Raymond Carver (1938–1988)
Author of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories
About the Author
Born in 1938 in an Oregon logging town, Raymond Carver grew up in Yakima, From California he went to Iowa to attend the Iowa Writers Workshop. Soon, however, he returned to California, where he worked at a number of unskilled jobs before obtaining a teaching position. Widely acclaimed as the most show more important short story writer of his generation, Carver writes about the kind of lower-middle-class people whom he knew growing up. His characters are waitresses, mechanics, postmen, high school teachers, factory workers, door-to-door salesmen who lead drab lives because of limited funds. Critics have said that may have the most distinctive vision of the working class. Nominated posthumously for both a National Book Critics Circle Award (1988) and a Pulitzer Prize (1989) for Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories (1988), Carver is one of a handful of writers credited with reviving the short story form. Some have put Carver in the tradition of Ernest Hemingway and Stephen Crane. Carver's stories tend to be brief, with enigmatic endings, although never erupting. Violence is often just below the surface. An air of quiet desperation pervades his stories, as Carver explores the collapse of human relationships in bleak circumstances. In later works, Carver strikes a note of redemption, unheard at the beginning of his career. But for readers who are not attuned to Carver's voice of resignation, these moments may sound sentimental and unconvincing. Carver died of lung cancer in 1988. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1824244
Works by Raymond Carver
Romane und Kurzgeschichten schreiben. Mit einer Kurzgeschichte von R. Carver (2004) 10 copies, 1 review
Why Don't You Dance? {story} 6 copies
One More Thing {story} 5 copies
They're Not Your Husband {story} 4 copies
Fever {story} 4 copies
The Student's Wife {story} 4 copies
Üks hea asi 3 copies
סיפורים אחרונים 3 copies
Gazebo {story} 3 copies
Little Things {story} 3 copies
What's in Alaska? {story} 3 copies
Neighbors {story} 3 copies
Feathers {story} 3 copies
Chef's House {story} 3 copies
Why, Honey? {story} 3 copies
The Calm {story} 3 copies
Vrij Nederland 2 copies
Fogos 2 copies
דבר קטן וטוב 2 copies
Bilmezsiniz Ask Nedir 2 copies
The Bath {story} 2 copies
Jerry and Molly and Sam {story} 2 copies
The Father {story} 2 copies
Intimacy {story} 2 copies
Menudo {story} 2 copies
Viewfinder {story} 2 copies
The Ducks {story} 2 copies
Mr. Coffee and Mr. Fixit {story} 2 copies
Fat {story} 2 copies
Vitamine (in Da dove sto chiamando) 2 copies
My Father's Life 2 copies
A Serious Talk {story} 2 copies
Popular Mechanics {story} 2 copies
Night School {story} — Author — 2 copies
Errand {story} 2 copies
Boxes {story} 2 copies
Signals {story} 2 copies
What Is It? {story} 2 copies
Distance {story} 2 copies
Pesme 1 copy
Zimska nesanica 1 copy
The Idea 1 copy
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love / Raymond Carver Had His Cake and Ate It Too (1990) — Author — 1 copy
Beint af augum 1 copy
No title 1 copy
Atesler 1 copy
Voisitko olla hiljaa? 1 copy
The Race, ONE ACT Play 1 copy
How About This? 1 copy
Svi mi: Sabrane pesme 1 copy
Sendiferðin 1 copy
After the Denim {story} 1 copy
Tell the Women We're Going 1 copy
Sacks {story} 1 copy
Careful {story} 1 copy
La briglia (in Cattedrale) 1 copy
Il treno (in Cattedrale) 1 copy
How About This? {story} 1 copy
Sixty Acres {story} 1 copy
Are You a Doctor? {story} 1 copy
Carver Raymond 1 copy
Desocupado y más Poemas 1 copy
Cathedral; The Fever 1 copy
Em làm ơn im đi, được không? 1 copy
Chi ha usato questo letto 1 copy
Wovon Wir Reden 1 copy
Üks hea asi : jutud 1 copy
Kindling 1 copy
Cathedral [short story] 1 copy
Peresa 1 copy
For Tess 1 copy
The Bridle {short story} 1 copy
Associated Works
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (1995) — Contributor, some editions — 1,011 copies, 7 reviews
A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry (1996) — Contributor — 941 copies, 12 reviews
The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction: Fifty North American American Stories Since 1970 (1999) — Contributor — 582 copies, 4 reviews
The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories (1994) — Contributor — 544 copies, 2 reviews
The World of the Short Story: A 20th Century Collection (1986) — Contributor — 510 copies, 4 reviews
