Biographical and Literary Analysis of Raymond Carver - Essay Example

11 December 2008 According to his biography (Liukkonen), Raymond Carver was born in 1938 in Oregon. His father, a sawmill worker, was an alcoholic, and although his father shaped him by the stories he told, Carver found it difficult to deal with his father's alcoholism. He attended school in Yakima, California, and married his 16-year old high school sweetheart, MaryAnn, who was pregnant with their daughter. The couple had one more child, a boy. Both of his children went on to become college graduates. Carver worked as a janitor, laborer at a sawmill and as a salesman, following in his father's blue-color footsteps. During the first years of married life, his wife usually earned more than her husband as a waitress, salesperson, administrative assistant, and teacher. When the family moved to California, Carver became interested in writing and took a course from John Gardner, which had a profound effect on him. He continued his studies at Chico State University, Humboldt State College, and the University of Iowa. He earned a BA in 1963. He became a textbook editor at Science Research Associates, Palo Alto, but was fired in 1970. He went on to teach at universities throughout the United States and from 1980-1983 was a professor of English at Syracuse University. While Carver was at Humboldt, he wrote his first story, "Pastoral," as well as his first poem, "The Brass Ring." Although his biography states he started his writing career as a poet, he confessed he was never a "born" poet (Liukkonen) and although he eventually had his poetry published, it never received the acclaim of his short stories. His story "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please" was written in 1967 and with the editing expertise of Gordon Lish, he published a collection of stories of the same name set in Eureka, California in 1976 (Boddy). During the ensuing years, alcohol was a problem for him and drinking became a full-time pursuit. In fact, alcohol became a subject in several of his stories. On June 2, 1977, Carver stopped drinking and became active in Alcoholics Anonymous. He begin seeing poet Tess Gallagher and divorced his wife MaryAnn in 1982. He lived with Gallagher and married her two months before he died from lung cancer in 1988 (Liukkonen). Carver has said that everything we write is, in some way, autobiographical. In a New York Times article he said he considered the short story a vehicle for transforming the commonplace and said, "it is possible to write a line of seemingly innocuous dialogue and have it send a chill along the reader's spine" (Carver par. 9). His writing style is muted and anticlimactic but creates a tense atmosphere. His life is basically divided into two sections, one before he gave up drinking and met Tess and one after. "Cathedral," a short story contained in a collection by the same name, gives him the chance to write in retrospect, utilizing his life experiences in the first section of his life as part of his writing within the second part of his life. His father's alcoholism possibly led to Carver's addiction to alcohol since an addictive personality can be and often is passed down. "Cathedral" was published in 1983, after Carver had joined AA, but the characters in the story spend a great deal of time in intervals of drinking and smoking marijuana. There are three characters in the story-the narrator, his wife, and a blind man. The narrator, who would appear to be based on Carver himself, distances himself from the story by being an observer rather than a participant-at least at first. As the story progresses, he unobtrusively fixes himself drinks, and although it is never evident or brought out, the excess drinking throughout the story labels him as an alcoholic, albeit a recovering alcoholic.. He refers to his wife's friend as "this blind man," and it is clear he is dismissing any personal interest in the man's forthcoming visit. "I wasn't enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew" (Carver "Cathedral" 1). Even so, he offers the reader background on the relationship between the blind man and the narrator's wife, who, at the time she met the blind man was involved with another man, not the narrator. The narrator becomes even less involved at this point and speaks as if he is talking about two strangers who have no relationship to him at all. Carver also talks about the wife's poetry when she shows the narrator a poem about her relationship with the blind man, and the narrator says he "didn't think much of the poem" (1). In fact, any time Carver mentions poetry in this story, it is dismissed as not very good. Since Carver began as a poet and did not have success in the field, the comments about poetry could apply to him and reviews of his poetry over the years. By now, the narrator feels bombarded by his wife's relationship to the blind man and her description of how it felt when the blind man touched her face, the tapes they exchanged, the poetry she wrote, her experiences while married to someone else who is unamed--"Why should he have a name" (2), as well as her suicide attempt, and the last thing he looks forward to is the blind man's presence in his house. When his wife mentions that the blind man's wife has died and her name is Beulah, the narrator reacts to the name and says, "Was his wife a Negro" (2) and his wife accuses him of being drunk. As the narrator's wife tells him about Beulah and how she died from cancer after "they had been inseparable for eight years," (2-3) he begins to commiserate with the blind man and his wife. Carver may have known he had lung cancer at the time he wrote this story and passing the illness on to someone he didn't know was perhaps his way of making it impersonal. According to journalist Robert McFarlane, "he once described himself as a cigarette with a body attached to it" (par. 11). The narrator reflects as he waits for his wife to pick up the blind man at the train station and return on the fact that his wife has just given him more detail than he