I met Raymond in the fall of 1977, not really so long ago, although of course almost half of that time he’s been gone. We met at one of those semi-fancy literary festivals that still take place in American universities. A mixed group of writers—poets and prosers—get themselves invited to a college campus (in this case it was S.M.U., in Dallas). Public readings go on every evening, panel discussions, classes with students in the afternoons, late nights in the Hilton Hotel bar with pals, occasionally some low-grade high jinks, nothing too serious—all of it on the cuff. It’s what occupies the space of a literary life outside of New York.
Ray and I were lesser lights in a larger group that included Philip Levine and E.L. Doctorow—distinct literary stars, even then. A friend of ours at S.M.U. had included us on the “faculty” as a way of putting some money in our pockets and giving us some needed exposure. I had published a novel the year before, to no special acclaim. Ray had published his first collection of stories, “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?,” which had been nominated for the National Book Award.
I can honestly say I didn’t know who Raymond Carver was at the time. That his name would become a household word in the next ten years, his stories a standard for the form, and he himself elevated to the station of “the American Chekhov” did not seem quite evident then. (It’s difficult, of course, to re-create the condition of not knowing once experience has made so much known. It is, though, a phenomenon writers all puzzle about as we try to make made-up experience seem real.)
It’s possible I’d heard the name Ray Carver before, knew of some wild and woolly literary drinking episodes in the Bay Area or Iowa City, two places I knew little of. (I, improbably enough, lived in Princeton.) But I’m certain I hadn’t read a Carver story. I was thirty-three, and Ray was vaguely thirty-nine. Neither of us had much gotten our head up out of the foggy ether young writers live in—sometimes for years, sometimes forever—in which you’re indistinctly aware of a “writing world,” conscious of a few names on its periphery, a few stories, an occasional significant breakthrough into print, but mostly are just beavering away trying to make isolation and persistence into a virtue, and anonymity your sneak attack on public notice. (...)
Ray was my opposite, at least in appearance: a man who truly had other things on his mind. Ray Carver was hungry in 1977, and not for a square meal. You could also say he looked haunted. Bad things were not very far behind him, and he meant to be watchful. He laughed hurriedly, then slipped back into a kind of serious but uncertain reserve. His eyes darted a little. His big shoulders were slightly hunched. He seemed to want to come near you, to agree with you about something important you and he knew together, something literary, if possible—admiration for somebody’s book or poem—but not to come all the way to you. “Yes, yes, oh yes. Oh by God I couldn’t agree more.” His voice was hoarse, deep. His eyes would move away but find you again, as if he were testing something—your opinion of him. He seemed vulnerable, good. And everything—his clothes, his hands, his hair (if you put your hands on his shoulders, as we all did a lot then, and drew close)—everything smelled like smoke. Though everything did not smell like booze. Booze was over.
The night I met Ray he gave a reading in some big, cold and barny, echoing multipurpose room on the S.M.U. campus. Other people, even if I didn’t, seemed to know who Raymond Carver was, because lots of them turned up to listen. Ray read a story that was then called “What Is It?” and that is still my favorite. (Later, an overweening editor convinced Ray to call it “Are These Actual Miles?”—a terrible title for giving away the story’s keystone line.) The story concerns a couple on the brink of bankruptcy and dispossession who decide to sell their prized convertible (an emblem of palmier times) before whoever is going to foreclose or serve papers or slap a lien on them arrives at the door. She leaves to do the selling. He stays home, full of apprehension and loathing, drinking Scotch. The story, which is from “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?,” is shockingly brief—ten pages in my Vintage edition—especially in view of the broad emotional distances it traverses while still being full of memorable moments and lines. In the passage of an afternoon and evening, a man’s entire spiritual life is laid bare then bludgeoned in ways that make the reader both laugh and cringe: his marriage is possibly sacrificed to hardship; he is almost certainly cuckolded by a used-car dealer his wife has only that night become acquainted with; great fury and indignation are fruitlessly unleashed; his wife’s distaste for him is revealed. And, of course, his car is sold.
