Raymond Carver: The Poetry Foundation - Book Report/Review Example

? A Thematic Analysis and Discussion of the Work of Raymond Carver Raymond Carver an esteemed inEnglish literature is considered to be the most influential and prominent American writer of poems as well as short stories of this era. His work comprises to two completely distinct eras of his life. "Raymond Carver excelled at portraying the hardscrabble existence of blue-collar workers frustrated and disillusioned by the false promises of the American dream." (Meyer, 26) The earlier part of his life was spent writing on people whose life is in a frustrated and oppressed state, which is precisely the narration of his own experiences which he encountered because of poverty, consumption of alcohol and disturbed marital state. With the passage of time the way he wrote changed and hence his later work is a representation of what he considered to be his "second life" which is said to have begun when he had the last sip of alcohol (drink). It is observed that after this his level of productivity rose high and was apparently given a chance to bring his life back on track. It needs to be noted here that Carver during his lifetime faced many obstacles which reflected in his literary works and the stages he underwent during his life. Thus, "Raymond Carver was one of a handful of contemporary short story writers credited with reviving what was once thought of as a dying literary form." (The Poetry Foundation) Raymond Carver had a very disturbed childhood; his father had taken up on alcohol and had grown up in an environment where the struggle of his mother and nominal salary of his father was a source of income for their family which eventually was not enough for a sustainable living. During his childhood he constantly shifted from one place to another he developed a passion for reading various Field and Stream and Mickey Spillane publications. A major turn over came in his life when he married a pregnant seventeen year old lady at the age of eighteen and eventually was a father of two children at the age of twenty. In order to earn a living for his family and support his education he had to opt for various lower grade jobs. Later he was awarded a scholarship to pursue his literary passion during which he wrote his first poem and short story namely "Pastoral". In the year 1964 his work "Brass Ring" and "The Furious Season" was published in "The Best American Short Stories". During this tenure Carver was charged for bankruptcy and therefore had to move to another place where his other work was included in in "The Best American Short Stories" in 1967. After facing immense obstacles in life such as early marriage, father's death, bankruptcy, financial disturbance etc. Carver chose to start drinking in order to drown his sorrows. According to him, “We were in a state of penury, we had a bankruptcy behind us, and years of hard work with nothing to show for it except an old car, a rented house, and new creditors on our backs. It was depressing and I felt spiritually obliterated. Alcohol became a problem" (Gentry and Stull, 37) Carver's stage of bankruptcy again aroused merely because of his alcohol consumption. During 1968 Carver published his first poetry book namely Near Klamath. Carver was in a full bloom of his career when he was appointed at various universities and his literary works was being published in the 1970's. During this period his alcohol addiction forced him to resign from his respectable jobs and eventually had to face a serious setback. Later in the year 1976 he was successful in publishing his first book constituting of short stories which comprised of works such as 'Yourself in My Shoes' and 'Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?' This book was nominated for the National Book Award, which helped him prove his image as a prominent English writer who had a distinct voice and a unique style. He has the honor of introducing one of his main themes related to the problem of love and losses. The problem again aroused when Carver was hospitalized on many occasions because of his drinking habit that became so injurious that it almost killed him and became the sole reason for his separation. All this influenced his early writings and a major theme of his works. Hence in order to sum his first part of his early life work it won't be wrong to say that his work is the representation of the troubled people who were suffering because of lack of work, love and intimacy. Here was the time when his second life started. In the year 1977 Carver made up his mind to quit on his drinking addiction. This was life a state of rebirth for him when he made his decision and started his new life with Tess Gallagher, this game changing point in his life is often referred to as this being his second life. (Henry, 416) After this he published his collection of short stories namely What We Talk about When We Talk about Love, was published in the year 1981. Cathedral his famous book on short stories shows a change in the way Carvel initially wrote, there was a stylistic change that was very prominent."Very 