Points of View: An Anthology of Short Stories, Revised & Updated Edition (1995) — Contributor — 442 copies, 7 reviews
You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe (1994) — Contributor — 413 copies, 3 reviews
The Art of the Story: An International Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories (1999) — Contributor — 393 copies, 5 reviews
The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories (1986) — Contributor — 381 copies, 3 reviews
Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story (2012) — Contributor — 253 copies, 9 reviews
The Workshop: Seven Decades of the Iowa Writers Workshop - 43 Stories, Recollections, & Essays on Iowa's Place in Twentieth-Century American Literature (1999) — Contributor — 197 copies, 1 review
First Fiction: An Anthology of the First Published Stories by Famous Writers (1994) — Contributor — 194 copies, 1 review
Still Wild: Short Fiction of the American West 1950 to the Present (2000) — Contributor — 165 copies, 1 review
The Graphic Canon, Vol. 3: From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest (2013) — Contributor — 161 copies, 1 review
Adaptations: From Short Story to Big Screen: 35 Great Stories That Have Inspired Great Films (2005) — Contributor — 136 copies, 1 review
A World of Difference: An Anthology of Short Stories from Five Continents (2008) — Contributor — 110 copies, 1 review
The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Concise Edition (2003) — Contributor — 72 copies, 1 review
The Haves and Have Nots: 30 Stories About Money and Class in America (1999) — Contributor — 36 copies
West Coast Fiction: Modern Writing from California, Oregon, and Washington (1979) — Contributor — 8 copies, 1 review
TriQuarterly 48: Western Stories — Contributor — 2 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Carver, Raymond Clevie, Jr.
- Birthdate
- 1938-05-25
- Date of death
- 1988-08-02
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Chico State University
Humboldt State College, (BA|1963)
University of Iowa
Stanford University (Stegner Fellow) - Occupations
- short story writer
janitor
essayist
poet
teacher
gas station attendant (show all 7)
delivery boy - Organizations
- National Institute of Arts and Letters (Literature, 1988)
American Academy of Arts and Letters (1988) - Relationships
- Carver, Maryann Burk (wife|divorced)
Gallagher, Tess (wife)
Jarman, Mark (student) - Cause of death
- cancer (lung)
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Clatskanie, Oregon, USA
- Places of residence
- Clatskanie, Oregon, USA (birth)
Yakima, Washington, USA
Sacramento, California, USA
Palo Alto, California, USA
Austin, Texas, USA
Iowa City, Iowa, USA (show all 7)
Port Angeles, Washington, USA (death) - Place of death
- Port Angeles, Washington, USA
- Burial location
- Ocean View Cemetery, Port Angeles, Washington, USA
- Map Location
- Oregon, USA
Members
Reviews
"I admit it's not much of a story." (pg. 112)
I was well-primed to explore and enjoy Raymond Carver's writing. I'm a big fan of the cool, clipped American style, the sort honed to perfection by Ernest Hemingway and his 'iceberg theory', and my interest in Carver was also piqued by the role the title story of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love played in the 2014 film Birdman. Unfortunately, my experience with Carver's most famous work was one of disappointment, flavourlessness and show more boredom.
Carver's prose is scraped to the bone and yet it also feels inflated. It has nothing really to say, and says it with a sort of brittleness, a halting walk far removed from the deft, confident stride and precision of other American 'iceberg' or hard-boiled writing. The prose says so little the reader has to work overtime just to find anything. Some of the commentaries and analyses I've read are shockingly obese, finding false genius in banal happenings. They're far more entertaining than Carver himself: an obvious metaphor is lauded as a keystone, a clumsily-recited list of household objects a totem representing all of human existence. If Carver had written "the cat sat on the mat", to these people it would no doubt symbolise the yearning of all living creatures to find some place where they could rest their burdens, always tragically aware that the mat is not fixed and that they must move on from their slumber at some indeterminate time.