Ray read the story in near-dark conditions, hugely hunched over a glaring little podium lamp, constantly fiddling with his big glasses, clearing his throat, sipping water, beetling down at the pages of his book as if he’d never really thought of reading this story out loud and wasn’t finding it easy. His voice was typically hushed, seemingly unpracticed, halting almost to the point of being annoying. But the effect of voice and story upon the listener was of actual life being unscrolled in a form so distilled, so intense, so chosen, so affecting in its urgencies as to leave you breathless and limp when he was finished. It was a startling experience—wondrous in all ways. And one learned, from the story, many things: Life was this way—yes, we already knew that. But this life, these otherwise unnoticeable people’s suitability for literary expression seemed new. One also felt that a consequence of the story was seemingly to intensify life, even dignify it, and to locate in it shadowed corners and niches that needed revealing so that we readers could practice life better ourselves. And yet the story itself, in its spare, self-conscious intensity, was such a made thing, not like life at all; it was a piece of nearly abstract artistic construction calculated to produce almost giddy pleasure. That night in Dallas, Ray put on a blatant display of what a story could do in terms of artifice, concision, strong feeling, shapeliness, high and surprising dramatics. The story was definitely about something, and you could follow it easily—it was about what two people did in adversity which changed their lives. But here was no ponderous naturalism. Nothing extra. There were barely the rudiments of realism. This was highly stylized, artistic writing with life, not art, as its subject. And to be exposed to it was to be bowled over.
On the way out of the building into the watery Texas night, I came up beside Ray and patted him on the back. (We were always doing that.) “Gee,” I said, “that was a terrific story, Ray. And you read it just perfectly [hesitantly, painfully, reluctantly, almost inaccessibly, as if all the horrors and poignance and comedy were straight from true life, which they probably were].”
“Oh God, Richard, really?” Ray said, looking nearly astonished and grinning. “Did you like that? Did you? Oh Christ, I’m glad to hear that. I really am.” He stopped and shook his head. “I hadn’t read a story sober in longer than I can remember. Maybe never. I was shaking in my boots. I was afraid I couldn’t finish it. But that you liked it means the world to me. Thanks a lot, my friend. I’m pleased. I really am. Thanks. Thanks.”
Ray and I were lesser lights in a larger group that included Philip Levine and E.L. Doctorow—distinct literary stars, even then. A friend of ours at S.M.U. had included us on the “faculty” as a way of putting some money in our pockets and giving us some needed exposure. I had published a novel the year before, to no special acclaim. Ray had published his first collection of stories, “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?,” which had been nominated for the National Book Award.I can honestly say I didn’t know who Raymond Carver was at the time. That his name would become a household word in the next ten years, his stories a standard for the form, and he himself elevated to the station of “the American Chekhov” did not seem quite evident then. (It’s difficult, of course, to re-create the condition of not knowing once experience has made so much known. It is, though, a phenomenon writers all puzzle about as we try to make made-up experience seem real.)
It’s possible I’d heard the name Ray Carver before, knew of some wild and woolly literary drinking episodes in the Bay Area or Iowa City, two places I knew little of. (I, improbably enough, lived in Princeton.) But I’m certain I hadn’t read a Carver story. I was thirty-three, and Ray was vaguely thirty-nine. Neither of us had much gotten our head up out of the foggy ether young writers live in—sometimes for years, sometimes forever—in which you’re indistinctly aware of a “writing world,” conscious of a few names on its periphery, a few stories, an occasional significant breakthrough into print, but mostly are just beavering away trying to make isolation and persistence into a virtue, and anonymity your sneak attack on public notice. (...)
