AGENDA:
GO TO LIBRARY FOR RAYMOND CARVER BOOK
HMWK: Next Wednesday---READ Carver TITLE STORY AND: "The Bath" and "Tell the Women We're Going"
Short Story: Popular Mechanics by Raymond Carver
E A R L Y that day the weather turned, and the snow was melting into dirty water. Streaks of it ran down from the little shoulder-high window that faced the backyard. Cars slushed by on the street outside, where it was getting dark. But it was getting dark on the inside too. He was in the bedroom pushing clothes into a suitcase when she came to the door. I’m glad you’re leaving! I’m glad you’re leaving! She said. Do you hear? He kept on putting his things into the suitcase.
Son of a bitch! I’m so glad you’re leaving! She began to cry. You can’t even look me in the face, can you? Then she noticed the baby’s picture on the bed and picked it up.
He looked at her, and she wiped her eyes and stared at him before turning and going back to the living room.
Bring that back, he said. Just get your things and get out, she said. He did not answer. He fastened the suitcase, put on his coat, looked around the bedroom before turning off the light. Then he went out to the living room. She stood in the doorway of the little kitchen, holding the baby.
I want the baby, he said. Are you crazy? No, but I want the baby. I’ll get someone to come by for his things. The baby had begun to cry, and she uncovered the blanket from around his head. Oh, oh, she said, looking at the baby.
He moved toward her. For God’s sake! she said. She took a step back into the kitchen. I want the baby.
Get out of here!She turned and tried to hold the baby over in a corner behind the stove. But he came up. He reached across the stove and tightened his hands on the baby. Let go of him, he said.
Get away, get away! she cried. The baby was red-faced and screaming. In the scuffle, they knocked down a flowerpot that hung behind the stove. He crowded her into the wall then, trying to break her grip. He held on to the baby and pushed with all his weight.
Get out of here!She turned and tried to hold the baby over in a corner behind the stove. But he came up. He reached across the stove and tightened his hands on the baby. Let go of him, he said.
Get away, get away! she cried. The baby was red-faced and screaming. In the scuffle, they knocked down a flowerpot that hung behind the stove. He crowded her into the wall then, trying to break her grip. He held on to the baby and pushed with all his weight.
Let go of him, he said. Don’t, she said. You’re hurting the baby, she said.
I’m not hurting the baby, he said. The kitchen window gave no light. In the near-dark he worked on her fisted fingers with one hand and with the other hand he gripped the screaming baby up under an arm near the shoulder. She felt her fingers being forced open. She felt the baby going from her.
I’m not hurting the baby, he said. The kitchen window gave no light. In the near-dark he worked on her fisted fingers with one hand and with the other hand he gripped the screaming baby up under an arm near the shoulder. She felt her fingers being forced open. She felt the baby going from her.
No! she screamed just as her hands came loose.
She would have it, this baby. She grabbed for the baby’s other arm. She caught the baby around the wrist and leaned back. But he would not let go. He felt the baby slipping out of his hands and he pulled back very hard.
She would have it, this baby. She grabbed for the baby’s other arm. She caught the baby around the wrist and leaned back. But he would not let go. He felt the baby slipping out of his hands and he pulled back very hard.
In this manner, the issue was decided.
Interview with Carver:
Raymond Carver was a short-story writer credited with revitalizing the form in the United States during the 1970s and '80s. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Carver spent most of his childhood in Yakima, Washington. He moved to California in 1958 and took up writing in the early 1960s. During the 1960s he worked as a textbook editor, lecturer and teacher while writing, and published several short stories and his first book, Winter Insomnia (1970). His 1976 collection Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? established his reputation and featured some of his trademarks: alcohol, poverty and ordinary people in ordinary but desperate situations. Carver, who also taught writing and wrote poetry, has been called a "minimalist" because of his spare and realistic fiction, and has been compared to Ernest Hemingway and Anton Chekhov. In the late 1970s Carver required hospitalization four times in under two years for acute alcoholism. By the mid-1980s, however, he was sober, writing full-time and married to the poet Tess Gallagher (it was his second marriage). He died at the age of fifty from lung cancer, and his last collection of stories, Where I'm Calling From, was published posthumously in 1989. His collections of poetry include Where Water Comes Together With Other Water (1985) and Ultramarine (1986).
Short Stories
AGENDA:
Classic Short stories online:
http://www.classicshorts.com/author.html\
http://www.classicreader.com/browse/6/p/title/
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/writers-as-architects/?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FCarver%2C%20Raymond&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=collection&_r=0
Raymond Carver:
The dirty-realism school of writing became popular in the 1980s thanks to a group of writers who began writing about middle-class characters who faced disappointments, heartbreaks, and harsh truths in their ordinary lives. Granta, a highly regarded literary journal, coined the term dirty realism in 1983 when it published its eighth issue, which featured writers from this school. Granta 8, as the issue became known, included stories by Angela Carter, Bobbie Ann Mason, Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver, and many others. Although each of these dirty-realism writers has a distinctive style, they are connected by their sparse prose, simple language with few adjectives or adverbs and direct descriptions of ordinary people and events. Much of the fiction published in the New Yorker, where many of these writers were and are still published, is of the dirty-realism school, but today the term—as well as the practice—has somewhat fallen out of fashion. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” was published in 1981, at the height of the dirty-realism movement, and the story is often regarded as the prime example of the form.
