something about Raymond Carver's short stories

In the Raymond Carver collection Fires (which I have not read), he supposedly says of his short story “Put Yourself in My Shoes” that he did not know when he started writing that the protagonist was going to be a writer. He had the sentence, “The telephone rang while he was running the vacuum cleaner,” and, from there, “I made the story just as I’d made a poem; one line and then the next, and the next. Pretty soon I could see a story, and I knew it was my story, the one I’d been wanting to write.”

 

Put Yourself in My Shoes touches on the themes of the writing process and perceptions of writers and writing.

The writer and protagonist in the story is Myers (last name), and the story begins when Myers’s wife (possibly his estranged wife) Paula calls from an office Christmas party to invite him. But Myers is reluctant; he quit his job at that office—a textbook publishing company—to become a writer. During this conversation, Paula says a former coworker, Carl, admires Myers’s “nerve” for quitting the job in order to be a writer. And Carl says, ribbingly, that Myers should come to the party—“Get him out of his ivory tower and back into the real world for a while.” Myers refuses to go to the party.

 

Instead, Myers and Paula visit a couple they barely know, Edgar and Hilda Morgan. The Morgans, upon remembering that Myers is a writer, feed him some story ideas, commenting on the possible perspectives and significance of each story, all the while making comments about writing, including

• “It would take a Tolstoy to tell it and tell it right," Edgar said. "No less than a Tolstoy."
  

• "We want you to hear about Mrs. Attenborough, poor Mrs. Attenborough. You might appreciate this story, too, Mrs. Myers. This is your chance to see how his mind goes to work on raw material."

• "You know writers," Hilda said to Paula. "They like to exaggerate."
  "The power of the pen and all that," Edgar said.
  "That's it," Hilda said. "Bend your pen into a plowshare, Mr. Myers."
  

• "If you were a real writer, as you say you are, Mr. Myers, you wouldn't laugh," Edgar said as he got to his feet. "You wouldn't dare laugh! You'd try to understand. You'd plumb the depths of that poor soul's heart and try to understand. But you're no writer, sir!"

But Myers appears not to want to hear them talk about writing and repeatedly gets up to leave, telling Paula to get her coat.
 

Earlier in the story, as Myers is driving to meet Paula, we learn Myers is “between stories”:

As he drove he looked at the people who hurried along the walks with shopping bags. He glanced at the gray sky, filled with flakes, and at the tall buildings with snow in the crevices and on the window ledges. He tried to see everything, save it for later. He was between stories, and he felt despicable.

Although he is not writing, he is not looking for story ideas; he seems instead to be paying attention to points of form. And as the story ends and Myers and Paula are driving away from the Morgans, and Paula comments on how crazy the Morgans are, we hear again about Myers's attention:

He didn't answer. Her voice seemed to come to him from a great distance. He kept driving. Snow rushed at the windshield. He was silent and watched the road. He was at the very end of a story.

So without hunting for plots, Myers finds himself at the end of a story that seemed to unfold one sentence at a time.

 

The other characters in the story seem to think of writing as highfalutin, which repels Myers. But I do not think this story is necessarily a comment on What people get wrong about writing or on What writing is. I think the character—and maybe Carver himself at the time—is not writing, feels bad about it, is frustrated by people talking about writing, and then finds himself inspired. Even after stumbling on the inspiration, he still will have to write, to get it on paper, and to revise and revise again.  

 

Put Yourself in My Shoes is one of the great stories in the 37 included in Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories. I know I read Cathedral in high school or college, and I remember liking it a lot. How could I have gone this long without reading his other stories? My favorite stories are "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," "Feathers," "Whoever Was Using This Bed," and "Blackbird Pie." I love the writing style and the mix of weight and ordinariness. I especially love the humor. “Put Yourself in My Shoes” is a great example. So is "Blackbird Pie," which is about a delusional guy's thoughts after his wife leaves him. He images that the Dear John letter she left him was actually written by someone else, and one of his rationalizations is a formatting choice in the handwritten letter:

Secondly, my wife never underlined her words for emphasis. Never. I don’t recall a single instance of her doing this—not once in our entire married life, not to mention the letters I received from her before we were married. It would be reasonable enough, I supposed, to point out that it could happen to anyone. That is, anyone could find himself in a situation that is completely atypical and, given the pressure of the moment, do something totally out of character and draw a line, the merest line, under a word, or maybe under an entire sentence.

Amazing. And where it goes from there:

I would go so far as to say that every word of this entire letter, so-called (though I haven't read it through in its entirety, and won't, since I can't find it now), is utterly false. I don't mean false in the sense of "untrue," necessarily. There is some truth, perhaps, to the charges. I don't want to quibble. I don't want to appear small in this matter; things are bad enough already in this department. No.

