Raymond Carver Stories - Essay Example

Topic: Raymond Carver is considered one of the leaders of what many refer to as the ‘American Renaissance’. American short storiesand poems were considered dead when Edgar Allan Poe died in the mid-19th century. It was only until the late 70s and early 80s when this genre was revived, thanks, in part to the genius that Raymond Carver was. Born to a fisherman father and waitress mother, nothing in his formative years even vaguely suggested what a force in American literature the blue-eyed boy from Oregon would grow to be. He was a father of two by the time he was twenty and life wasn’t rosy at all for him. He did whatever he had to do to survive, including working as a janitor, sawmill laborer and library assistant before eventually moving to California where his writing career began. His stories are mainly set in the pacific north west states of Oregon and Washington, an environment he was familiar with as he grew up. Coming from a low-income family, Raymond grew up to be humble at heart. In 1963 he failed to complete the Iowa Writers’ Workshop simply because he did not fit into the program’s upper middle class milieu and he grew homesick of California. It is, therefore, not surprising that the characters in his books mirror the life that he was used to. In an article written in the New York Review of Books in April 1976, critic Thomas Edwards describes Raymond’s fictional world as a place “[where] people worry about whether their old cars will start, where unemployment or personal bankruptcy are present dangers, where a good time consists of smoking pot with the neighbors, with a little cream soda and M & Ms on the side.” Edwards continues and says “Carvers characters are waitresses, mechanics, postmen, high school teachers, factory workers, door-to-door salesmen. [Their surroundings are] not for them a still unspoiled scenic wonderland, but a place where making a living is as hard, and the texture of life as drab, for those without money, as anywhere else." It is therefore not a concidence that Carver had the most distinct vision of the middle class American society. His life paralleled that of the characters in his stories. His first collection of short stories “Will you please be quiet, Please?” was published in 1976. The stories are brief, but not stark. Carver had mastered the art of walking a fine line between no blood shed and repressed violence. Almost all stories hold the promise of a an ugly ending, marred by violence and mayhem as the characters seek to break into liberty from oppression. This is a prevalent theme in the story “Neighbors”. While the Stones are on vacation, Bill and Arlene Miller, their neighbors, agree to take care of their cat for them. This inevitably allows the Millers access to their neighbors’ house, who were considerably richer than the Millers. Bill and Arlene find themselves indulged and increasingly taken by their friends’ clothes, jewelry and soon go as far as assuming the Stones’ identities. Strangely, they both find this stimulating and their sex lives improve, but neither seems willing to talk about it. In the end, the Millers try to cling to the Stones’ house with their teeth, knowing that their neighbors returning essentially means an end to their rich fantasy life. The first collection of stories explored a common plight and not a common subject. His characters were lost, confused and diminished in many different ways. This volume primarily reflects on the plight of the lower echelons of middle class America and their day to day struggle to move up the food chain. Carver’s third book ,” What we talk about when we talk about love” sees the author explore a wider variety of themes such as love, marriage and in general the disquieting tricks of human affection. The recurring pattern is that the endings are unexpected, suddenly lurching sideways and moving in a direction that would seem random. The reader is likely left gnashing his teeth, wondering what might have been had a slight detail been adjusted in the tale. Perhaps there is an explanation to this. Readers and writers alike use the ending of stories as a key that unlocks their feelings at the time of reading or writing respectively. Carver might be attempting to make his writing unique by making his endings enigmatic and ,sometimes, surreal. His stories are forceful and enjoyable. Carver’s father was a known heavy drinker and, from what we can tell of his scantly documented family history, the relationship between his father and mother wasn’t rosy. In his stories, thus, Carver seems to be concerned with the collapse of human relations. Some of his stories take place at the moment things fall apart; others, after the damage has been done, while the shock waves still reverberate. Alcohol and violence are rarely far removed from what happens, but sometimes, in another characteristic maneuver, Carver will nudge the drama that triggers a crisis aside to show that his story has really been about something else all along. He is not a particularly lyrical prose. A typical sentence is blunt and uncomplicated, eschewing the ornaments of descriptive adverbs and parenthetical phrases. His rhythms are often repetitive or brusque, as if to suggest the strain of people learning to express newly felt things, fresh emotions. Time passes in agonizingly linear fashion, the chronology of a given scene marked by one fraught and simple gesture after another. Dialogue is usually clipped, and it is studded with commonplace observations of the concrete objects on the table or on the wall rather than the elusive, important issues in the air. In Cathedral, Carver rewrites the ending of one of his most acclaimed stories from What We Talk about When We Talk about Love. The original story, "The Bath," is about a mother who orders a special cake for her eight-year-old sons birthday—but the boy is hit by a car on that day and is rushed to the hospital, where he lingers in a coma. The baker, aware only that the parents havent picked up their expensive cake, badgers them with endless calls demanding his money. As the story ends, the boys fate is still unknown, and the desperate parents hear the phone ring again. In Cathedral, the author retells this story (renamed "A Small, Good Thing") up to the final phone ring. At this point, ambiguity vanishes; Carver reveals that the boy has died, and the call is from the irate baker. But this time the parents confront the baker with the circumstances, and the apologetic man invites them over to his bakery. There he tells the parents his own sad story of loneliness and despair and feeds them fresh coffee and warm rolls, because "eating is a small, good thing in a time like this." In revising The Bath into A Small, Good Thing, Carver has indeed gone into [what he describes as] the heart of what the story is about, and in the process has written an entirely new story—has created a completely new world. The Stories ‘A small, Good thing’ and ‘Cathedral’ are astute psychological dramas. However, an element of sentimentality has crept into these works – something that was previously absent in Carver’s writings. Perhaps because he doesnt quite trust the sense of hope with which he leaves his characters, the writing at the end becomes self-consciously simple and the scenes of resolution contrived. However, compare this with his two previous collections and an increase in vitality is clearly seen. Carver seems to be gradually redeeming his characters. Carvers 1988 short fiction collection “Where Im Calling From”, released shortly before his death, combines new and previously published stories. The entire volume is colored by Carvers standard themes of alienation, failed relationships, and death, but critics generally considered the newer contributions softer and more rambling than the authors earlier, more intense pieces. Where Im Calling From was nominated for both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Critics Circle Award.  Carver’s writings summon strong American literary traditions. In subject matter they draw upon the American voice of loneliness and stoicism, the native soul locked in this continents space. His characters, like those of many earlier American writers, lack a vocabulary that can release their feelings, so they must express themselves mainly through obscure gesture and berserk display. Carvers art masquerades as accident, scraps of information that might have been overheard at the supermarket check-out or local beer joint. His most memorable people live on the edge: of poverty, alcoholic self-destruction, loneliness. Something in their lives denies them a sense of community. They feel this lack intensely, yet are too wary of intimacy to touch other people, even with language. Read More