A friend of mine gave me a used copy of Where I’m Calling From: New and Selected Stories by Raymond Carver. She had picked up the book from the free shelves at our library, which is a section of books that have been donated by people who need to make room in their homes for more books. Anyone can come in, peruse those shelves, take what they want, and leave — no library card needed. People can keep the books, pass them along to friends, or donate them back to the library. Note: I’m keeping the copy of Carver’s short stories. My heirs can argue over who gets to inherit it.
My paperback edition of Carver’s stories was published in 1989 by Vintage Books: A Division of Random House. My particular copy has an intense black-and-white photo of Carver staring at his readers. The whites of Carver’s eyes are abnormally bright, suggesting an effect created by the photographer. Carver is neither smiling nor frowning, but looks like he could have done either after the shutter clicked. Every time I look at his photo, I wonder what he is thinking. This book is still in print, but the updated cover art isn’t nearly as interesting as Marion Ettlinger’s photograph of Carver, with its Mona Lisa vibe.
After my friend finished reading Carver’s book, she thought I’d like to read it. Sure, why not. I hadn’t remembered reading any of Carver’s work before. (Probably not the only gaping hole in my literary education. I still haven’t read a single Colleen Hoover novel or War and Peace.)
There is no way I’m going to take on reviewing Carver’s short story collection. Literary critics have done that. But having read the book, cover to cover, I feel compelled to share some thoughts.
If you write short stories, you might want to read Raymond Carver, not because you need to write like him, but because you will learn about craft from him. So here, and in no particular order, are random thoughts about Carver’s stories:
- He writes great dialogue, conversations filled with irony, skepticism, avoidance, misunderstandings, and sarcasm — the way angry, unhappy, disillusioned, conflicted people talk.
- He writes great first-person point of view narration. It’s not easy to create a character’s narrative voice that can reflect, ponder, and think about the past and the present without becoming oppressive or irritating. It’s a skill that when done right looks so easy, but when done wrong sounds like fingernails scratching on a chalkboard.
- He creates characters who come to life, stirring up emotions of dread, disgust, helplessness, loss, confusion, regret, grief, boredom, uselessness, and addiction. Carver has been called a postmodernist and a minimalist. He writes about real life in a stark manner with bruised and broken characters, leaving readers to fill in between the lines, and he doesn’t provide tidy endings. But you don’t need to go all postmodernist to admire and learn from Carver’s character development.
- I read Carver’s stories before bed. Some of his characters drank so much alcohol, I worried I would be hungover in the morning. They lit up one cigarette after another, filling ashtrays to overflowing. Occasionally, a joint gets passed around. The dulling of the senses is a motif in many of Carver’s stories, but it’s usually not the story. It’s an atmosphere created, one that made me psychosomatically nauseous as I read through a powerfully told, unsettling story.
- I didn’t like all of Carver’s stories. To me, some of them were little more than a short conversation, and I felt something was missing. This was especially true when the dialogue pulled me in, making me want more of a story. Most of the stories I didn’t like were in the first part of the book, but I kept reading because it was Raymond Carver, who is considered one of the finest short story writers in American literature.
- But I loved a lot of his stories, usually the longer ones, which were in the second half of his book. My favorites from this collection: “The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off”, “So Much Water So Close to Home”, “Careful”, “Where I’m Calling From”, “Chef’s House”, “Fever”, “Feathers”, “Cathedral”, “A Small Good Thing”, “Boxes”, “Elephant”, and “Blackbird Pie.”
- Carver’s story titles throw subtle, understated jabs at the situations in his stories. The title “A Small Good Thing” nods to a sad irony in a tragic story. The title “Where I’m Calling From” is layered with multiple meanings, including its play on the phrase, where I’m coming from. The one-word title “Boxes” is brilliant in its ability to cover the physical and the metaphorical dimensions of a dysfunctional family.
- Carver sometimes weaves absurdly unexpected events into the mundane. And they’re believable because Carver believes them. For example, in the story “Feathers” a city couple goes to dinner at a country couple’s house. The country couple have an ornery peacock that likes to come into the house at night, a plaster-of-Paris cast of repulsive teeth that decorates the top of their TV, and the ugliest baby one can imagine. My take-away: Don’t be afraid to throw curveballs in your story.
- Even though some of Carver’s characters believe they are happy, they actually live vapid lives, teetering in the balance. So, when a complication occurs, their lives become complete crap, miring them in muck that will stick to them, even should they pull themselves out of the cesspool. The stories I liked best reveal a before, followed by a pivotal change, which lets loose a wrecking ball headed toward at least one of the characters. We don’t get to see the impact; we are left to imagine it.
