Doug Rucker

Early Stories Doug Rucker

After making eight, one hundred-page comedy books with cartoons and humorous essays and giving them to friends, and doing enough poetry to fill a four-hundred page book, I finally had the desire remember the past and think maybe I could write it. I'd tell myself the EARLY STORIES of my life.

At the age of sixty-five and prompted by my mother's gift of three tattered family photo albums, I was reminded of the past and suddenly wanted to remember everything of that far distant time. I started with my birth. It should organize easily. The outline would be chronological.

In remembering everything, perhaps I indulged myself too much, but you be the judge. When I finished the book after writing about graduating from the University of Illinois, I felt, perhaps my life story could not be told in a mere three or four hundred pages. It looked very much like there would at least be a LATER STORIES.