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Hiromi Hashimoto, a student from Japan, wrote this thesis on the common (and irritating) misconception that Raymond Carver was/is a "minimalist." Ms. Hashimoto's thesis was first published in Japan, in the Tokai English Review, No. 5 (December 1995), pp. 113-147. ISSN 0914-532X. She has graciously granted permission to re-publish it here.
"I don't like the term ‘minimalism,’" Raymond Carver repeated whenever interviewed.1 In fact, Raymond Carver was not a minimalist. Throughout his life, he changed his style drastically, so that it is impossible to define him as an minimalist. Why was he recognized as "a godfather of a burgeoning school of" minimalists? 2 I believe the answer lies in the little-noted original version of "The Bath." Revision is Carver’s hallmark and he had many different versions for each of his stories. He wrote "The Bath" three times. Therefore, in this paper, I would like to introduce the "lost" original of "The Bath," published in Columbia , which I studied through the kindness of Professor William L. Stull who had pointed out its existence and importance. I would like to thank him for providing me with valuable materials. By comparing the original, the minimalist version, and "A Small, Good Thing," this paper intends to prove that Carver’s so-called minimalism was temporary and tries to understand the essential features of Carver’s writing.
1. THE LITTLE-NOTED ORIGINAL VERSIONS
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981) (What we . . . ) is generally called Carver’s most minimalistic collection. Carver stripped down and minimalized the original stories for this collection and, in the next collection, he revised and stayed "fairly close to the versions as they first appeared." (Fires: 219) The following are the most typical examples.
"Everything Stuck to Him"
(as "Distance" ) Chariton Review 1. No.2 (Fall 1975),
"Mr. Coffee and Mr. Fixit"
(as "Where Is Everyone?" ) TriQuarterly, No.48 (Spring 1980),
"So Much Water So Close to Home"
Spectrum,17, No.l (Fall 1975),
"The Bath"
Columbia, No.6 (Spring/Summer 1981)
"Distance", "Where Is Everyone?" and "So Much Water So Close to Home" were rewritten for Fires (1983), and "The Bath" was revised and developed under the title of "A Small, Good Thing" for Cathedral (1983). Each of the What We . . . versions depicts menace lurking in daily life unfeelingly and ominously, in the minimalistic and stripped-down style. On the other hand, all of the revised versions are more narrative, longer, and more emotional. Especially, in "A Small, Good thing," the plot was added to "The Bath." The characters recover trust in communication and get some kind of psychological redemption.
It must be noted that although revision from What We . . . to Fires or Cathedral has been the subject of controversy by critics and book reviewers, little is known about revision from the original stories to What We . . . . This is partly because the original stories first appeared in minor literary magazines. (Though "So Much Water . . ." and "Distance" were later republished in Furious Seasons and Other Stories (1977), it is now out-of-print and hard to find.) There is also another reason. Since What We . . . was published by the major publishing company Knopf, and then was successful commercially as a Vintage Contemporary, Carver drew considerable attention. This sudden success led many readers to the wrong impression that Raymond Carver was a minimalist as if he started from the minimalism which is represented by "The Bath" and other stories in What We . . . .
Moreover, this caused another misunderstanding of his stylistic change. Most critics consider his change as dualistic, from minimalism to narrative, paying attention to his change only in Fires and Cathedral. However, as Adam Yeyer acutely pointed out, when we talk about Carver’s change, we should date back to his original stories. 3 Yeyer takes up mainly revisions "both before and since" What We . . . of only "So Much Water . . ." and "Where Is Everyone?" and compares Carver’s change to the shape of an "hourglass." That is, Carver’s starting point was not the minimalistic slim point, but "beginning wide, then narrowing, and then widening out again." Meyer says, "By looking at a story that has been published in three different versions, we get a fuller picture of the whole of Carver’s evolution, his movement at first toward and then away from minimalism. (147)" This is a very important observation overlooked by many critics. However, even Meyer ignores the original version of "The Bath." Compared to the above three stories, revision from "The Bath" to "A Small, Cood Thing" is important in the sense that it develops the plot and changes drastically, and that both versions are respectively consummate (each received a prize in the year it was published).
The editor William Abrahams, who chose "A Small, Good Thing" for The O.Henry Award in 1983 felt "the story marks a new direction in Carver’s career," and says, "The original ["The Bath"] can’t compare to this. The original seemed like the bare bones of a story he could have done. In this new version which must be at least twice the length, he’s able to develop the people as people. All this has a terrific intensity." 4 Though Abrahams believes that "The Bath" is the original and "A Small, Good Thing" is developed from it, William Kittredge corrects his misunderstanding and says, "the fact is it was just the opposite. He had written the story, but his editor Gordon Lish had cut it down to the short version." 5
Kathleen Westfall Shute analyzed the differences between "The Bath" and "A Small, Good Thing" very clearly in her paper. 6 Unfortunately, even she misunderstands that it was the minimal version of "The Bath" in What We . . . that was given The Carlos Fuentes Award of 1981. But the truth is explained by William Stull in DLB Yearbook 1984 as follows, "’The Bath,’ under that title in Columbia (Spring/Summer 1981) it won the Carlos Fuentes Fiction Award. (243) It is not the minimal version of "The Bath," but the original version in Columbia that was given the award." 7 As Haruki Yurakami says, "the original version is longer than the minimal version in What We . . . and closer to "A Small, Good Thing" in its contents." Therefore, through comparing the true original version with the other two versions, we can come closer to understanding Raymond Carver’s change of style.
II. THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE MINIMAL VERSION OF "THE BATH" AND "A SMALL GOOD THING"
All further references to the three versions appear as Original Version of "The Bath"=OB, Minimal Version of "The Bath"=MB, "A Small Good Thing"=SGT.
The basic plot of each version is the same. A mother goes to a baker to order a birthday cake for her son Scotty. Two days later, the morning of his birthday, Scotty is struck by a hit-and-run driver. The parents devotedly take care of their comatose son in the hospital and forget about the birthday cake completely. When the father, and then in turn the mother goes back home to take a bath, someone gives an ominous telephone call, and just says, "It's about Scotty." Both OB and MB end here. Then what are the differences between them? Why is OB 1.5 times as long as MB? Before turning to a closer examination of that, we must get the differences between MB and SGT firmly established.
SGT goes beyond MB in time. The comatose boy dies. When the exhausted parents receive the harassing call again, they come to realize that the baker has been making the call. In rage, the parents drive to the baker's at midnight and confront him. Once he listens to their explanation of the situation, he feels deep remorse for losing humanity through his long solitary life. He apologizes for having bothered them, offers them some fresh rolls, telling them that "Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this." The story ends with some hunch of reconciliation and forgiveness: "They talked on into the early morning, the high, pale cast of light in the windows, . . ."