- Less is more. Carver’s stories say so much by not saying all of it. Every word counts for something, and he never nags. I’m reminded of Grandma’s advice: Put your jewelry on, then take one piece off. Or Marilyn Monroe’s advice: Don’t make your hairdo too perfect, or no one will notice the rest of you. You know, just “kill your little darlings.”
- Of course, I looked up Carver’s own story. He died of lung cancer. He was an alcoholic, but found sobriety. He had a failed marriage, but found a second love. He died young, at 50, but he achieved a literary immortality.
A shout-out to my kind friend who handed me a collection of Carver’s stories and said, “I thought you might like to read these.” She was right.
And I recently discovered I won’t have to read War & Peace because PBS is airing it as a miniseries, starring James Norton, a dreamy British actor, who I came to adore while watching Grantchester. That means I have time to re-read David Copperfield and Huckleberry Finn then read Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and James by Percival Everett.
Writing Near the Lake 
I came to Carver too late to entirely love him. By that time I had read far too many Carver-wanna-be imitators, and they pretty much spoiled me for Carver for years. (Carver was also awful to his first wife, repeatedly unfaithful while she worked to support him and their children, and married the much younger one six weeks before he died.)
fyi Raymond Carver owed much of the success of the stories you admire to the editing of Gordon Lish at The New Yorker. (You can find Carver’s original versions in print.) I used to share with my students Carver’s original “Beginners” and published version of “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” + a version with cut words struck out and Lish’s new words in bold. Some dialogue came from different people; many paragraphs were cut (including the last 1500 words); new lines added (including the ending paragraph). You might prefer Carver’s version; some of my students did. After years of collaboration Carver cut ties with Lish.What people most loved about Carver in his day, however, was Lish’s doing.
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I think it’s good that you shared different versions of Carver’s work with your students, and made them aware of the Carver-Lish issue. I’ve been aware of the Carver-Lish relationship and Lish’s editing of Carver’s stories. It’s part of the reason, that until my friend gave me a copy of Carver’s book, I didn’t bother to read his work. However, it is the stories in that particular book I wanted to comment on and the use of craft in those particular stories. Lish’s name isn’t on the book, and I had no desire to comment on the Carver-Lish writer-editor relationship, which seems complex. Nor was this type of writer-editor collaboration (or rewriting) limited to Carver and Lish. Ezra Pound made sweeping edits to T.S. Elliot’s “The Wasteland.” Thomas Wolfe turned in a 330,000-word manuscript of Look Homeward, Angel to editor Max Perkins, who helped Wolfe cut and revise, with Wolfe’s approval. But, it could be argued that without Perkins’ help Look Homeward, Angel, would have floundered. Also, from what I’ve been able to piece together, it is Carver’s version of “A Small Good Thing” without Lish’s edits that is published in the collection of stories I commented on. And “Blackbird Pie” is another post-Lish story. I don’t know about the other Carver stories in the 1989 edition, but again, I wanted to comment on what was in that book. I didn’t like a lot of the stories in the book, including “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” and I have no idea if it’s Carver’s version or a Carver-Lish version. It’s a story that I felt went nowhere. I wonder if the writer-editor relationships of the past would even exist today. I don’t think publishers have the time or resources to hold a writer’s hand. An author like Thomas Wolfe who turned in a unwieldly, verbose manuscript, would probably be sent packing, even if some parts of it were brilliant.
As for Carver’s treatment of his first wife, living with an alcoholic isn’t fun. She has my sympathy. However, I find it difficult to simply dismiss writers who are or were jerks in their personal lives. Charles Dickens left his wife for another woman. Fitzgerald was an alcoholic, and his behavior probably hastened Zelda’s decent into mental breakdowns. Hemingway, another alcoholic, was no knight in shinning armor. My sympathies go to all his former wives. I doubt Shakespeare remained faithful while in London. But from each of these writers have come stories or books or plays that I have loved, and read often more than once. There were great women writers who were alcoholics too, and probably difficult to live with and possibly unfaithful, too.
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I may have to give Carver another try. The only thing I’ve read by him is “Cathedral.” I read it for school, which is the death knell of enjoying just about any story for me.
Thanks for the head’s up about War and Peace on PBS. I read the book a long time ago. I think the ink was still drying from Tolstoy’s hand—but it’ll be fun to see the story again.