There is a weak undercurrent simmering in some of the stories, but nothing remarkable. On this evidence, Carver has nothing to say as a writer: he's grasping at clichéd, cookie-cutter episodes of disaffected American suburbia to perform a few simple prose tricks. He presents abusive and repressed relationships, alcoholics, bores and philanderers – presents them, but doesn't have any insight into them, let alone resolution. The overwhelming feeling for this reader was of plainness, like eating a pack of ready-salted crisps and knowing just a dash of vinegar would go a long way. The only lesson of writing to be found here is that you can't have an iceberg in such shallow water. show less
I was well-primed to explore and enjoy Raymond Carver's writing. I'm a big fan of the cool, clipped American style, the sort honed to perfection by Ernest Hemingway and his 'iceberg theory', and my interest in Carver was also piqued by the role the title story of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love played in the 2014 film Birdman. Unfortunately, my experience with Carver's most famous work was one of disappointment, flavourlessness and show more boredom.
Carver's prose is scraped to the bone and yet it also feels inflated. It has nothing really to say, and says it with a sort of brittleness, a halting walk far removed from the deft, confident stride and precision of other American 'iceberg' or hard-boiled writing. The prose says so little the reader has to work overtime just to find anything. Some of the commentaries and analyses I've read are shockingly obese, finding false genius in banal happenings. They're far more entertaining than Carver himself: an obvious metaphor is lauded as a keystone, a clumsily-recited list of household objects a totem representing all of human existence. If Carver had written "the cat sat on the mat", to these people it would no doubt symbolise the yearning of all living creatures to find some place where they could rest their burdens, always tragically aware that the mat is not fixed and that they must move on from their slumber at some indeterminate time.
There is a weak undercurrent simmering in some of the stories, but nothing remarkable. On this evidence, Carver has nothing to say as a writer: he's grasping at clichéd, cookie-cutter episodes of disaffected American suburbia to perform a few simple prose tricks. He presents abusive and repressed relationships, alcoholics, bores and philanderers – presents them, but doesn't have any insight into them, let alone resolution. The overwhelming feeling for this reader was of plainness, like eating a pack of ready-salted crisps and knowing just a dash of vinegar would go a long way. The only lesson of writing to be found here is that you can't have an iceberg in such shallow water. show less
A young couple buying furniture from a man's yard sale encounters the haunting remnants of his failed relationship, blending awkwardness and profound melancholy. A man recounts fragmented memories of his past relationships, revealing the quiet pain of failed intimacy and unmet expectations. A married couple's attempt to save their crumbling relationship in a squalid motel room spirals into mutual blame, guilt, and resignation. Two childhood friends reconnect as adults, but a casual outing show more turns disturbingly dark, revealing suppressed violence and alienation. A man recalls a tragic friendship between his father and an eccentric, lonely neighbor whose obsession with his fish stock ends in calamity. Two couples drinking around a kitchen table explore the nature of love through contrasting stories, exposing its complexity, vulnerability, and inevitable pain.
Those are the themes of just a handful of the seventeen stories comprising What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, legendary author Raymond Carver’s second major collection of short fiction and the one that made his reputation. I use the label “stories” somewhat guardedly here, because with one exception—the volume’s title story—these entries are better thought of as vignettes, or brief scenes, in larger and more complex drama that is transpiring somewhere off the page. Despite their brevity—and most tales are no longer than a half dozen pages—they pack a huge emotional punch as characters sort through the despair and wreckage of their lives due to a variety of shortcomings: alcoholism, domestic violence, infidelity, irresponsible behavior, abandonment, and so on. Indeed, there is not really an uplifting or redemptive story in the whole book, which is consistent with the “dirty realism” style of Carver’s fiction.
I will admit to being a little frustrated by the clipped nature of many of these pieces; they often left too much of the backstory context for the reader to figure out. I did admire the author’s consistent use of the “nested story” technique, in which the narrator interacts with another character who then relates his or her own tale. Also, I found two of the stories—"The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off” and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”—to be more fully developed and emotionally satisfying. On the other hand, the underdeveloped nature of “The Bath” was particularly vexing. In fact, a longer version of that story was published as “A Small, Good Thing” and included in a subsequent collection (Cathedral) to much greater effect. (The expanded version—which is the one that Carver apparently intended in the first place—became one of his most highly regarded creations.) So, although all the pieces in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love are worthwhile, a reader new to Carver’s writing might start that exploration elsewhere in his estimable catalog. show less
Those are the themes of just a handful of the seventeen stories comprising What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, legendary author Raymond Carver’s second major collection of short fiction and the one that made his reputation. I use the label “stories” somewhat guardedly here, because with one exception—the volume’s title story—these entries are better thought of as vignettes, or brief scenes, in larger and more complex drama that is transpiring somewhere off the page. Despite their brevity—and most tales are no longer than a half dozen pages—they pack a huge emotional punch as characters sort through the despair and wreckage of their lives due to a variety of shortcomings: alcoholism, domestic violence, infidelity, irresponsible behavior, abandonment, and so on. Indeed, there is not really an uplifting or redemptive story in the whole book, which is consistent with the “dirty realism” style of Carver’s fiction.
