Some commentators found his work depressing for these reasons.įor many young writers, it was terribly liberating. The good vin du pays was replaced by cheap gin, the romance of drinking by the dull grind of full-time alcoholism.

The trout inĬarver's streams were apt to be pollution-deformed mutants. The cafes and pensions and battlefields of Europe were replaced by trailer parks and apartment complexes, the glamorous occupations by dead-end jobs. Idiom such an awkward model for other writers in the late 20th century. But Carver completely dispensed with the romantic egoism that made the Hemingway Unmistakably like Hemingway's - the simplicity and clarity, the repetitions, the nearly conversational rhythms, the precision of physical description. Respect for the language - humility bordering on dread - in every sentence of his work.Įncountering Carver's fiction early in the 1970's was a transforming experience for many writers of my generation, an experience perhaps comparable to discovering Hemingway's sentences in the 20's.

House he shared with Tess Gallagher in Syracuse, you sensed a writer who loved the words of the masters who had handed the language down to him, and who was concerned that he might not be worthy to pick up the instrument. Listening to him talking about writing in the classroom or in the living room of the big Victorian As if it might be almost impossible to say what you wanted to say. Hardly begins to do justice to his speech this condition was aggravated whenever he was pressed into the regions of generality or prescription.Īs I say, he mumbled, and if it once seemed merely a physical tic, akin to cracking knuckles or the drumming of a foot, I now think it was a function of a deep humility and a respect for the language bordering on awe, a reflection of his sense that words A few days later the interviewer called up, near despair: Ray's voice on the tapes was nearly inaudible. Moved the tape recorder closer and closer and finally asked if Carver would put it in his lap. I once sat in and listened while Carver was interviewed for two and a half hours. Waist, saying, ''Beg pardon, Ray?'' Never insisting, rarely asserting, he was an unlikely teacher. Smoke could be filling the room, flames streaking across the carpet, before Carver would ask, ''Is it, uh, getting a little hot in here, maybe?'' And you would be sitting in your chair, bent achingly forward at the Eliot once described Ezra Pound, qua mentor, as ''a man trying to convey to a very deaf person the fact that the house is on fire.'' Raymond Carver had precisely the opposite manner. Year after his death, the recurring image I associate with Raymond Carver is one of people leaning toward him, working very hard at the act of Raymond Carver: A Still, Small Voice By JAY McINERNEY

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