Numerous comparisons have been made by critics and many differences are pointed out. 9 Because the endings of MB and SGT are obviously different, we can assert that MB, like the whole collection What We . . . , emphasizes hopelessness (inability to help their own son in serious condition) and menace lurking in daily life (an unexpected car accident and harassing calls). On the other hand, SGT depicts the state where such menace is mitigated by communication and sympathy, and despair of death is given some kind of redemption, healing and a note of rebirth. Stull calls this change "existential realism" to "humanist realism." 10
In MB existential questions remain unsolved. Despite the mother’s repeated questions, the doctor cannot answer whether the boy's condition is a coma or not. Also, the parents do not know who makes the harassing calls. The fact that no character is given a proper noun except the mother Ann and the boy Scotty implies such uncertainty or lack of existence.
On the other hand, in SGT the pending questions in MB are all solved and at the same time the characters (the father, the mother, the doctors, the dog, the neighbors) each have a name and personality. Not perfectly but gradually, awkwardly and sheepishly, people try to recover humane communication.
Stull says "As the titles of the two versions suggest, the story is concerned with the two most basic Christian sacraments, baptism and communion.(pp.11-12)" Whether such religious interpretation is necessary or not is an open question, 12 but l at least agree that through the last scene of SGT where the parents and the baker share the rolls, swallowing down their own pain and sorrow and putting on flesh, readers can feel not only the atmosphere of cannibalism, but the hope of regeneration and recovery of life force by sharing something to eat with others. On the contrary, through the very private act of taking a bath, we cannot communicate with each other, even if it has a healing power itself. Hideyo Sengoku writes that the act of "taking a bath" has "ominous blindness that could swallow down even stolidness and contingency of daily life." 13 Characters in MB remain alienated from each other after taking a bath.
From these observations the following five points become very clear as the changes from MB to SGT:
(1) From common nouns (the mother, the father etc.) to proper nouns.
(2) From stereotyped characters to ones with deep psychological description and identity.
(3) From alienated relationships without communion, empathy or communication to sympathy, interest and solidarity.
(4) From menace in daily life to healing and regeneration beyond it.
(5) From fragmental and similar nouns and noun phrases to narrative and longer sentences.
Based of these points, let us then consider OB.
III. COMPARING THE ORIGINAL VERSION OF "THE BATH" WITH THE TWO OTHER VERSIONS
< III-1 Common Nouns and Proper Nouns – Inability to Name and Inarticulateness >
In SGT, all the characters except the baker are given names. OB and MB give names only to the mother (Ann), the boy (Scotty) and the black family’s son (Nelson). Therefore, both OB and MB lack individuality in terms of names.
However, if we interpret the inability to name as the inability to call the thing correctly, or what Westfall Shute calls "inarticulateness," we can notice an interesting difference between OB and MB. Westfall Shute says that "inarticulateness" is something Carver’s early protagonists have in common and exemplifies the baker’s elliptical calls and the physicians’ inability to name the boy’s condition. 14 The doctor in MB cannot clearly state the medical condition to the mother who is worried about her unconscious son’s condition.
He [The doctor] said, "His signs are fine. Everything’s good."
The mother said, "But he's sleeping."
"Yes," the doctor said. [MB:54] 15 [emphasis added]Compared with MB’s doctor who can only say "yes" to the mother’s severe question, SGT’s doctor finally admits the word "coma."
". . . But all of his signs are fine. They’re as normal as can be."
"It is coma, then?" Ann said.
The doctor rubbed his smooth cheek. " We’ll call it that for
the time being, until he wakes up . . . [SGT:71] 16 [emphasis added]And this word "coma" was already admitted clearly in the original version.
. . . the doctor said. "All his signs are fine. They’re as normal as can be."
"Is it a coma then?" the mother asked.
The doctor rubbed his cheek. " We’ll call it that for the time being. Until he wakes up . . ."
[OB:39] 17 [emphasis added]SGT and OB are very similar. In MB, minimalistic economy with words heads for inarticulateness. On the other hand, the above quotations show that SGT’s effect to choose more precise words can be seen in the original version.
< III - 2 Identity and Psychological Descriptions >
Getting the proper noun means getting identity. In SGT, the characters, getting identity, gain also profound personality, and the ability to think and act vividly. For example, the baker who in "The Bath" seems to be an ominous ghost without a face gets his identity and begins to tell his lonely life history eloquently at the end of "A Small, Good Thing." As for the father who looks after his son in the hospital, SGT gives Howard’s psychological descriptions in detail in the scene where he is on the way home to take a bath.
Until now, his life had gone smoothly and to his satisfaction -- college, marriage, another year of college for the advanced degree in business, a iunior partnership in an investment firm. Fatherhood. He was happy and, so far, lucky -- he knew that. His parents were still living, his brothers and sister were established, his friends from college had gone out to take their places in the world. So far, he had kept away from any real harm, from those forces he knew existed and that could cripple or bring down a man if the luck went bad, if things suddenly turned. [SGT:62]
SGT’s father not only looks back on his life but also considers his relatives and friends and acknowledges some omen of vis major which might plunge him into difficulties. Then, how different are OB and MB’s fathers, compared with SGT’s?
It had been a good family till now. There had been work, fatherhood, family. The man had been lucky
and happy so far. This husband had so far kept away from any real harm. [OB:34]It had been a good life till now. There had been work, fatherhood, family. The man had been lucky
and happy. But fear made him want a bath. [OB:49] (emphasis added)Though it is a little difference, while OB’s father values "a good family," MB’s father tries to cling to "a good life." In other words, OB’s father seems family-first; MB’s father self-first. Neither of them ponders over his own life. MB’s father, as the very short, abrupt but impressive sentence, "fear made him want a bath" implies, tries to wash out his vague fear about the situation by taking a bath. Lacking this sentence, in OB, the sense of absurdity in the parents wanting a bath when their son is on the verge of death is weakened. OB is not so profound as SGT, nor so sharp as MB.
In OB, the mother is described psychologically in the scenes near the beginning where the mother orders a birthday cake for her son. In MB, as soon as the mother decides the order, the baker just says "ready Monday morning."
The cake would be ready konday morning, in plenty of time for the party Monday afternoon. This was
all the baker was willing to say. No pleasantries, just this small exchange, the barest information,
nothing that was not necessary. [MB:48]In SGT there is a long passage where the mother observes the baker and imagines his private life.
While he was bent over the counter with the pencil in his hand, she studied his coarse features and wondered if he’d ever done anything else with his life besides be a baker. She was a mother and thirty-three years old, and it seemed to her that everyone, especially someone the baker’s age – a man old enough to be her father – must have children who’d gone through this special time of cakes and birthday parties. There must be that between them, she thought.[SGT:60] (emphasis added)
MB omits the passage, but OB has a similar one.