I will admit to being a little frustrated by the clipped nature of many of these pieces; they often left too much of the backstory context for the reader to figure out. I did admire the author’s consistent use of the “nested story” technique, in which the narrator interacts with another character who then relates his or her own tale. Also, I found two of the stories—"The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off” and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”—to be more fully developed and emotionally satisfying. On the other hand, the underdeveloped nature of “The Bath” was particularly vexing. In fact, a longer version of that story was published as “A Small, Good Thing” and included in a subsequent collection (Cathedral) to much greater effect. (The expanded version—which is the one that Carver apparently intended in the first place—became one of his most highly regarded creations.) So, although all the pieces in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love are worthwhile, a reader new to Carver’s writing might start that exploration elsewhere in his estimable catalog. show less
I don't know about you, but I've never really seen the fuss around Carver's writing...yes, I get the "unique, outsider" stuff that's been plastered on him, but I spent years reading outsiders' work when I was an agent and, with that deep pool of experience to draw on, I think the only reason you're seeing this review at all is Gordon Lish.
He latched onto something in Carver's writing. He polished that something. But he polished it into something it never was before, and this is show more incontrovertible because Carver's widow Tess Gallagher didn't much like what Lish did and undid it. Here's a whole Wikipedia article about it. Also the plot gets summarized, a task I don't want to do myself.
The specific story I'll refer to is the title one, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Originally titled Beginners (read the full, unedited story here, behind The New Yorker's paywall; you can have three free reads a month, and this one's worth burning one for), the story is a four-person Decameron of lower-class life, a series of sad, slatternly people narrating the dead ends of dead people. A modern name for that is grit lit, or use the older group noun "noir" that intellectuals in the 1940s slapped on similar stories (especially their movies) to shake the last drop of piss off them. Fancy labels make all things better, establish their Worthiness for Inclusion; it's why there are fads and rediscoveries.
But if you read Carver's letters to Lish (again, the paywall applies, but I'm less sure it's worth burning a free read for this), I think you'll see how much Carver was replaced by equal or greater quantities of Lish. Editors do, always, leave their own DNA in a writer's work. It's part of a collaborative process that, at its best, makes the read that much better for the reader, and the writer that much better for the outsider's loving attention. But this, from Lish to Carver in 1982, after the fallout from this collection's contentious birth soured things:
EXPOSE YOU is telling, isn't it; you're flawed, you're talentless, but *I* am here to protect you from the consequences! I'm also more than a little offended on Carver's behalf that Lish "deems" his work to be the minimum to make the lumpen oddities presentable, an attitude I think Lish telegraphs quite clearly by using the verb "to deem":
(This from the Online Etymological Dictionary, whose Chrome extension I use with great frequency and frequent delight.)
I borrowed my library's Kindle edition of this book, my own 1980s paperback having vanished decades ago. I read the Lished version; I read Carver's original; I can't say I liked one better than the other because I wasn't enamored of either. They're not bad. But I came away thinking "...and why was this work deemed (!) so marvelous as to deserve to be gefilted (gefilte fish (n.)
1892, gefüllte Fisch, not a species but a loaf made from various kinds of ground fish and other ingredients; the first word is Yiddish, from German gefüllte "stuffed," from füllen "to fill" if you're innocent of Jewish ancestors) into this allegedly superior work presented by Lish?
Why bother? There is so very much work out there, quite a lot of it starting out better than Lish ended up making this collection, that one could more profitably spend one's time reading! Works by QUILTBAG authors, works by Black authors, Asian and Asian-American authors, Spanish-speaking or Arabic-speaking or Serbian-speaking authors...all so much more trenchant or squalid, if that is your kink; yet here's this nice-enough collection (I re-read this one story, it's widely critically hailed as the chef d'ouevre, and it is the only one I remembered the first thing about, so you "you're wrong, I think it's wonderful" commenters are deprived of the usual favorite opening line) sucking up money and attention forty years on and for no particularly compelling reason that I can see. There are books whose titles are plays on this collection's title! It's that well known, it's some kind of cultural touchstone.
