run locale. But Drayer, who now lives in Los Angeles, insists his setting is not a mirror image of Rimersburg, his hometown 20 miles southwest of Clarion.

"Everything is fictional. I never wrote an exact thing that happened," he said "But those events are sort of metaphors for things and feelings I experienced."

Certainly, however, Drayer can empathize with the stress and anxiety that plague so much of Seth Hardy's life. A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh's writing program (he also attended the Community College of Allegheny College on the North Side), Drayer earned a master's degree in fine arts from the University of Iowa. But his dream of becoming a writer always seemed distant and unattainable while growing up in Rimersburg.

"I remember being very frustrated, having no clue where to start," Drayer said. "And no one else seemed to know. I didn't come from a family of writers. .... They wanted to help, but they didn't know how. No one did. Even college was something I did a little later (at the age of 22). I didn't even know enough to go there."

Drayer, 36, moved to California after earning his master's degree to pursue dual careers as an actor - he had small roles in "The Tempest" and "Richard II" for the Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival - and writer. But his acting bug soon died.

"You walk into a room (to audition), and someone else decides who you are, what you can do," he said. "You're constantly relying on someone giving you something. With writing, no matter what else happens, you don't need anyone else's permission to do it."

Drayer finished "Strip Cuts" four years ago, sent it to publishing houses and waited. Rejection letters started accumulating in his mailbox, but with a twist: Almost every publisher liked his work, but didn't know what to make of a novel that used a small town as its central character.'

There was even an offer to publish the novel if Drayer would rewrite the book, get rid of most of the other characters and concentrate more on Seth's story. But the author refused to compromise his work.

"It really would have killed what I was trying to do," he said. "It just didn't feel right. I can't imagine the book without Charlie and Rose (an elderly couple who get caught in a snowstorm), or Lloyd and Judy (two middle-aged people who get caught up in an affair)."

Finally, Drayer struck a deal with Rowdy House Publishing, a small press in Los Angeles. His faith in "Strip Cuts" was further renewed when Publisher's Weekly came out with a glowing review in late February.

Now, all he has to do is convince the folks back home they're not in the book. At a recent prepublication party in Rimersburg, Drayer kept having to tell friends his book is fiction and not based on real people or events.

"It so hard to explain," he said with a laugh. "A guy I met even said the principal in the book had to be his high school principal in Canada. Well, I've never even been to Canada."

His next novel is set in Los Angeles and deals with the independent film industry. But Drayer promises readers haven't seen the last of Seth Hardy.

"Definitely, he'll be back, and so will a lot of the other characters," he said. "I want to hear from them again, about how their lives have changed, how they have changed."