While the baker was bent over the counter with the pencil in his hand, the woman studied the
man’s coarse features and wondered if he’d ever been anything but a baker. Had he been a
father, perhaps? Did he know about birthday cakes and parties only insofar as he was a baker?
[OB:32]In OB, the link between the mother and the baker is barely connected through the mother’s interest in the baker, while in MB it is broken off by omitting the passage. Though OB is not as explicit as SGT, a motherly sensibility does come across.
Similar differences related to maternal feelings can be seen near the end of "The Bath," where the mother is about to leave the hospital temporarily with painful reluctance. In MB, Carver does not probe the mothor’s mind: "He helped her into her coat. She moved to the door . . ." [MB:55] In SGT, a long psychological description of Ann is added between these two sentences. Being worried about her son, the mother looks desperately for some hint as to the boy’s condition.
She stood in her coat for a minute trying to recall the doctor’s exact words, looking for any
nuances, any hint of something behind his words other than what he had said. She tried to
remember if his expression . . .[SGT:72-73]In MB, inner acts such as reading behind others words are intentionally omitted. Carver aims for complete objectivity. Then what did he do in the original version?
She stood in her coat trying to recall the doctor’s words. She was looking for hints. She tried to
remember thc expressions that went with the words. [OB:40]Here are the niceties of the mother’s feeling and the hope for verbal communication which are cut off in MB. The more portrayal added, the more sensible the characters become. The best example can be seen in the technician.
A technician came in and took blood.
"I don t understand this," the mother said to the technician.
"Doctor’s orders," the technician said. [MB:53]In MB, there is no portrait of the technician. She answers the mother with just "Doctor’s orders," in a business-like manner. There is no basis for emotional response in the reader.
A young woman knocked and came in. She wore white slacks and a white blouse and carried a
little tray of things that she put on the stand beside the bed. [OB:38]OB gives more detail about the technician. Accordingly, her reaction toward the mother changes.
"Doctor’s orders," the young woman said. "I do what I’m told to do. They say draw, I draw. What’s wrong with him, anyway?" she said. " He’s a sweetie." [OB:38] (emphasis added)
The technician’s icy coldness melts. She shows her interest and sympathy for the boy. SGT revives these sentences in their original condition.
< III - 3 Marital Unity and Sharing Pain>
The characters who are given sensibility by outer and inner descriptions also get interest and empathy with others, which leads them to communicate with each other. Originaliy, in OB, Carver characters have this nature, which is in MB completely stripped down, then in SGT recovered.
The cause of the tragedy, a hit-and-run driver, is not mentioned in MB. However, OB’s driver confirms that the boy gets up to his feet.
The automobile that had struck the boy had come to rest a hundred feet farther on. A man in the
driver’s seat sat looking back over his shoulder. When he saw the boy get back up to his feet, the
driver put the car into gear and drove away. [OB:33]In SGT, after the driver sees Scotty stand up, an inner perspective of the driver is added: "The boy wobbled a little. He looked dazed, but okay. [SGT:61]" This could be considered some kind of concern for the boy.
The most definite differences among OB, SGT and MB concern marital unity and empathy between the wife and husband. Just after the car accident, in MB, there is no verbal communication through which the wife informs the husband about the accident. After the son lies down on his back, the scene changes to the hospital. MB does not depict how the wife informs her husband about a matter of grave concern to the family and how they share the shock of it. OB depicts it as follows:
When the woman could not wake the chiId, she hurried to the telephone and called her husband
at work. The man said to remain calm. [OB:33]The wife, first of all, hurriedly calls her husband and he tries to encourage her to calm down. In SGT, the affection to the wife deepens all the more because the phrase "remain calm" is repeated.
When she couldn’t wake him up, she hurried to the telephone and called her husband at work. Howard told her to remain calm, and then he called an ambulance for the child and left for the hospital himself. [SGT:61] (emphasis added)
This tendency can be seen in the scene where the husband suggests to his wife that she should go home and take a rest. The wife is very reluctant to leave her son even for a moment. The husband insists on her going home. In MB, Howard says, " You don’t have to worry." [MB:50] It looks as if the husband’s worry and the wife’s worry exist separately. As for OB and SGT, he says " We don’t have to.worry," [OB: 35], [SGT: 64] This sentence shows that Howard thinks he and his wife share this grievous situation.
An explicit example is when the son shows no sign of recovery and the parents are getting more and more anxious. The husband tries to solace his wife by holding her hand. In MB,
The husband sat in the chair beside her. He wanted to say something else. But there was no
saying what it should be. He took her hand and put it in his lap. This made him feel better. It
made him feel better. It made him feel he was saying something. They sat like that for a while,
watching the boy, not talking. From time to time he squeezed her hand until she took it away.
"I've been praying," she said.
"Me too," the father said. "I’ve been praying too." [MB:53]Though the wife and husband both say they have been praying, MB’s couple lack communication and empathy, so it is difficult to read their expressions. We can only imagine they sit side by side, looking straight ahead with expressionless faces like Noh masks, while their eyes never meet and they are isolated in their separate shells of despair. Stull calls the conversation "private desperation." 18 The couple’s prayers remain floating in the stagnant hospital room like two balloons, and they are far from reaching Heaven.
In OB,
"I’ve been praying," she said. She said, "Maybe if you prayed too," she said to him.
"I’ve already prayed," he said. "I’ve been praying," he said.
" That’s good," she said. [OB:37] (emphasis added)This seems almost the same as MB, but there is a big difference. Ann says "That’s good." The moment these short words were uttered from her mouth probably her eyes, which had been straying aimlessly, were turned upon her husband, and they must have felt some kind of communion. The words imply the wife has broken her shell. It cannot be called complete unity, but something better than "private desperation," because the wife calls "good" the fact they both did the same thing unconsciously.
In SGT, it is not implied, but explicitly expressed as communion with the husband. ln the first place, SGT’s couple look at each other.
Howard sat in the chair next to her chair. They looked at each other. He wanted to say something else and reassure her . . . [SGT:67]
"That’s good," she said. For the first time, she felt they were together in it, this trouble. She realized with a start that, until now, it had only been happening to her and to Scotty. She hadn’t let Howard into it, though he was there and needed all along. She felt glad to be his wife. [SGT:68] (emphasis added)Thus, she acknowledges communion as her joy.
A similar example can be seen in the scene where the wife stays up until the next morning looking after her son. At dawn, she looks out at the hospital parking lot and tries to run away from the reality by identifying with someone who is about to go home from the hospital. ln MB, the existence of the husband is not described and the wife stands by the window alone in private desperation again.