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" (Fallon, 99). Carver achieved immense fame in his life and the reason behind his fame was his devotion and extreme polished writing skills. His work comprises of five books that were based on his short stories, moreover two chapbooks and three volumes that constituted of poetry. He also worked with his second wife Gallagher, which was a collaborated venture on a screenplay namely Dostoevsky. He was honored with a nomination for a Pulitzer Prize when it came to Cathedral; it was successful in attaining the Levinson Prize which was awarded by the Poetry Magazine. He was even selected for its initial Mildred and Harold Strauss Livings by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.Sadly this amazing writer departed from us in the year 1988 when he lost the war of his life against lung cancer."Raymond Carver's death at fifty in 1988 cut short the career of the most influential American short story writer since Ernest Hemingway." (Updike, John and Oates, Prose as Architecture: Two Interviews with Raymond Carver) During his life Carver has experienced mixed reactions. He has been appreciated as well as criticized for his works which are the depiction of the affairs of an individual from the working class which resemble to his real life experiences. We observe a change in his writing style and the themes used by him from alcoholism, hopelessness to soberness and optimism. The work of Carver has been considered as a representation of “humanist realism” (Brown 125), the masterpieces of a minimalist (Nesset 29). It won't be wrong to say that his work is a representation of “Post-Alcoholic Blue-Collar Minimalist Hyperrealism” (Runyon). Hi9s work has been constantly victimized for experienced constant changes in his way of writing therefore there hasn't been consistency with that therefore there isn’t any one style to which we can relate him but one thing that persists throughout in his work is postmodernism. Hence, "Raymond Carver, whose work excited something of a stir when contemporary critics began to assure each other that Carver had been a true postmodernist all along." (Zavarzadeh, Journal of the Short Story in English).His work is as deep as an ocean and even his fiction based books contain a lot of deepness in them. His early work comprises of simple characters that are given immense intensity and depth when it comes to the words they speak. His earlier work shows oppression, losses. Hopelessness and frustration whereas with the change in his life his work from Cathedral shows optimism, faith, belief and the power of will. It has been observed that the things which are obvious are never shown in Carvers work. According to him, “it’s the things that are left out, that are implied, the landscape just under the smooth, but sometimes broken and unsettled, surface of things” (Halpert, 25). Irrespective of his debatable and contradictory style and sense of beauty, Carver still has been able to captivate the true essence of the silent desires that are prevailing in the poor working class. In a nutshell Raymond Carver was one of those writers who made their life experience a theme of their work. The most enchanting thing about Raymond is that he has covered various themes and shows a change in his life pattern. Thus Raymond Carver is "Voice of the oppressed." (Bloom,62) WORKS CITED: Carver, Raymond, Marshall B. Gentry, and William L. Stull. Conversations with Raymond Carver. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990. Print. Fallon, Erin. A Reader's Companion to the Short Story in English. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2001. Internet resource. Brown, Arthur A. "Raymond Carver and Postmodern Humanism." Critique: Studies in contemporary Fiction. 31.2 (1990): 125-136. Print. Nesset, Kirk. The Stories of Raymond Carver: A Critical Study. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1995. Print. Runyon, Randolph. Reading Raymond Carver. Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1992. Print. Halpert, Sam. Raymond Carver: An Oral Biography. Iowa City, Iowa: Univ. of Iowa Press, 1995. Print. "Raymond Carver : The Poetry Foundation." Poetry Foundation.N.p., n.d. Web. 12 May 2013.  Zavarzadeh, invoking, an advocate of the experimental “recorded transcript” fictions of Andy Warhol, and of Tom Wolfe’s psychedelic cadences in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. "Symbolic Significance in the Stories of Raymond Carver." Journal of the Short Story in English - Les Cahiers de la nouvelle.N.p., n.d. Web. 12 May 2013.  Updike, John, and Joyce Carol Oates. The Englishman Ian McEwan. There's. "Prose as Architecture: Two Interviews with Raymond Carver." Illinois Wesleyan University -- Bloomington, IL. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 May 2013.  Bloom, Harold. Raymond Carver: Comprehensive Research and Study Guide. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House, 2002. Print. Henry, Patrick. "Raymond Carver and Tess Gallagher." Philosophy and Literature. (1998): 413-477. Print. Meyer, Adam. Raymond Carver. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994. Print. Read More