Critics have aligned Carver with minimalist writers because of his truncated prose and elliptical delineation of characters and events in the volume What We Talk about When We Talk about Love, in which Esquire magazine claimed that Carver had “reinvented the short story.” The stories of this collection, which reach extremes of stark understatement, have been called spare and knowing masterpieces by some reviewers and laconic, empty failures by others. Specifically, “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” has been described by some commentators as a story where nothing really happens, but others see it as a demonstration of the barely-furnished nature of Carver's distinctive style. Most critics laud the impact and power of the stories in the collection, including “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love.” Scholars have praised the realistic and evocative dialogue of the couples in the story as well as Carver's use of irony. Critically and popularly, Carver is acknowledged as a profound influence on contemporary writers and literature, and stories such as “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” are considered valuable, original contributions to the American short fiction genre.
Themes
The Elusive Nature of Love
The nature of love remains elusive throughout “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” despite the characters’ best efforts to define it. Mel tries again and again to pinpoint the meaning of love, but his examples never build up to any coherent conclusion. For example, he tells his friends about an elderly couple who nearly died in a car crash, but the conclusion of the story—the old man depressed by not being able to see his wife—merely confuses everyone. When he asserts that he’ll tell everyone exactly what love is, he instead digresses into a muddled meditation about how strange it is that he and the others have loved more than one person. His attempts to clarify the nature of love eventually devolve into a bitter tirade against his ex-wife. He seems much more certain about what love is not and tells Terri several times that if abusive love is true love, then she “can have it.”
Laura and Nick believe that they know what love is, but they never really provide a clear definition or explain why they’re so certain in their convictions. They merely demonstrate their love for each other by blushing and holding hands, but these actions simply support the mystery of love rather than unmask it. Terri, of all the friends, seems to be most certain about the meaning of love and repeatedly claims that her abusive ex-boyfriend, Ed, truly loved her, despite his crazy way of showing it. The examples she provides of this love—beating, stalking, and threatening—are disturbing but serve as proof in her mind. Like the others, however, she cannot translate her certainty into any kind of clear explanation of the nature of love.
The Inadequacy of Language
Although the four friends talk for a while about love, the fact that they never manage to define it suggests that language can’t adequately describe emotional, abstract subjects. Mel does the most talking, but his bloated stories and rambling digressions show that he has trouble conveying his thoughts and feelings, despite how much he talks. Terri speaks a great deal about her former lover Ed, but when Mel challenges her, she turns to intuition to prove her point. She believes that Ed loved her no matter what Mel or the others think, demonstrating that gut feelings about love can be more powerful and accurate than words. Laura and Nick, meanwhile, say very little about the nature of love and instead rely on physical gestures to clarify what language cannot: they hold hands, blush, and touch each other’s legs. Carver indicates that words simply aren’t enough when talking about love, which is probably why all four friends have fallen silent by the end of the story.
Motifs
Drinking
Nick, Mel, Terri, and Laura consume copious amounts of alcohol during their discussion about the nature of love, and their increasing intoxication mirrors their growing confusion about love and inability to define it. The friends have gathered to talk and drink gin, and the pouring, stirring, and sipping of drinks punctuates their conversation. As the friends get drunk, their conversation grows blurry and incoherent and finally stops completely. Drinking also serves as a kind of ritual in the story as the friends pass the bottle of gin around the table and make toasts to love. At the end of the story, as the friends discuss going out to dinner, Mel says they must finish the gin first, as though only finishing the bottle can free them from the discussion.
Symbols
The Sun
The sun in the story, which is bright at the beginning and gone by the end, represents the loss of clarity and happiness as the friends grow increasingly confused about the meaning of love. At the beginning of the story, Nick notes that the kitchen is bright and compares the friends to giddy children who have “agreed on something forbidden.” The talk is light and hopeful, just a friendly conversation on a gin-soaked afternoon. However, as the conversation about love becomes increasingly dark and complex, the sun in the kitchen slips slowly away. Nick notes that the sun is “changing, getting thinner,” and, not long after, that the sun is “draining out of the room.” As the sun disappears completely, the conversation devolves into Mel’s drunken threats against his ex-wife, including a fantasy of murdering her. At the end of the story, the friends are sitting in complete darkness. The sun has gone, as have their rosy, hopeful perceptions of love.