The mother went to the window and looked out at the parking lot. Cars with their lights on were driving in and out. She stood at the window with her hands on the sill. She was talking to herself like this. We’re into something now, something hard.
She was afraid.
She saw a car stop and a woman in a long coat get into it. She made believe she was that woman. She made believe she was driving away from here to someplace else. [MB:54]In OB, the husband wakes up from a nap and breaks her separate shell.
The husband woke up. He looked at the child. He got up from the chair and went to stand beside the woman at the window. They were looking out into the parking lot. [OB:391
They are looking at the parking lot together. Without words, they see the same thing with probably the same feeling. Unlike MB, a hint of unity exists here.
In a little while, Howard woke up. He looked at the boy again. Then he got up from the chair, stretched, and went over to stand beside her at the window. They both stared out at the parking lot. They didn’t say anything. But they seemed to feel each other’s insides now, as though the worry had made them transparent in a perfectly natural way. [SGT:70-71] (emphasis added)
In SGT, as the emphasized sentence shows, the couple’s insides become transparent. There is no cocoon of isolation like MB. That is why Stull calls it "humanistic realism."
Empathy between the couple (or absence of empathy) is reflected most dramatically near the ending scene of "The Bath" where the mother meets the black family. Persuaded by the husband, the mother decides to go home temporarily. On the way to the elevator, she meets a black family who are worried about their wounded son’s condition. Perhaps because of empathy from holding the same kind of anxiety, Ann opens her heart to the black father, saying "My son was hit by a car." [OB: 40] [MB:55] [SGT:74] However, MB’s black father does not answer her. He just shakes his head and murmurs his son’s name.
The man shifted in his chair. He shook his head.
He said, "Our Nelson." [MB:56]There is no conversation, communication or empathy. The readers are never informed what causes this family’s menace.
In OB, the black father answers Ann.
The man shifted in his chair. He shook his head. He looked down at the table, and then he looked back at the mother. He said, "Our Nelson, somebody cut him. They say he was just standing and watching. We’re just hoping and praying." He gazed at the mother and tugged on the bill of his cap. [OB:40] (emphasis added)
The mother is desperately anxious about her son, who was hit by a car and has lost consciousness. The father is desperately praying and waiting for the recovery of his son, who is also on the brink of death. They share the same woeful plight. Through the short dialogue their sympathy can be felt. And through their gazing ("He gazed at the mother . . ."), mutual communication can be felt, which MB lacks and SGT deepends.
In SGT, the black father becomes more eloquent. After the father gives a detailed explanation about his son, Carver turns to Ann’s psychological state.
She wanted to talk more with these people who were in the same kind of waiting she was in. She was afraid, and they were afraid. They had that in common. [SGT: 74] (emphasis added)
These sentences show that Ann feels empathy not only toward her husband, but also the black family. Irving Howe quoted Katharine Ann Porter’s "Holiday" in his review of Cathedral and said that "Mr. Carver’s characters don’t have the solace of ‘communal grief,’ or indeed the solace of communal anything.’" 19 However, the above examples show the original version of The Bath has "communal grief." Then Carver omitted it in MB, and in SGT he revived it. By this revision he spread empathy, communion and communication widely and gave the element of "redemption."
As Carver himself says, "The story hadn’t been told originally; it had been messed around with, condensed and compressed in "The Bath" to highlight the qualities of menace that I wanted to emphasize . . . ." 20 If the story aims at emphasizing the qualities of menace, MB’s revision is highly effective, specially in the scene of the harassing call from the baker.
When the father comes back home temporarily, the first call rings. OB and SGT’s descriptions here are completely the same.
But when he picked up the receiver and shouted, "Hello!" there was no sound at the other end of the line. Then the caller hung op. [OB:34] [SGT:63]
No sound at the other end of the line would be very ominous. But in this case, MB emphasizes the menace much more by adding sentences.
He picked up the receiver and shouted, "Hello!"
The voice said, "It’s ready." [MB:50] (emphasis added)If you suddenly hear the voice "It’s ready" at the other end of the line when you are very anxious about your comatose son, you would feel as if the god of death was speaking from the bottom of hell.
The menace peaks at the ending. When the mother in turn comes back home, the telephone rings again. MB ends abruptly and ominously with the stranger’s voice.
"Scotty," the voice said. "It is about Scotty," the voice said. "It has to do with Scotty, yes." [MB:56]
OB and SGT have additional sentences after that.
"Scotty," the man’s voice said. "It’s about Scotty. It has to do with Scotty, yes. Have you forgotten about Scotty?" the man said.
And then the man hung up. [OB:41] (emphasis added)"Scotty," the man’s voice said. "It’s about Scotty, yes. It has to do with Scotty, that problem. Have you forgotten about Scotty?" the man said. Then he hung up. [SGT:75] (empahsis added)
The point of view shifts from the mother to the caller, then the story ends. The readers know it is the baker who makes the harassing call. Nevertheless, this story is ominous because from the parents’ point of view it remains a mystery who is calling. If so, the story must end from the mother’s point of view in order to keep the aftereffect of the ominous voice. When the story ends at the caller’s point of view like in OB and SGT, it leaves the image of the baker with the reader while the menace of the mother who is frightened by the ominous call is toned down. However, in SGT the story develops and there is reconcilement and the solace of grief at the end. In this case, the image of the baker can foreshadow a coming event.
As we see above, the original version is wavering between minimalism and rich narration. The differences of the style prove it.
Near the opening, the mother observes the baker. MB does not describe this at all. OB shows the early Carver’s features.
Instead of talking, she looked into the back of the bakery and saw a long wooden table with pie pans stacked up. She saw the oven, the empty racks on rollers. She heard a radio going, a voice giving the top of the news.[OB:32] (emphasis added)
The monotonous pattern of repeated subject words followed by nouns of object words can often be seen in Carver's early stories, eg. "Neighbors" (1971): "He looked out of the window, and then he moved slowly . . . He saw ashtrays, items of furniture, kitchen utensils, the clock. He saw everything." 21 SGT avoids the repetition of the same pattern by using "there structure" and inanimate subjects, thereby breaking the monotony.
She looked into the back of the bakery and could see a long, heavy wooden table with aluminum pie pans stacked at one end; and beside the table a metal container filled with empty racks. There was an enormous oven. A radio was playing country-western music. [SGT:60]
Moreover, the most obvious differences can be seen in the descriptions of the black family near the ending.
She went past the nurses’ station and down to the end of the corridor. At the end of the corridor she turned and saw a little waiting room. She saw a family in there, sitting in wicker chairs. There was a man in a khaki shirt and pants, a baseball cap pushed back on his head. There was a large woman wearing a housedress and slippers. There was a teen-aged girl in jeans, her hair done in dozens of little braids. There was a table littered with hamburger wrappers and Styrofoam cups. [OB:40] (emphasis added)
Here again OB repeats the "there structure." Its monotonousness creates a kind of poetic rhythm.