wanted. He, as usual in this story, has a drink and while he is watching TV hears the car pull into the driveway. At this point in the story, the blind man arrives, and the narrator, who has just been thinking about the man's wife and how he could never know what she looked like and know he would never tell her how good she looked or how a new outfit suited her, is faced with the man's actual physical presence. This is Carver's way of suddenly making the mundane exciting. Michael Wood has described Carver's work as creating edges and silences, an interesting interpretation. The first thing the narrator notices as he sips his drink and looks out the window is that his wife is laughing, then that the man has a full beard. He takes his empty glass into the kitchen, rinses it, and dries his hands before going to the door. This is where the crack in the armor appears, the time in the story when he starts to reflect on the fact that the man is blind and how he, the narrator, feels about that. His wife has labeled the man Robert and the narrator can no longer distance himself completely. His effort to make small talk with the man deals with the "scenic ride" on the train and whether the man sat on the right side or left side of the Hudson, which might make a difference to the narrator who can see, but certainly not to the blind man. His wife repeats the man's name several times in her conversation as if to imprint it on her husband's brain. The narrator has not so far allowed himself to make a connection with the man, but suddenly, he focuses on him as to age, physical appearance, clothes, posture, and lack of a cane or dark glasses. Looking at the man's eyes, he notices that one eye roams while the other is fixed. Though still an observer, he is becoming more personal in his observations. At this point, the narrator includes the blind man, Robert, in his drinking circle and he, Robert and his wife begin having Scotch with a dash of water. It becomes evident that Robert is the only person Carver has named. The narrator and his wife are not named. This deliberate oversight is noted when he is listening to one of his wife's tapes and says, "I heard my own name in the mouth of this stranger" (2). The unexpected occurs when the blind man, Robert, gives the narrator a name, such as it is--"Bub" (4). Is his name actually Bub It is doubtful because the narrator responds in a negative way. The person who never does have a personal identity is the narrator's wife. As the three have dinner and two or three more drinks, Robert is the focus of the conversation and Carver makes sure the reader is aware that the man talks in a loud voice, mentioning it several times. Finally, however, the blind man asks the narrator some personal questions and when he thinks the blind man is almost finished, he turns on the TV, which his wife does not appreciate. Ultimately, his wife leaves the scene, returns for a short time, and leaves again. Carter divorced his wife at the time he was working on this story collection, and this could be his way of dismissing her. At this point in the story (halfway through), the two men begin to bond with the help of marijuana. Whether it was deliberate on Carver's part or not, the blind man states, "Me and her monopolized the evening." This obvious error in English is unexpected and interrupts the flow of story. It happens one other time, and is probably intentional but not necessary. Carver's editor, Norman Lish, was no longer editing Carver's work, and the whole story would have benefited from his editorial expertise. Even so, Carver managed to create a story that divided his life into two parts. He had talked about his "two lives," one part marked by alcohol, financial struggle, and marital turmoil, and the other alcohol-free, with a new relationship and literary success (Boddy). In "Cathedral," the narrator gradually begins to relate to the blind man when a program appears on TV about cathedrals and the narrator tries to explain to a blind man what a cathedral looks like. As Michael Wood in a review of Carver states, "Mr. Carver's characters are imaginative in the extreme, almost obsessively concerned with the minds of other people and their own fright" (par. 6). Throughout this story, the narrator is concerned that he is saying or doing the wrong thing, but when Robert, who has been self-assured throughout, tells him to put his hand over his and start drawing the cathedral, which he has been unable to describe clearly, the narrator has an epiphany, a vision of the cathedral, and ultimately relates to the blind man as if the two were one. In fact, the narrator keeps his eyes closed and still sees the cathedral. End of story. Works Cited Boddy, K. 8 February 2008. "Why Raymond Carver's Legacy Keeps On Growing." Last updated 8 August 2008. 10 December 2008. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3557635/Why-Raymond-Carver%27s-legacy-keeps-on-growing.html Carver, Raymond. 15 February 1981. "A Storyteller's Shoptalk." New York Times Company. 10 December 2008. http://www.times.com/books/01/01/21/specials/carver-shoptalk.html Carver, Raymond. Cathedral. "Cathedral" (short story). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983, pp. 1-12. Howe, I. 1983, September 11. "Cathedral: Stories of Our Loneliness." New York Times Company. 9 December 2008. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.htmlres=9803E2D91338F932A2575AC0A965948260 Liukkonen, P. 2008. "Raymond Carver (1938-1988)." Books and Writers. 9 December 2008. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rcarver.htm McFarlane, R. 9 April 2005. "Back to the Source." The Guardian. 10 December 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/apr/09/scienceandnature.raymondcarver Schneider, D. 2003. "Cathedral by Raymond Carver" (Review). 10 December 2008. http://www.laurahird.com/newreview/cathedral.html Wood, Michael. 26 April 1981. "Stories Full of Edges and Silences. New York Times Company .10 December 2008. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.htmlres=9F07E4DD1738F935A15757C0A967948260 Read More