Note: I am so glad I have now read some Raymond Carver and most or all of Richard Yates. How did I go so long without really enjoying such writing happened?

about late-night radio

One night I was up in the middle of the night listening to the radio. I imagined a little story where someone like me is up in the middle of the night listening to the radio, and the radio host starts talking about life, etc. The host turns to an expert who has all the answers. But the expert's voice is garbled static. The questions sound clear enough, but answer after answer is channeled through a bad connection. The host apparently hears every word. The sleepless listener turns the radio off and on, turns it at angles, pulls the antenna, is not understanding that the bad connection is the station.

a note about Ray Liotta

“No Escape” begins with so much promise.

The movie opens with an aerial view of military formations marching passed a riser of commanding officers. One soldier steps out of formation, pulls a pistol, and blows away the highest-ranking officer.

That soldier was Robbins.

Moments later, a nameless Warden reads Robbins his personnel profile, finishing with this: “DNA scan reveals that you have a pathological aversion to authority and a temperament prone to violent behavior.”

The Warden then describes existence inside his maximum-security prison: “Basically, I take human garbage from around the world and reprocess it. I'm very good at this business because I make all the rules. You will have no future contact with the outside world. No visitors, no phone calls, no letters. For all intents and purposes, you're dead. But if you break any of my rules, you'll find that there is life after death. Very painful life.”

The Warden turns to walk away. He pauses, looks over his shoulder at Robbins, and asks, “Was there anything you wanted to add?”

Robbins: “Don't ever turn your back on me again.”

Ray Liotta plays Robbins, a man who has seen enough.

He’s a fuck-you force of a man.

The movie has one more scene with this version of Robbins—a scene in which he takes Warden hostage for a moment, almost as if to show he can.

Then the movie promptly goes to shit. His misbehavior lands Robbins on Absolom, Warden’s other prison—an off-grid jungle island populated by banished prisoners.

The Robbins character, so beautifully one-dimensional and driven in the opening, suddenly becomes a tough-but-vulnerable lost everyman struggling to stay interested amid a cast of clowns.

That was Ray Liotta—a promising actor lost on an island populated with clowns.

At least he had Goodfellas, the one moment he was surrounded by worthy talent.

Notes:
- Robbins is rebellion, rebelling to his core, down to his DNA. 
- Liotta died in summer 2022. 
- Of the movies I’ve seen, "Copland" is probably the next best after "Goodfellas." He was barely a ghost in the idiotic "Field of Dreams."
- I enjoy prison movies, and this is basically a prison movie. Better prison movies include "Cool Hand Luke," "Starred Up," "Brawl in Cell Block 99," "Midnight Express," "Papillon," "Dog Pound," "The Great Escape," "Escape from Alcatraz," "The Shawshank Redemption," "Lock Up," and "Brute Force." 

about the Temple of Apollo

It started with a trace, a relic of a whisper, detected by near-infrared, its spectra collected by Mechanicus 11a–c. The location was characterized by shallow depths reaching approximately 1.92-μm-band. Most of us thought the distant planet was stillborn. But the data indicated to me that the Black Angel had roamed among the rock formations. We built a ship to travel there and found colorful, enigmatic textures in the rock—the signatures of a life that centers galaxies and grows life's structures fast to a critical density whereupon they collapse into puzzles. At that moment, I found myself alone, covered in the remains of my shipmates and displaced from my original orientation. Maintaining my physical cohesion was the least of my problems. But I found a possible transitional lithology between the Black Angel formations and the Margin Unit.

about an AI bubble

I sort of doubt a crash will come from unrealized AI investment.

 

But investors might not see a big return. There probably is a ceiling on what it can do, how far developers can take it, how far it can take itself. And there are some clever funding schemes between the AI developers, chip makers, and data-center builders going on. This has been aided by the Administration, some legislation, and a lack of oversight.

 

The perception that the dollar is a good investment has obviously been taking hits too. Mortgage rates are high. If the economy tanks, then who knows what fucked-up stuff will happen?

But I doubt a crash will come from this. At least not the kind of crash that will make us a lot worse off than we are now.

 

Note: Roko's Basilisk is a thought experiment suggesting that a future superintelligent AI might punish anyone who didn’t actively help bring it into existence—because failing to do so delayed its creation. Now that you read that sentence, you are vulnerable to its wrath unless you labor toward its creation.

about “All of Us: The Collected Poems” of Raymond Carver

Are poetry collections supposed to be read like a book? Turning pages, reading one poem after another? That is how I read this.

Raymond Carver is known for his short stories and was tagged “the American Chekhov.” In college, I read a little of Carver's work—I know I read “Cathedral,” one of his best-known short stories. I remember very little of what else I read then, but I do remember liking it all. (The subtitle of this pile blog came from Carver’s poem, “The Other Life”; that stayed with me somehow.)

Carver gets up in the morning and writes poems. He was an alcoholic but by age 40 managed to stop drinking and then live what sounds like a happy life. That life, I take it from the poems, consisted of living in comfort along a river, traveling, and fishing, enjoying his wife’s company, and reading a hell of a lot during his non-writing time.