MB cuts off the idleness of repetition and makes this long paragraph one sentence by using phrases.
She went past the nurses’ station and down to the end of the corridor, where she turned and saw a little waiting room, a family in there, all sitting in wicker chairs, a man in a khaki shirt, a baseball cap pushed back on his head, a large woman wearing a housedress, slippers, a girl in jeans, hair in dozens of kinky braids, the table littered with flimsy wrappers and styrofoam and coffee sticks and packets of salt and pepper. [MB:55]
The "there structure" omission and phrase replacement can also be seen in the opening scene:
There were no pleasantries, just this small exchange, the information, nothing unnecessary. [OB:32] (emphasis added)
No pleasantries, just this small exchange, the barest information, nothing that was not necessary. [MB:48]
In SGT, the one sentence is separated again. lt avoids the poetic monotonous repetition of "there" and makes it prosaic narratively. In OB, repetition of the "there structure" which is very inorganic and impersonal makes the black family like other substances such as the chairs and tables. In SGT, the mother and the daughter become the subject word and are foregrounded. At the same time, they attain a vivid presence as human beings.
She went past the nurses’ station and down to the end of the corridor, looking for the elevator. At the end of the corridor, she turned to her right and entered a little waiting room where a Negro family sat in wicker chairs. There was a middle-aged man in a khaki shirt and pants, a baseball cap pushed back on his head. A large woman wearing a housedress and slippers was slumped in one of the chairs. A teenaged girl in jeans, hair done in dozens of little braids, lay stretched out in one of the chairs smoking a cigarette, her legs crossed at the ankles. The family swung their eyes to Ann as she entered the room. The little table was littered with hamburger wrappers and Styrofoam cups. [SGT:73] (emphasis added)
The stiff mannequin-like characters suddenly begin breathing, stretching out their legs and smoking in SGT. Though OB, in its story, has a hint of communication and empathy which MB lacks, in its style, OB shows a minimalism which is brief, cool-surfaced and impersonal. In that sense, OB is ambiguous and lacks consistency.
Now the boom of "minimalism" has passed away, though it is open to question whether the label was proper or not. John Barth’s 1986 definition of minimalism is perhaps the most widely accepted one. 22 In an essay, Barth classifies it into three categories.
First, he points out, "There are minimalisms of unit, form and scale: short words, short sentences and paragraphs, super-short stories . . ." It is true the revision from 0B to MB is a drastic contraction but the developed SGT is no longer "a super-short story."
Second, Barth explains, "minimalisms of style: a stripped-down vocabulary; a stripped-down syntax that avoids periodic sentences, serial predications and complex subordinating constructions; stripped-down rhetoric that may eschew figurative language altogetner; a stripped-down, non-emotive tone." These features can often be seen in MB as I have shown above. Westfall Shute calls this superficial description "brush-stroke" or "perfunctorily-sketched." 23
Third, regarding "minimalisms of material: minimal characters, minimal exposition . . . , minimal mises en scene, minimal action, minimal plot." OB fails to be consistent, and SGT is never applicable in terms of expansion of psychological descriptions and development of the plot. Therefore, if Carver was a minimalist, it was only in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981), which includes MB.
Judging from the above, OB is inferior to the other two versions in sophistication and consistency of style. Or Carver is wavering. This original version is precious because it proves that Carver’s so-called minimalisms – not only his style, but also thematic factors of alienation, isolation, despair, inarticulateness, inability to communicate – are not necessarily his starting points.
In the original version, there are character portrayals, psychological descriptions, mutual empathy, and communication. When Carver omitted those factors in order to emphasize "the qualities of menace" in MB, he succeeded in making ominousness absurdly conspicuous by revising in short sentences, using fragmental phrases, and cutting out conversations and explanations. However, in SGT he revived, added, and developed what he once cut out to the extreme in MB. In SGT, he reached for the spiritual profundity of mutual communion, unity, forgiveness.
Carver’s revisions justify Adam Yeyer’s "hourglass" analogy. However, it is not symmetric, but a distorted and surrealistic hourglass, the bottom of which is much larger than the top. Carver’s "pre-minimalism period" and "after minimalism period" should be respectively labeled "journeyman years" (to echo Stull in DLB Yearbook 1984) and "mature years." In fact, compared 0B (before minimalism) and SGT (after minimalism), additions and revisions in SGT emphasize Carver’s change although the two versions have many similarities. I believe this change shows that Carver matured as a writer.
IV. BEFORE AND AFTER THE REVISION
– SELF-EXPKESSION OR COMMUNICATION?
There are two levels to Carver’s revisions. One consists of the myriads of revisions to polish sentences before completing the original manuscript. The other, discussed in this paper, consists of the changes made to stories after publication, including minor changes and changes of titles. Carver actively revised on both levels until SGT. After SGT in Cathedral Carver’s obsession for the latter level of revisions stopped.
In an interview for London Review of Books conducted in 1987, Carver says, "But I don’t do that kind of rewriting much any more. I have more confidence in the stories now, or maybe it’s just that I feel that I have more things to do than I have time to do them, and I tend now not to look back so much. I do all the revision when I’m writing a story, and once it’s published I’m just not much interested in it any longer. I want to look ahead. I think that’s healthy."
Changes in SGT show Carver’s great fulfillment in expression as a writer. The fact that Carver included SGT, not MB, in Selected Stories proves that Carver himself was satisfied with SGT and considered it finished. Still, there are critics who insist MB is superior. 24
It is true that MB embodies a complete form of styles for which Carver had been groping through trial and error. I t can be called "experimental realism," to borrow Kenji Kazama’s phrase. 25
As a whole, literary minimalism of the 80’s is conservative and the opposite of post-modern, experimental novels of the 60’s, and metafiction. Carver, a "Godfather" of minimalism, is often classified in a category of traditional realism. However, as Kenji Kazama points out, Carver’s fiction has superrealistic, or photoreal experimentalism different from Barth and Pynchon’s metafiction; such precise descriptions that readers forget it is not real. Kazama calls the descriptions reproductions through mechanical eyes. He says, "a picture expresses absence of substance by showing an image of it. In the same way, Carver’s fiction, however precisely it depicts characters and objects, expresses images only as symbols." According to Kazama, characters in Carver’s early stories suddenly realize cruelty and violence buried in seemingly peaceful daily life when they see and touch the nothingness behind the image.