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On the list of stories that I really liked, “Cathedral” is at the bottom, but it definitely made the list. I have a friend, however, who counts that story among one of his favorite stories ever. It’s one of the stories that made me wonder if I’d wake up hungover in the morning! Note: Some of Raymond Carver’s stories were heavily edited by his editor Gordon Lish, before Carver and Lish parted ways. However, some of Carver’s stories have been published as Carver originally wrote them. So, if you’re going to read his stories based on my recommendations, I would get a copy of his 1989 collection, Where I’m Calling From. I believe that the version of “A Small Good Thing” is Carver’s original version because I believe the version edited by Lish was published under a different name. And the “Blackbird Pie” is a post-Gordon Lish story. However, I can only find the hardback copy of this book printed in 1988 by Atlantic Monthly.
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I’ll never be able to find the article where I read it now, but Kurt Vonnegut wrote about back in the day, editors were more willing to work with authors. He said he benefited from this when he was a young writer. While the Carver/Lish situation might be more extreme than more, maybe it’s a reflection of this? Unless, of course, Lish wrote passages himself, then it’s more of a collaboration/coauthor situation.
At any rate, thanks for the clarification. I’ll keep an eye out.
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Kurt Vonnegut is right. A time like that did exist. About five years ago, I read A. Scott Berg’s biography called Max Perkins: Editor of Genius. Perkins worked with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway from early on in their careers. He also worked with Thomas Wolfe and Marjorie Kinnan Rowlings, among others. He provided different levels of support to these writers, sometimes by helping them to edit their works and suggesting revisions, sometimes just reminding them that they were talented. I remember that Thomas Wolfe was one of his most challenging writers to work with. A dear mentor and friend of mine, told me several times to read it. So I got a copy of it from the library and read it. Unfortunately, my mentor-friend got sick and died before we could talk about the book. I found the book fascinating, and I sure wish that I could have asked him why he thought it was so important for me to read it. Perhaps it was just because he really liked the book, and thought I’d enjoy the history in it. Also, readers learn a lot about Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe. I sure miss that mentor and friend. He wrote a wonderful memoir, which is one of my favorite books.
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I’m sorry about your mentor.
The industry has changed over the last fifty plus years. I don’t know whether it’s because of television has become ubiquitous and now, of course, there’s this internet thingy. When I was a kid, TV went off the air about midnight (?) and didn’t sign on again until six-ish or so in the morning. Granted, that was a while ago. 🙂
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I grew up with your kind of TV. We had four channels and when the stations went off the air, we had to watch a test pattern or snow on the screen.
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that sounds familiar.
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upon reading your post, I ordered the book from the library and hope to pick it up tomorrow when I go for our writer’s group meeting. I haven’t read much of Carver, just a piece here and there that I found to be difficult. But I’m going to try again to look at the book from the craft point of view not just the stories. I read many times that he is a genius in the art of short story writing. thank you for prompting this reexamination of his work.
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Some of Raymond Carver’s stories were heavily edited by his editor Gordan Lish, before Carver stopped working with Lish. However, some of Carver’s stories have been published as he originally wrote them. I’m not sure which stories in this collection are which. So, if you’re going to read his stories based on my recommendations, I would get a copy of his 1989 collection, Where I’m Calling From. At least that way you will be reading what I read. I think the version of “A Small Good Thing” is Carver’s original version because I believe the version edited by Lish was published under a different name. And the “Blackbird Pie” is a story written by Carver after he stopped using Lish as a editor. I didn’t want to weigh in on the Carver-Lish debate. I just read the stories as they appeared in the book, and I wanted to discuss what I saw in them as far as craft. I don’t write like Carver (or Carver-Lish) but I think we can learn tidbits from writers, even if we don’t write like them. Maybe I shouldn’t have written about the craft in the stories because of the fact some scholars claim (and perhaps rightly so) that some of Carver’s stories should actually be credited to both Carver and Lish. Either way, I think the stories that were my twelve favorite were very good stories.
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Raymond Carver was unknown to me, but when I see the Penguin or a Vintage label on the spine I grab the book off the used bookshelf to read. Literary people far wiser than I have designated the book as read-worthy across time, one that people will relate to. Many of Carver’s stories are grim on a slippery slope. The craft in their construction is so subtle, I read along, then find myself clawing at a slippery slope as I wash down a psychological drain. Good for you, Vickie, for pointing out the ways in which Carver is a master as manipulating words to lead a reader were he wants them to go, then leaves them to their own thoughts. You sow yourself to be an insightful and writing craft attentive reader/writer.
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