NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
... pert 59). The seizures only complicated matters. Unger continues, "He was then terrified to quit drinking, because it had happened in a hospital in San Francisco and it had happened when he'd tried to quit on his own; so he kept on drinking" (59). In his story "Where I'm Calling From, " Carver has a character named Tiny in Frank Martin's drying out facility who has these sort of seizures immediately after describing to his fellow recovering alcoholics how he feels much better and will be leaving soon.
Carver was often suspicious of good fortune. During his successful, sober years he would often marvel that he could own things like boats to fish in, and two cars -- one a Mercedes -- that weren't breaking down all the time. Maryann said in her interview that it took Ray about five or six years to process the material that would end up in a story, whether it was his own experience, a story someone had told him, or simply a line he had overheard (Halpert 90). Ray quit drinking on June 2 nd, 1977 and didn't write for almost a year. He said at that point that he didn't even care if he wrote again, his sobriety was so important to him. During that time of early sobriety, he made some connection between his writing and drinking, the ruin he'd made of his life.
Perhaps because writing had always been his first priority, his first love, and alcohol came along competing for that love and attention. The coincidence of the beginning of his publishing and the beginning of his problem drinking may have helped to foster this psychological connection. At any rate, his first life, or the time of his "Bad Raymond Days" as he called it, was over and his second life began with his sobriety. No writing was done for some time, then he wrote the stories that were included in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. That collection, also edited by Gordon Lish, was published in 1981. This book marked the end of his first literary life, his extremely pared down style.
In 1982, about five years after the end of his first life -- the processing time Maryann mentioned -- Carver wrote what would become the title story for his next collection, "Cathedral. " He said at the time, "There is definitely a change going on in my writing and I'm glad of it. It happened when I wrote the story 'Cathedral. ' I date the change from that story" (Gentry 29). Later on, when he had finished the collection and had thought about his development as a writer, he commented on the aesthetics involved in this newfound life: The stories in What We Talk About are different to an extent... I pushed and pulled and worked with those stories before they went into the book to an extent I'd never done with any other stories. When the book was put together and in the hands of my publisher, I didn't write anything at all for six months. And then the first story I wrote was "Cathedral, " which I feel is totally different in conception and execution from any stories that have come before.
I suppose it reflects a change in my life as much as it does in my way of writing... I knew I'd gone as far the other way as I could or wanted to go, cutting everything down to the marrow, not just to the bone. Any farther in that direction and I'd be at a dead end -- writing and publishing stuff I wouldn't want to read myself, and that's the truth (Gentry 44). This drastic and immediate change in Carver's style marked an opening up.
His new life of grace called for a new way of looking at things, new and old, and although he did not enjoy looking at the past too long, he went back to a story first printed in What We Talk About called "The Bath. " Though this story had already been published in a collection and had won Columbia magazine's Carlos Fuentes Fiction Award, he rewrote the story, making it three times as long by adding to the original section and continuing the story to what he felt was it's true conclusion. The second story is called "A Small, Good Thing, " and he says of the two versions, "In my own mind I consider them to be really two entirely different stories, not just different versions of the same story" (Gentry 102). They are as different as his two lives. In a way he was, in this second life, rewriting the first.
He continues, "I went back to that one, as well as several others, because I felt there was unfinished business that needed attending to. The story hadn't been told originally; it had been messed around with, condensed and compressed in 'The Bath' to highlight the qualities of menace that I wanted to emphasize" (Gentry 102). As most agree when they read both stories, the risk was worth taking. Carver's obsession with rewriting paid off in critical acclaim when "A Small, Good Thing" was awarded first place in Prize Stories 1983 and the same year was included in The Pushcart Prize, VIII.
Then, at the height of his critical acclaim, Carver, along with Cynthia Ozick, won the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters' first Mildred and Harold Strauss Living award. These are renewable five-year fellowships that carry annual tax-free stipends of $ 35, 000. The award not only allowed Carver to stop teaching, but required that he not engage in any other employment (Gentry xxvi). Once again, looking back at his life, it seems appropriate that his last five years be spent in full time writing.
After this sort of wish fulfillment, poetic justice would not allow him to continue upwards. He couldn't have written his own story any better than he lived it. In terms of representative vision, it is interesting that both "A Small, Good Thing" and "Cathedral" are Carver's most anthologized stories. They are arguably his best stories, and they appeal to a wider audience than his other work, perhaps accidentally because of the expansiveness, the generosity that Carver felt in his life and allowed to enter his work. Ironically enough, these two stories, most popular among all of his work, are the least representative of the bulk of his writing.