Try this: Imagine a lesbian had written these stories. Do you still think this would be a venerated cultural artifact? Much more likely it'd be a forgotten typescript in some poor, beleaguered agent's archives. show less
He latched onto something in Carver's writing. He polished that something. But he polished it into something it never was before, and this is show more incontrovertible because Carver's widow Tess Gallagher didn't much like what Lish did and undid it. Here's a whole Wikipedia article about it. Also the plot gets summarized, a task I don't want to do myself.
The specific story I'll refer to is the title one, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Originally titled Beginners (read the full, unedited story here, behind The New Yorker's paywall; you can have three free reads a month, and this one's worth burning one for), the story is a four-person Decameron of lower-class life, a series of sad, slatternly people narrating the dead ends of dead people. A modern name for that is grit lit, or use the older group noun "noir" that intellectuals in the 1940s slapped on similar stories (especially their movies) to shake the last drop of piss off them. Fancy labels make all things better, establish their Worthiness for Inclusion; it's why there are fads and rediscoveries.
But if you read Carver's letters to Lish (again, the paywall applies, but I'm less sure it's worth burning a free read for this), I think you'll see how much Carver was replaced by equal or greater quantities of Lish. Editors do, always, leave their own DNA in a writer's work. It's part of a collaborative process that, at its best, makes the read that much better for the reader, and the writer that much better for the outsider's loving attention. But this, from Lish to Carver in 1982, after the fallout from this collection's contentious birth soured things:
I’m aware that we’ve agreed that I will try to keep my editing of the stories {in Where I'm Calling From} as slight as I deem possible, that you do not want me to do the extensive work I did on the first two collections. So be it, Ray. What you see in this sample is that minimum: to do less than this, would be, in my judgment, to expose you too greatly.
EXPOSE YOU is telling, isn't it; you're flawed, you're talentless, but *I* am here to protect you from the consequences! I'm also more than a little offended on Carver's behalf that Lish "deems" his work to be the minimum to make the lumpen oddities presentable, an attitude I think Lish telegraphs quite clearly by using the verb "to deem":
deem (v.)
Old English deman "to judge, decide on consideration, condemn;, think, judge, hold as an opinion," from Proto-Germanic *domjanan (source also of Old Frisian dema "to judge," Old Saxon adomian, Middle Dutch doemen, Old Norse dma, Old High German tuomen, Gothic domjan "to deem, judge"), denominative of *domaz, from PIE root *dhe- "to set, put" (compare doom). Related: Deemed; deeming. Originally "to pronounce judgment" as well as "to form an opinion." Compare Old English, Middle English deemer "a judge." The two judges of the Isle of Man were called deemsters in 17c., a title formerly common throughout England and Scotland and preserved in the surname Dempster.
(This from the Online Etymological Dictionary, whose Chrome extension I use with great frequency and frequent delight.)
I borrowed my library's Kindle edition of this book, my own 1980s paperback having vanished decades ago. I read the Lished version; I read Carver's original; I can't say I liked one better than the other because I wasn't enamored of either. They're not bad. But I came away thinking "...and why was this work deemed (!) so marvelous as to deserve to be gefilted (gefilte fish (n.)
1892, gefüllte Fisch, not a species but a loaf made from various kinds of ground fish and other ingredients; the first word is Yiddish, from German gefüllte "stuffed," from füllen "to fill" if you're innocent of Jewish ancestors) into this allegedly superior work presented by Lish?
Why bother? There is so very much work out there, quite a lot of it starting out better than Lish ended up making this collection, that one could more profitably spend one's time reading! Works by QUILTBAG authors, works by Black authors, Asian and Asian-American authors, Spanish-speaking or Arabic-speaking or Serbian-speaking authors...all so much more trenchant or squalid, if that is your kink; yet here's this nice-enough collection (I re-read this one story, it's widely critically hailed as the chef d'ouevre, and it is the only one I remembered the first thing about, so you "you're wrong, I think it's wonderful" commenters are deprived of the usual favorite opening line) sucking up money and attention forty years on and for no particularly compelling reason that I can see. There are books whose titles are plays on this collection's title! It's that well known, it's some kind of cultural touchstone.