"Menace in daily life, the hallmark in Carver’s early years, is derived from exquisite superrealism, not from traditional realism. The more mercilessly Carver pares down and omits words, the more effectively themes of voyeurism and alienation from self and others in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (1976) and inability to communicate in What We . . . are expressed. Minimal visual art plunges viewers into a zero-degree-feeling by eliminating illusions and feelings. As a result of extreme paring down in What We . . . , Carver succeeded in establishing his own minimalism or experimental realism which never allows readers to feel empathy. Carnations, which is the first play he wrote in 1962 when he enrolled at Humboldt State University, is a highly experimental play suggestive of Samuel Beckett. 26 Since then, as a successor of Hemingway, seemingly pursuing traditional realism, Carver reached experimental realism.
However, was it the ultimate artistic style he truly wished? As the example of postmodern fiction shows, experimentalism is charged with the danger of one-way self expression that ignores readers. In fact, many stories in What We . . . reject the readers’ empathy and characters in them are alienated from each other, failing to communicate verbally. While writing this collection, Carver rewrote and revised more than any other time in his life. The degree of revision shows his dissatisfaction with what he was writing. 27
As OB shows, Carver did not originally reject communication and empathy. Yet he desired self-expression as a writer. It was difficult to pursue original self-expression without being experimental. Communication or self-expression? Carver seems to have wavered over this dilemma from the start of his career. He suffered, unable to find a definitive conclusion. Ambiguity in OB is evidence of this. His obsessive impulse for constant revision shows Carver’s unconscious anxiety over attaining the style he truly wished for.
Changes in Carver’s private life (family breakup, the depths of alcoholism, recovery, rehabilitation, happiness and fulfillment) and processes involved in minimalism and a more narrative style have a close relation to changes of Carver's attitude towards revision.
At the time of writing What We . . . (in 1979-80) Carver came to a big turning point. After miraculously getting over alcoholism (in 1977), separating from his first wife (in 1978), trying to begin a new life, Carver must have felt like deleting all his past. It is natural that this might have affected his creative activity unconsciously. At the time, he did not want to share his various hardships in life with readers or try to have them understand him. Carver felt what he had gone through was too hard and tough to share with ordinary readers. He was focused only on describing squalor, absurdity and menace in life with a masochistically minimalistic, pared-down style.
The result of Carver's extreme experimentation in a minimal style was inarticulation and inability to communicate verbally. By "cutting everything down to the marrow, not just to the bone," he ran up against an unexpected wall: "I’d be at a dead end – writing stuff and publishing stuff I wouldn’t want to read myself . . ." 28 A seemingly great breakthrough that could settle the dilema turned out to be no way out. Even if it was highly artistic and experimental, it was impossible for Carver to continue.
After he experienced a six-month slump when he could not write anything at all, he finally found a true breakthrough in "Cathedral" first published in the September 1981 Atlantic Monthly.
"When I wrote ‘Cathedral,’" Carver said, "I experienced this rush and felt, ‘This is what it’s all about, this is the reason we do this.’" 29 A prominent feature of Carver’s new horizon in "Cathedral" and SGT is recovery of trust in communication.
This experience seems to have changed his artistic view drastically. From 1983, Carver began to refer to "art and communication" frequently. The following are a few random examples: "Art is not self-expression, it is communication, and I am interested in communication" (1983) 30; "Writing, or any form of artistic endeavor, is not just expression, it s communication, (1984) 31; A writer wants to communicate, and communication is a two-way street between writer and reader, (1986) 32.
Yoshihiko Kazamaru, quoting Carver’s 1983 statement in his essay, compares him with several postmodern novelists and comments that Carver pulled autobiographical fiction down to a more understandable level and through his highly precise stories tried to communicate with readers. 33
It is true that Carver’s fiction is much more understandable and autobiographical than Barth’s and Pynchon’s. However, he did not consistently try to "communicate with readers," but only began to incline more toward communication than self-expression. Ironically, What We . . . , which rejects communication and empathy with readers, attracted much more attention than he ever had before. This attention made Carver more conscious of the existence of readers.
Many aspects of stability (artistic success in Cathedral (1983), literary fulfillment in receiving the Mildred and Harold Strauss Award in 1983, happiness in his private life with a new partner, Tess Gallagher, gave Carver self-confidence as a writer. As his anxiety over an "unfinished" feeling disappeared, Carver began to lose interest in rewriting his stories. His way of thinking also changed.
"I suppose," he said in 1986, "I became more hopeful, somewhat more positive in my thinking." 34 Fulfillment and confidence in his own private life brought him maturity as a writer. After he revised MB into SGT in Cathedral, Carver stopped revising stories after they were published. However, Carver never stopped challenging himself with artistic experimentation.
After Cathedral, Carver chose words more precisely, and adopted different factors more vigorously. Though absurdity and menace still exist in Carver’s fiction, his characters did not just sit back and watch any more. By acting by themselves they found not "the nothing" beyond, but some kind of redemption and sympathy. Suffering from difficulty of communication, they gradually regained it. While his characters made efforts to communicate with each other, Carver continued to grope for his own original and experimental style. In light of this, a further evolution of SGT will help elucidate Carver’s stylistic maturity.
Regarding Carver’s new experimentalism, the concept of "mimetic body," is very suggestive. The Japanese art critic, Tatsumi Shinoda points out this is a key word in the post Cold-War art scene. 35 Shinoda explains that in a postmodern time when common standards in society disappear and only isolated small groups exist, the only thing people can share physically or psychologically is the body even if it is temporary. "The body," in this sense, is not exposed directly without illusion like performance art in the 70’s. Now even the body as the last fort for human beings is analyzed and deconstructed by the flood of information in postmodern society. The body is shown with the discourse or the illusion that the truth is that even the body might disappear. Thus, Shinoda concludes that "mimicry" and "quotation" as its variation are keywords for expression in the 90’s.
"The mimetic body." That is the very essence of Carver’s depictions after Cathedral. At the end of SGT, the three characters who are eating fresh rolls that are suggestive of the dead son act mimetically in a sense of cannibalism. In the last scene of "Cathedral," the protagonist is drawing a picture of a cathedral with a blind man whom he at first refused to understand and sympathize with. By closing his eyes and trying to mimic a blind man himself, he can finally achieve a great empathy. Following a two year blank after Cathedral, Carver wrote "Errand" which turned out to be his last short story. In this story, he depicted an historical person, Chekhov, using many quotations from the biographies of Chekhov. 36 Quotation is a kind of mimesis. For the first time, Carver’s fiction attained an historical scope and spacious scale, revealing the beginning of a new horizon in his art.