Even in his last story collection, Where I'm Calling From, the rewritten and new stories do not so much follow those two examples. "Errand, " on the other hand, Carver's last published story and the last in this collection, is yet again different from anything else he had done. It may have to do with the fact that it was one of only two or three stories that he wrote that had no thing to do with his own experience, and that he was inspired by the new biography of Chekhov by Henri Troyat that he was reading at the time. Or it may have had something to do with, as Douglas Unger relates, the "strong influence" the actual biography made. "I was at Yahoo when that story came out, " Unger said, "and it so happened there was a copy of Henri Troyat's biography of Chekhov around. James Salter noticed that the death scene in the biography and a large part of the death scene in 'Errand' was almost exactly alike, almost word for word.
That caused quite a stir and discussion among the writers there" (Halpert 71). To Carver, using that material was no different than using a story one of his friends had told him (Halpert 72). "Cathedral" does have its main character in common with many of his stories -- someone who has a rather limited feel for other's experiences and is afraid of differences, such as Robert's blindness. But the relationship that develops in the evening depicted in the story is much different than what might have happened six or seven years before "Cathedral" was written. At an earlier time, the main character might not have overcome his unnamed fears and done something odd to offend Robert. Robert himself might have been different, much less affable, perhaps he would represent much of what had been bad in the narrator's life. This is the story that might have been, and what would have to be for it to represent Carver's overall vision.
As it is, it represents the change in his life and work and it shows how a writer's vision is not static anymore than his or her life is static. The progression of Carver's career represents a reality that is not dealt with in criticism; it is a dirty reality, something his work mirrors. The fallacy of criticism -- that something can actually be taken apart, examined, and reassembled to be looked at in a different, fuller light -- is revealed by Carver's work. Political theories are made to deal with the clear oppression of American Capitalism in Carver's representation of working poor. Some critics point to his "minimal" style as the beginning of the end of true literature. In one specific example, Mark Helprin, the editor for The Best American Short Stories 1988, spent his introduction condemning "minimalists" and everything he thought they stood for.
For sixteen pages, he tells us, as only a non-minimalist like himself can, in thirteen different ways, how the minimalists are boils on the ass of literature and the cause of the literary cannon being under siege. He then begins talking about how he is glad that he read the stories to be judged not knowing the writers or the publications they came from. And, after all of this, he tells of his learning the names of the writers that he chose for inclusion, "I was surprised, delighted, and a little taken aback to discover that I had chosen stories by some people whom I do not like personally, by one who wrote one of the stupidest reviews I have ever read (of my first book, no less), and by some whose work I find very hard to bear" (Helprin xxvii). Do you suppose one of those references, after a large part of his essay had been dedicated to cutting down "minimalists" every way he could, concerned Raymond Carver, whose story "Errand" was included that year by none other than Helprin? The coincidences are astounding and humiliation is, especially when performed by his own hand, quite a wonderful spectacle. In final analysis, though every attempt is made to peg Carver's entire body of work down to a few distinguishing characteristics, even by this paper, his work does not sit still for such classification any more than his life.
Youthful optimism, early marriage, alcoholism, near death, recovery, sobriety -- this isn't simple and it's all in his work, true and clear. We can say a certain percentage of his stories dealt with the working poor, or alcoholics out of work, or adulterers. Or we can say that overall he dealt with people who had no hope, or little hope, until we look at his most popular stories -- "Cathedral" for instance -- where hope is primary. Perhaps only the broadest classification is accurate -- change. In an organic, dirty reality, Carver's work changed with his life.
He grew and received reprieves in life that most do not encounter. Anything can happen, he tells us. He once said, "It's strange. You never start out life with the intention of becoming a bankrupt or an alcoholic or a cheat and a thief.
Or a liar" (Gentry 38). At one time Carver was all of these. If we can learn one thing, it is that nothing is set in stone. Change is the only sure thing.
Bibliography: Carver, Raymond. Fires. New York: Vintage-Random House, 1989. Gentry, Marshall Bruce, and William L. Stull, eds.
Conversations With Raymond Carver. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1990. Halpert, Sam, ed... when we talk about Raymond Carver. Layton: Gibbs Smith, 1991.
Helprin, Mark, ed. The Best American Short Stories 1988. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988.
Free research essays on topics related to: short stories, main character, raymond carver, working poor, death scene
Research essay sample on Raymond Carver Death Scene