Try this: Imagine a lesbian had written these stories. Do you still think this would be a venerated cultural artifact? Much more likely it'd be a forgotten typescript in some poor, beleaguered agent's archives. show less
"Maxine said it was another tragedy in a long line of low-rent tragedies"
This is a quote from one of the 37 short stories featured in this collection and could summarise many of those stories. [Where I'm Calling from] was published in 1988 the year of Carver's death and features stories that appeared in magazines and earlier collections published between 1971 and 1987. The main subject of the stories is American suburban life, but one might also add alcoholism. Many have an unnerving feel of show more real life situations as characters fight or succumb to events that appear largely out of their control. They fight against taking another drink or succumb to having another shot, always looking over their shoulder, but never quite becoming destitute. Men cheat on their wives, on their girlfriends and occasionally the women fight back. It is a tawdry selection of subjects on which Carver has chosen to base his stories, but they are so well written and so convincing that they draw the reader in.
Carver appears to have been an alcoholic for much of his adult life, in the mid 1970's he claimed that he had given up writing and had taken to full time drinking. In his stories almost everyone drinks and as a good proportion of them are written in the first person they have an autobiographical feel to them. His characters are exceptionally well drawn and their dialogue hits the mark almost every-time. Couples argue and fight, cheat and deceive, pretend they do not see what is right in front of their eyes. They act like people in a TV soap opera, but are totally convincing. Some of the stories are mere snapshots of events in his characters lives, but have a lasting impression, there is often not a clear resolution and God forbid there should be happy ending.
Almost all the characters are white Americans, lower middle class or blue collar workers, none of them are out and out criminals, but often choose to act out of pure self interest or are dumbed down by the need to earn a living in a society that takes few prisoners. Mostly it is not a pretty picture and like people who suffer with alcoholism there appears to be an overlying trait of self deception. It is a sobering collection.
Carver when he was able, taught literature at colleges and was a guest lecturer as creative writing courses, but took on miscellaneous jobs when he needed. He states in the preface to this collection that his chosen medium was short stories and was interested in paring the stories down to precise images that reflected the real situations that he was depicting. How far he succeeded in this and how near he came to presenting a culture of a section of life in 1970's America will probably depend on each readers own experiences. Sexist and occasionally racist in accordance with the unenlightened 1970's but good short story writing that can be uncomfortable to read: 4 stars. show less
This is a quote from one of the 37 short stories featured in this collection and could summarise many of those stories. [Where I'm Calling from] was published in 1988 the year of Carver's death and features stories that appeared in magazines and earlier collections published between 1971 and 1987. The main subject of the stories is American suburban life, but one might also add alcoholism. Many have an unnerving feel of show more real life situations as characters fight or succumb to events that appear largely out of their control. They fight against taking another drink or succumb to having another shot, always looking over their shoulder, but never quite becoming destitute. Men cheat on their wives, on their girlfriends and occasionally the women fight back. It is a tawdry selection of subjects on which Carver has chosen to base his stories, but they are so well written and so convincing that they draw the reader in.
Carver appears to have been an alcoholic for much of his adult life, in the mid 1970's he claimed that he had given up writing and had taken to full time drinking. In his stories almost everyone drinks and as a good proportion of them are written in the first person they have an autobiographical feel to them. His characters are exceptionally well drawn and their dialogue hits the mark almost every-time. Couples argue and fight, cheat and deceive, pretend they do not see what is right in front of their eyes. They act like people in a TV soap opera, but are totally convincing. Some of the stories are mere snapshots of events in his characters lives, but have a lasting impression, there is often not a clear resolution and God forbid there should be happy ending.
Almost all the characters are white Americans, lower middle class or blue collar workers, none of them are out and out criminals, but often choose to act out of pure self interest or are dumbed down by the need to earn a living in a society that takes few prisoners. Mostly it is not a pretty picture and like people who suffer with alcoholism there appears to be an overlying trait of self deception. It is a sobering collection.
Carver when he was able, taught literature at colleges and was a guest lecturer as creative writing courses, but took on miscellaneous jobs when he needed. He states in the preface to this collection that his chosen medium was short stories and was interested in paring the stories down to precise images that reflected the real situations that he was depicting. How far he succeeded in this and how near he came to presenting a culture of a section of life in 1970's America will probably depend on each readers own experiences. Sexist and occasionally racist in accordance with the unenlightened 1970's but good short story writing that can be uncomfortable to read: 4 stars. show less
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