Raymond Carver is a loser

So do you think that Carver did feel compelled to tell truths? I certainly do. In college I got way into Carver -- read everything he had written -- and it affected my writing heavily: story after story of drunk fathers and cowed sons (my growing-up story in a nutshell) that all ended up being shit (except for one poem, which I'm still very proud of). What I finally realized was that while Carver is a very good writer (I still believe this to be the case), imitating him will only lead to bad writing...

But Anthony, your post was very interesting.

If my Carver trajectory is correct, then this statement is off the mark. From what I recall, Carver did realize he had trapped himself in compressing every story into its skeletal frame. Which is why some of the stoires in Cathedrals and Where I'm Calling From open up a lot more. I do remember a quote from him where he felt his stories had gotten so bare that they were practically unreadable at one point.

I remember reading some of those essays in a bookstore years ago and melting at the thought of him and Tess reading Chekhov to each other over breakfast.

Also I'd love to be a 1% the loser Carver was.

"By the time of his death in 1988, at the age of fifty, Carver had established himself as the new torchbearer for what had formerly been celebrated as the Hemingway ethos, forging a scenically simple, dialogue-driven idiom that conveyed powerfully not just the undercurrents of rage and longing in his characters, but also suggested the palpable blockages and blind-spots that kept these forces moving with destructive momentum. The difference between Carver and Hemingway is that Hemingway's sharply angled reticence somehow implicated the whole larger world—as if the corrosions of civilization, a world gone wrong, were to blame—whereas in Carver's world the problem was merely human, there in the very clay. Better: the ordinary clay, in the working people who were almost unfailingly warped by their hard lot and who handed down the misery of their foreshortened lives to their children. Somewhere along the way he got called a minimalist and the label lopsidedly stuck."

Carver was clean by the time he started writing, i think.

I'm quite confused by Anthony's first post but i will read it again.

# Reflections on Short Cuts, a new 25-minute videotaped conversation with Robert Altman and Tim Robbins
# Luck, Trust, and Ketchup: Robert Altman in Carver Country, a 90-minute documentary on the making of Short Cuts
# Segment from BBC television's Moving Pictures tracing the development of Raymond Carver's short story "Jerry, Molly and Sam" for the film
# Hour-long audio interview with Raymond Carver from 1983
# To Write and Keep Kind, a PBS documentary on Carver
# Deleted Scenes
# A look inside the marketing of Short Cuts, featuring trailers and more than sixty print advertising campaigns
# Original song demos by Dr. John
# An essay by film critic Michael Wilmington and a guide to the music
# Special reprint of Short Cuts, the Vintage Books companion collection of Raymond Carver short stories
# Number of discs: 2

From what I can recall reading somewhere, Altman wasn't really a fan of Carver's. He was in desperate need of a good script (contractual obligation with the studio), and a producer friend of his gave him Short Cuts as a present, suggesting him to adapt it to film. He loved it, and as such, initiated that little endeavor. But yes, you're right, their sensibilities don't really fit together, I don't think.

So, Anyone read this in the Times yesterday? The edits are really interesting.

The edits are available to look through here

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/Carver.pdf

I dunno, I think Lish was a great editor. He really cuts down on the B.S. I think his edit of "One More Thing" is terrific. I also think the "controversy" is pretty funny--I'm sure this book will come out, eventually one way or another.

I was going to post yesterday and forgot.

Don't see the big deal. The power of good editors is overstated. Maxwell Perkins hacked at Thomas Wolfe's books and didn't approve them.

I would say that the edits Lish made make a case that the power of good editors is understated.

Carver was a good writer already.

I think I read the original draft of "A Small Good Thing" in a college fiction class.

From the looks of the edits, he was even more of a sappy sentimental writer than I thought he was.

I also happened to read, this morning, a story I wrote when I was 16 that is almost ridiculous in how much it owes to Carver.

please post, jaymc.
i also want to read yancey's poem.

i like raymond carver, and it's all thanks to gygax (RIP.)

i realize i may be talking to myself at this point, but this article is fantastic

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F03E3D71F38F93AA3575BC0A96E958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

Of Carver's work, I've only read "A Small, Good Thing." It's really amazing. Where do I go next?

To A Relative Stranger by Charles Baxter.

I think you could do a lot worse than just reading Where I'm Calling From, which has most of his best and famous stories, and then, if you're still curious, going to the individual collections to fill in the cracks.

'cathedral' is beautiful (from the same-titled collection).

i always liked this one. it's mawkish, but whatever.

The whole Lish sage in re: Carver is pretty fascinating

http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/12/19/talking_about_editing_ray_carver/

READ IT ALL!

Drinking While Driving by Raymond Carver

It's August and I have not
Read a book in six months
except something called The Retreat from Moscow
by Caulaincourt
Nevertheless, I am happy
Riding in a car with my brother
and drinking from a pint of Old Crow.
We do not have any place in mind to go,
we are just driving.
If I closed my eyes for a minute
I would be lost, yet
I could gladly lie down and sleep forever
beside this road
My brother nudges me.
Any minute now, something will happen.

sorry if I've already said this 10,000,00x but I saw him give a reading at Reed in either '85 or '86 - dude had it working

Thanks, everyone!

I like that poem, but it's in the exact same meter and format as a lot of great James Wright poems.

I wrote my undergrad thesis on Carver (as well as David Mamet and Susan Rothenberg, two other late-70s/early-80s who made a similar major shift in their work from fragmented essentialism to a fuller, connection-based style), and I treated him with reverence in high school and college, but I've become much more conflict about his work in the years since. I'd love to be blown away again by a poem or story of his.

late 70s/early 80s artists
...much more conflicted

wait Eazy what meter is that poem in

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

*

OK, OK, not meter.

I wrote my undergrad thesis on Carver (as well as David Mamet and Susan Rothenberg, two other late-70s/early-80s who made a similar major shift in their work from fragmented essentialism to a fuller, connection-based style),

It's interesting how James Wright's development was in the other direction, no?

His line breaks are so perfect, he just holds ideas an arms length away from each other, like here:

I could gladly lie down and sleep forever
beside this road

I admire Carver but he's too depressing to compel me to spend a lot of time with him.

READ IT ALL!

― I know, right?, Sunday, 21 September 2008 10:42 (1 year ago) Permalink

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