V. FROM A MINIMALIST TO A PRECISIONIST
In the essay "Fires," Carver names John Gardner and Gordon Lish as the persons who most influenced him. 37 Both Gardner, who taught Carver in a beginning fiction writing course at Chico State College, and Lish, who was an editor at Esquire, told him to cut unnecessary words out. Carver learned from them a writing habit of cutting out. When an interviewer asked in The Paris Review Interview, "How much of what you write do you finally throw away?" Carver answered, "Lots. If the first draft of the story is forty pages long, it’ll usually be half that by the time I'm finished with it." 38
Carver said before Cathedral, "I like to mess around with my stories. I’d rather tinker with a story after writing it . . . .Maybe I revise because it gradually takes me into the heart of what the story is about. I have to keep trying to see if I can find that out . . . ." 39 He inherited this practice from Gardner. Gardner also believed that "a writer found what he wanted to say in the ongoing process of seeing what he’d said. And this seeing, or seeing more clearly, came about through revision." 40
However, the extremely minimalistic revision in MB and other examples of What We . . . goes beyond Gardner’s creed. Though Carver was to restore them almost to the original versions, why did he pare down his works? He might not have known the reason himself. "It had to do with the theory of omission," he told an interviewer in 1986. "If you can take anything out, take it out, as doing so will make the work stronger. Pare, pare, and pare some more. Maybe it also had something to do with whatever I was reading during that period. But maybe not." 41
Changes in his private life may have influenced his revision practice. More likely, his editor was responsible for the minimalism.
"He had written the story," Carver’s close friend William Kittredge said, "but his editor Gordon Lish had cut it down to the short version. The short version of that story is enormously diminished in its emotional power. It’s no coincidence that Ray changed contractual agreements, changed editors and all that. As he told me afterward, ‘They can’t change a comma from now on.’" 42
Carver might have had ambivalent feelings towards Lish, as Lish was his benefactor. What We . . . was published by Knopf because of Lish and as a result Carver attracted the world’s attention as a "minimalist." At the same time, Lish restricted Carver’s way of writing. It is true that final artistic decisions were up to Carver as Richard Ford says. 43 Still, he referred to Lish again and again as the person who most influenced his writing.
Lish once evaluated Carver as follows, ". . . what has most powerfully persuaded me of Carver’s value is his sense of a peculiar bleakness," 44 Though admitting that Carver’s sentences and "Carver’s way of staging a story, staging its revelations" were unique, Lish thought Carver’s "bleakness" was the most salient aspect of Carver’s writing. Sense of "bleakness" is related to the "zero-degree-feeling of experience" of minimal art mentioned above. After all, what Lish pursued was minimalistic effect.
While both Gardner and Lish were greatly influential in leading Carver to an economy of words, their techniques were subtly different. Lish insisted on "omission for omission"; that is omission as minimalism. Gardner insisted on contraction in writing because he wanted to teach Carver and his other students "how important it was to say exactly what I wanted to say and nothing else." 45 He advocated "Nothing vague or blurred, no smoked-glass prose." 46 In short, Lish's minimalism to Gardner's precisionism.
Precisionism initially refered to a style in American Art in the 1920’s exemplified by the painting of Georgia O Keefe, Charles Demuth and others. 47 It has several similarities to minimalism, such as simplified style and mechanical form. It differs in giving an effect of coldness without humanistic factors through precise drawing, while minimalism omits and pares down. Charles Demuth’s painting, for example, is considered to be smoothly decorative with minimalism’s omission never an element. Precisionism is nearer to photorealism. Carver himself was not conscious of such artistic terminology. He used the term "precisionism" in the sense of depicting every thing very precisely. In any case, after artistic meanderings, Carver chose Gardner’s precisionism, not Lish’s minimalism.
Carver hated the "minimalist" label. 8 According to Tess Gallagher, he "preferred the more accurate identification of his style as that of a ‘precisionist.’" 49 This is evident when one considers Carver’s consistently strict attitude towards precision of words, despite his changing styles.
As for the two levels of Carver’s habit of revision, the second level of revision, rewriting stories after publication disappeared with his maturity as a writer. However, the first level of revision, to polish and refine his stories and poems, continued to the end. His enthusiasm or passion for selecting the right words is impressively described in a memorial essay by his typist Dorothy Catlett, who worked for Carver for his last four years. She testifies, "The revisions, however, contained numerous handwritten inserts with writing spilling onto the backs of pages sometimes when the margins had given out." 50 And whenever Carver revised the drafts, he asked Catlett, "Do you like it better now? Do you like the changes?"
Raymond Carver, who pursued precision in words throughout his life, should surely be called a precisionist, not a minimalist. His attitude is expressed best by Carver when he says in his essay "On Writing":
It is possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things – a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman s earring – with immense, even startling power. It is possible to write a line of seemingly innocuous dialogue and have it send a chill along the reader s spine – the source of artistic delight, as Nabokov would have it. That’s the kind of writing that most interests me.
NOTES
1 John Alton, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Literature: An Interview with Raymond Carver," Conversations with Raymond Carver, eds. Narshall Bruce Gentry and William L. Stull (Jackson and London: University Press of Mississippi, 1990) 153.
2 David Applefield, "Fiction & America: Raymond Carver," Conversations With Raymond Carver 206.
3 Adam Neyer, "Now You See Him, Now You Don’t, Now You Do Again: The Evolution of Raymond Carver’s Minimalism," Raymond Carver: A Study of the Short Fiction, written and ed. by Ewing Campbell (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992) 142-48.
4 Jim Naughton, "As Raymond Carver Muses, His Stature Grows," Conversations with Raymond Carver 29.
5 Sam Halpert, Raymond Carver: An Oral Biography (Iowa City: University of lowa Press, 1995) 152.
6 Kathleen Westfall Shute, "Finding the Words: The Struggle for Salvation in the Fiction of Raymond Carver," Raymond Carver: A Study of the Short Fiction 119-30.
7 Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Prose 6(Spring/Summer 1981). The content page says: "The editor and staff of Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Prose are pleased of announce the following prizes for work in this spring/summer Volume: The Carlos Fuentes Piction Award to Raymond Carver for The Bath . . ." Both prizes are awarded annually for the best poetry and fiction published in Columbia: A magazine of Poetry & Prose."
8 Haruki Murakami, "Kai-dai," Ai ni tsuite kataru toki wareware no Kataru koto: The Complete Works of Raymond Carver 2 (Tokyo: Chuou-Kouron Sha. 1 990) 291-92.
9 Regarding these two stories, William L. Stull’s "Beyond Hopelessville: Another Side of Raymond Carver," Philological Quarterly 64, 1 (Winter 1985): 1-15 is called "the best single article on Carver" by Meyer in his paper mentioned above, and "the most influential article" by Bandolph Paul Runyon in Reading Raymond Carver (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992) 149. Kathleen Westfall Shute’s paper mentioned above is also a clear analysis. As for essays written in Japanese, Hideyo Sengoku’s "Murakami Haruki to Amerika – Raymond Carver wo toushite" Eureka (June 1989):103-17, and Takaki Hiraishi’s "Raymond Carver, Shippai no shoudou," Eureka (June 1990):168-79 are typical.