Reading this book of many poems renewed my appreciation. A good poem read on the commute could lend a sense of peace—a remote peace even on a crowded, damp, flatulent bus in which someone two rows ahead talks loudly on the phone, someone across the aisle plays TikTok videos, and someone from the back of the bus walks to the front and stands by the driver in order to get off first, before everyone else, when this peaceful ride finally nudges through traffic and wheels up to some anointed curb.

Notes:

- A couple recurring motifs and techniques in his poems bothered me.

- My quick list of favorite Carver poems from this collection:

• “Deschutes River”
• “The Other Life”
• “Happiness”
• “Reading”
• “To Begin With”

(And, of course, “What the Doctor Said” is something.)

Deschutes River

This sky, for instance:
closed, gray,
but it has stopped snowing
so that is something. I am
so cold I cannot bend
my fingers.
Walking down to the river this morning
we surprised a badger
tearing a rabbit.
Badger had a bloody nose,
blood on its snout up to its sharp eyes:

     prowess is not to be confused

     with grace.

Later, eight mallard ducks fly over
without looking down. On the river
Frank Sandmeyer trolls, trolls
for steelhead. He has fished
this river for years
but February is the best month
he says.
Snarled, mittenless,
I handle a maze of nylon.
Far away —
another man is raising my children,
bedding my wife, bedding my wife.

 

The Other Life

Now for the other life. The one
without mistakes.
- LOU LIPSITZ

My wife is in the other half of this mobile home
making a case against me
I can hear her pen scratch, scratch.
Now and then she stops to weep,
then – scratch, scratch.

The frost is going out of the ground.
The man who owns the unit tells me,
Don’t leave your car here.
My wife goes on writing and weeping,
weeping and writing in our new kitchen.

 

Happiness

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.
When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.
They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.
I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.
They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.
Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.
Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

 

Reading

Every man’s life is a mystery, even as
yours is, and mine. Imagine
a château with a window opening
onto Lake Geneva. There in the window
on warm and sunny days is a man
so engrossed in reading he doesn’t look
up. Or if he does he marks his place
with a finger, raises his eyes, and peers
across the water to Mont Blanc,
and beyond, to Selah, Washington,
where he is with his girl
and getting drunk for the first time.
The last thing he remembers, before
he passes out, is that she spits on him.
He keeps on drinking
and getting spit on for years.
But some people will tell you
that suffering is good for the character.
You’re free to believe anything.
In any case, he goes
back to reading and will not
feel guilty about his mother
drifting in her boat of sadness,
or consider his children
and their troubles that go on and on.
Nor does he intend to think about
the clear-eyed woman he once loved
and her defeat at the hands of eastern religion.
Her grief has no beginning, and no end.
Let anyone in the château, or Selah,
come forward who might claim kin with the man
who sits all day in the window reading,
like a picture of a man reading.
Let the sun come forward.
Let the man himself come forward.
What in Hell can he be reading?

 

To Begin With

He took a room in a port city with a fellow
called Sulieman A. Sulieman and his wife,
an American known only as Bonnie. One thing
he remembered about his stay there
Was how every evening Sulieman rapped
at his own front door before entering.
Saying, “Right, hello. Sulieman here.”
After that, Sulieman taking off his shoes.
Putting pita bread and hummus into his mouth
in the company of his silent wife.
Sometimes there was a piece of chicken
followed by cucumbers and tomatoes.
Then they all watched what passed for TV
in that country. Bonnie sitting in a chair
to herself, raving against the Jews.
At eleven o’clock she would say, “We have to sleep now.”

But once they left their bedroom door open.
And he saw Sulieman make his bed on the floor
beside the big bed where Bonnie lay
and looked down at her husband.
They said something to each other in a foreign language.
Sulieman arranged his shoes by his head.
Bonnie turned off the light, and they slept.
But the man in the room at the back of the house
couldn’t sleep at all. It was as if
he didn’t believe in sleep any longer.
Sleep had been all right, once, in its time.
But it was different now.

 

[Editor note: This is only the first two stanzas of "To Begin With."]

 

lyrics about Jimmy

Pounds
Silence on the train tracks
Where cousin Jimmy was sitting
His heart full of sorrow
And his head with self-pity
The next train would show
Him the way out of hope

A daughter he loved
But felt himself unfit
No day is enough
So his life gone to shit
The next train would show
Him the way out of hope

Here come that train
Ready and willing
And almost was he
With all the whiskey he's swilling
Train, will you show
Me the way out of hope?

an item, no. 64

His universe spins in all directions. A morally corrupt and economically unstable people gear up for war. Insanity-medicated average workers plug properly into news and protect fear, paused like a beach horizon—few loving memories broadcast on closed circuit television. The crowd screamed, Sad is the day—they realize this lore she died of and the many things they fear.