Ray was my opposite, at least in appearance: a man who truly had other things on his mind. Ray Carver was hungry in 1977, and not for a square meal. You could also say he looked haunted. Bad things were not very far behind him, and he meant to be watchful. He laughed hurriedly, then slipped back into a kind of serious but uncertain reserve. His eyes darted a little. His big shoulders were slightly hunched. He seemed to want to come near you, to agree with you about something important you and he knew together, something literary, if possible—admiration for somebody’s book or poem—but not to come all the way to you. “Yes, yes, oh yes. Oh by God I couldn’t agree more.” His voice was hoarse, deep. His eyes would move away but find you again, as if he were testing something—your opinion of him. He seemed vulnerable, good. And everything—his clothes, his hands, his hair (if you put your hands on his shoulders, as we all did a lot then, and drew close)—everything smelled like smoke. Though everything did not smell like booze. Booze was over.
The night I met Ray he gave a reading in some big, cold and barny, echoing multipurpose room on the S.M.U. campus. Other people, even if I didn’t, seemed to know who Raymond Carver was, because lots of them turned up to listen. Ray read a story that was then called “What Is It?” and that is still my favorite. (Later, an overweening editor convinced Ray to call it “Are These Actual Miles?”—a terrible title for giving away the story’s keystone line.) The story concerns a couple on the brink of bankruptcy and dispossession who decide to sell their prized convertible (an emblem of palmier times) before whoever is going to foreclose or serve papers or slap a lien on them arrives at the door. She leaves to do the selling. He stays home, full of apprehension and loathing, drinking Scotch. The story, which is from “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?,” is shockingly brief—ten pages in my Vintage edition—especially in view of the broad emotional distances it traverses while still being full of memorable moments and lines. In the passage of an afternoon and evening, a man’s entire spiritual life is laid bare then bludgeoned in ways that make the reader both laugh and cringe: his marriage is possibly sacrificed to hardship; he is almost certainly cuckolded by a used-car dealer his wife has only that night become acquainted with; great fury and indignation are fruitlessly unleashed; his wife’s distaste for him is revealed. And, of course, his car is sold.
Ray read the story in near-dark conditions, hugely hunched over a glaring little podium lamp, constantly fiddling with his big glasses, clearing his throat, sipping water, beetling down at the pages of his book as if he’d never really thought of reading this story out loud and wasn’t finding it easy. His voice was typically hushed, seemingly unpracticed, halting almost to the point of being annoying. But the effect of voice and story upon the listener was of actual life being unscrolled in a form so distilled, so intense, so chosen, so affecting in its urgencies as to leave you breathless and limp when he was finished. It was a startling experience—wondrous in all ways. And one learned, from the story, many things: Life was this way—yes, we already knew that. But this life, these otherwise unnoticeable people’s suitability for literary expression seemed new. One also felt that a consequence of the story was seemingly to intensify life, even dignify it, and to locate in it shadowed corners and niches that needed revealing so that we readers could practice life better ourselves. And yet the story itself, in its spare, self-conscious intensity, was such a made thing, not like life at all; it was a piece of nearly abstract artistic construction calculated to produce almost giddy pleasure. That night in Dallas, Ray put on a blatant display of what a story could do in terms of artifice, concision, strong feeling, shapeliness, high and surprising dramatics. The story was definitely about something, and you could follow it easily—it was about what two people did in adversity which changed their lives. But here was no ponderous naturalism. Nothing extra. There were barely the rudiments of realism. This was highly stylized, artistic writing with life, not art, as its subject. And to be exposed to it was to be bowled over.
On the way out of the building into the watery Texas night, I came up beside Ray and patted him on the back. (We were always doing that.) “Gee,” I said, “that was a terrific story, Ray. And you read it just perfectly [hesitantly, painfully, reluctantly, almost inaccessibly, as if all the horrors and poignance and comedy were straight from true life, which they probably were].”
“Oh God, Richard, really?” Ray said, looking nearly astonished and grinning. “Did you like that? Did you? Oh Christ, I’m glad to hear that. I really am.” He stopped and shook his head. “I hadn’t read a story sober in longer than I can remember. Maybe never. I was shaking in my boots. I was afraid I couldn’t finish it. But that you liked it means the world to me. Thanks a lot, my friend. I’m pleased. I really am. Thanks. Thanks.”