10 Stull, 6-8.
11 Motoyuki Shibata points out in his essay, "Mumeisei no Bungaku-Carver teki sekai no naritachi," Eureka (June l990):158-67, that namelessness in the dangling state of time and space is a prominent feature in Carver's earlier works.
12 For examples, Kandolph Paul Runyon argues as follows: Quite correctly calling our attention to the manner in which the Weisses’ and the baker’s breaking of bread recalls the Last Supper, Stull nevertheless presumes more than I am willing to accept when he argues that ‘a subtle but pervasive pattern or a religious symbol in the story suggests the presence of a third kind of love in Carver’s work" in addition to erotic and brotherly love: "Christian love." (Reading Raymond Carver 149) They both agree that the slain son is a sacrificial victim. However, while Stull interprets Scotty as a sacrificial son because he is the Son of God, Runyon’s abrupt but original reading is "he is slain by the father, the same father (. . .) who in the immediately preceding story, ‘The Compartment,’ wishes his son were dead. Runyon, in a sense, tries the same kind of deconstruction and reconstruction in his critique Reading Raymond Carver as Robert Altman’s film Short Cuts, a rondo set in the end-of-the-20th-century US based on Carver’s fiction.
13 Sengoku, 116.
14 Westfall Shute, 124.
15 Raymond Carver, "The Bath," What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981; New York: Vintage Books, 1989) 54. All further references to this work appear in parentheses in the text.
16 Carver, "A Small, Good Thing," Cathedral (1983; New York:Vintage Books, 1989) 71. All further references to this work appear in parentheses in the text.
17 Carver, "The Bath," Columbia 39. All further references to this work appear in parentheses in the text.
18 Stull, 9.
19 Irving Howe, "Stories of Our Loneliness." New York Times Book Review 11 Sept. 1983: 42.
20 Alive and Writing, eds. Larry NcCaffery and Sinda Cregory, (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987) 69.
21 Carver, "Neighbors," Where I’m Calling From (l988; New York: Vintage Books, 1989) 90.
22 John Barth, "A Few Words About Minimalism," New York Times Book Review 28 Dec. 1986: 2. This article had a great influence on American intellectuals perception of minimalism. Raymond Carver esteemed it highly. He said to Applefield, "I thought John Barth’s recent essay in The New York Times Book Review was one of the best things that has been said on the subject. (206)" However, as Yoichiro Miyamoto points out in his essay "Seijaku to Gutaisei no Shigaku" (Eureka June 1990), Barth’s essay is quite misguiding. For further details of this, see my paper, "Minimalism Literature and Raymond Carver’s Contribution to American Fiction in the 1980s" in Chukyo University Bulletin of the Faculty of Liberal Arts (Vol.36, No.3 1995).
23 Shute, 23.
24 Carver himself was aware of such opinions. He once said, "I’ve had people tell me that they much prefer ‘The Bath,’ which is fine, but ‘A Small, Good Thing’ seems to me to be a better story." Alive and Writing, 69.
25 Kenji Kazama, "Jikkenteki realism to Carver," Eureka (June, 1990) 151-57.
26 Carver, Carnations (Vineburg: Engdahl Typography, 1992).
27 Regarding a discussion of interaction between revision and change of the themes a writer deals with, see my paper "Literary lnteraction of Translation – In the Case of Raymond Carver and Haruki Vurakami" in Nanzan Studies in English Language & Literature (No.15, l991).
28 Carver, "The Paris Review lnterview," Fires (1983; New York: Vintage Books, 1984) 204.
29 "The Paris Review Interview," 204.
30 Kay Bonetti, "Ray Carver: Keeping It Short," Conversations with Raymond Carver 58.
31 Alive and Writing 77.
32 Stull, "Matters of Life and Death," Conversations with Raymond Carver 190.
33 Yoshihiko Kazamaru, Carver ga sinda koto nante daaremo shiranakatta (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1992) 49-52.
34 Alton, Conversations with Raymond Carver 167.
35 Discussion by Kentaro Ichihara. Tatsumi Shinoda and Yuko Hasegawa, Bijutsu Techo (No.1, 1995) 247-65.
36 Carver's ex-brother-in-law Douglas Unger recalls the following: "I was at Yaddo when that story came out, and it so happened there was a copy of Henri Troyat’s biography of Chekhov around. James Salter noticed that the death scene in the biography and a large part of the death scene in ‘Errand’ were almost exactly alike, almost word for word. That caused quite a stir and discussion among the writers there." (Halpert, 123)
37 Carver, "Fires," Fires (1983; New York: Vintage Books, 1989) See also Yichael Shumacher, "After the Fire, into the Fire: An Interview with Raymond Carver." Conversations with Raymond Carver 235.
38 "The Paris Review Interview," 203-05.
39 Carver, afterword, Fires (1984) 218.
40 Carver, "John Gardner: The Writer As Teacher," Fires (1989) 43.
41 Stull, Conversation with Raymond Carver 182.
42 Halpert, 152.
43 Richard Ford says, "Some stories in that book were edited and revised so that they seemed superficially more like earlier stories. But I’d already seen them in manuscript, and I knew them in the original. Gordon Lish may have had a hand in those changes, but they were finally Ray's responsibility." (Halpert, 161)
44 Bruce Weber, "Raymond Carver: A Chronicler of Blue Collar Despair," Conversation with Raymond Carver 87.
45 Carver. "Fires," Fires (1989) 37.
46 Fires 37.
47 Sekai Bijutsu Hyakka 4; Bibutsu Jiten, supervised by David Piper and Saburo Kurata. (Tokyo; Daiichi Hoki, 1985) 145.
48 Carver explains the reason he hates the label "minimalist" as follows: "That word brings up associations with narrow vision and limited ability," he says. "It’s true that I try to eliminate every unnecessary detail in my stories and try to cut my words to the bone. But that doesn’t make me a minimalist. If I were, I’d really cut them to the bone. But I don’t do that; I leave a few slivers of meat on them." (Hansmaarten Tromp, "Any Good Writer Uses His Imagination to Convince the Reader." Conversations with Raymond Carver 72.)
49 Tess Gallagher, "Carver Country," Carver Country (1990; London: Pan Books, 1991) 18.
50 Dorothy Catlett, "Do You Like It?" Remembering Ray eds. William L. Stull and Maureen P. Carroll (Santa Barbara: Capra Press, 1993) 194-98.
51 Carver, "On Writing" Fires 24.
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