Classic Short stories online:
http://www.classicshorts.com/author.html\
http://www.classicreader.com/browse/6/p/title/
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/writers-as-architects/?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FCarver%2C%20Raymond&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=collection&_r=0
Raymond Carver:
The dirty-realism school of writing became popular in the 1980s thanks to a group of writers who began writing about middle-class characters who faced disappointments, heartbreaks, and harsh truths in their ordinary lives. Granta, a highly regarded literary journal, coined the term dirty realism in 1983 when it published its eighth issue, which featured writers from this school. Granta 8, as the issue became known, included stories by Angela Carter, Bobbie Ann Mason, Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver, and many others. Although each of these dirty-realism writers has a distinctive style, they are connected by their sparse prose, simple language with few adjectives or adverbs and direct descriptions of ordinary people and events. Much of the fiction published in the New Yorker, where many of these writers were and are still published, is of the dirty-realism school, but today the term—as well as the practice—has somewhat fallen out of fashion. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” was published in 1981, at the height of the dirty-realism movement, and the story is often regarded as the prime example of the form.
Critics have aligned Carver with minimalist writers because of his truncated prose and elliptical delineation of characters and events in the volume What We Talk about When We Talk about Love, in which Esquire magazine claimed that Carver had “reinvented the short story.” The stories of this collection, which reach extremes of stark understatement, have been called spare and knowing masterpieces by some reviewers and laconic, empty failures by others. Specifically, “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” has been described by some commentators as a story where nothing really happens, but others see it as a demonstration of the barely-furnished nature of Carver's distinctive style. Most critics laud the impact and power of the stories in the collection, including “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love.” Scholars have praised the realistic and evocative dialogue of the couples in the story as well as Carver's use of irony. Critically and popularly, Carver is acknowledged as a profound influence on contemporary writers and literature, and stories such as “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” are considered valuable, original contributions to the American short fiction genre.
Themes
The Elusive Nature of Love
The nature of love remains elusive throughout “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” despite the characters’ best efforts to define it. Mel tries again and again to pinpoint the meaning of love, but his examples never build up to any coherent conclusion. For example, he tells his friends about an elderly couple who nearly died in a car crash, but the conclusion of the story—the old man depressed by not being able to see his wife—merely confuses everyone. When he asserts that he’ll tell everyone exactly what love is, he instead digresses into a muddled meditation about how strange it is that he and the others have loved more than one person. His attempts to clarify the nature of love eventually devolve into a bitter tirade against his ex-wife. He seems much more certain about what love is not and tells Terri several times that if abusive love is true love, then she “can have it.”
Laura and Nick believe that they know what love is, but they never really provide a clear definition or explain why they’re so certain in their convictions. They merely demonstrate their love for each other by blushing and holding hands, but these actions simply support the mystery of love rather than unmask it. Terri, of all the friends, seems to be most certain about the meaning of love and repeatedly claims that her abusive ex-boyfriend, Ed, truly loved her, despite his crazy way of showing it. The examples she provides of this love—beating, stalking, and threatening—are disturbing but serve as proof in her mind. Like the others, however, she cannot translate her certainty into any kind of clear explanation of the nature of love.
The Inadequacy of Language
Although the four friends talk for a while about love, the fact that they never manage to define it suggests that language can’t adequately describe emotional, abstract subjects. Mel does the most talking, but his bloated stories and rambling digressions show that he has trouble conveying his thoughts and feelings, despite how much he talks. Terri speaks a great deal about her former lover Ed, but when Mel challenges her, she turns to intuition to prove her point. She believes that Ed loved her no matter what Mel or the others think, demonstrating that gut feelings about love can be more powerful and accurate than words. Laura and Nick, meanwhile, say very little about the nature of love and instead rely on physical gestures to clarify what language cannot: they hold hands, blush, and touch each other’s legs. Carver indicates that words simply aren’t enough when talking about love, which is probably why all four friends have fallen silent by the end of the story.
Motifs
Drinking
Nick, Mel, Terri, and Laura consume copious amounts of alcohol during their discussion about the nature of love, and their increasing intoxication mirrors their growing confusion about love and inability to define it. The friends have gathered to talk and drink gin, and the pouring, stirring, and sipping of drinks punctuates their conversation. As the friends get drunk, their conversation grows blurry and incoherent and finally stops completely. Drinking also serves as a kind of ritual in the story as the friends pass the bottle of gin around the table and make toasts to love. At the end of the story, as the friends discuss going out to dinner, Mel says they must finish the gin first, as though only finishing the bottle can free them from the discussion.
Symbols
The Sun
The sun in the story, which is bright at the beginning and gone by the end, represents the loss of clarity and happiness as the friends grow increasingly confused about the meaning of love. At the beginning of the story, Nick notes that the kitchen is bright and compares the friends to giddy children who have “agreed on something forbidden.” The talk is light and hopeful, just a friendly conversation on a gin-soaked afternoon. However, as the conversation about love becomes increasingly dark and complex, the sun in the kitchen slips slowly away. Nick notes that the sun is “changing, getting thinner,” and, not long after, that the sun is “draining out of the room.” As the sun disappears completely, the conversation devolves into Mel’s drunken threats against his ex-wife, including a fantasy of murdering her. At the end of the story, the friends are sitting in complete darkness. The sun has gone, as have their rosy, hopeful perceptions of love.
No comments:
Post a Comment