WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.960 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I am so glad you 00:00:02.960 --> 00:00:05.540 are here with us today. If you are new to the 00:00:05.540 --> 00:00:09.000 show, here's the drill. We take a massive stack 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:12.259 of articles, biographies, research papers, and 00:00:12.259 --> 00:00:14.720 critical essay stuff that would take you weeks 00:00:14.720 --> 00:00:17.679 to get through on your own, and we squeeze them. 00:00:17.820 --> 00:00:19.620 We really do. We squeeze them until we get the 00:00:19.620 --> 00:00:22.460 pure juice of knowledge out of them. We are looking 00:00:22.460 --> 00:00:25.019 for the insights, the context, and the why behind 00:00:25.019 --> 00:00:28.120 the facts, all without the fluff or the information 00:00:28.120 --> 00:00:31.359 overload. That is exactly right. Our goal is 00:00:31.359 --> 00:00:34.520 to get you to that aha moment. We want to take 00:00:34.520 --> 00:00:37.140 you past the Wikipedia summary and into the engine 00:00:37.140 --> 00:00:39.359 room of the topic. Yeah. We want you to walk 00:00:39.359 --> 00:00:41.200 away feeling like you didn't just hear a story, 00:00:41.280 --> 00:00:43.460 but that you actually understand the machinery 00:00:43.460 --> 00:00:47.320 behind it. And today, oh man, today we are tackling 00:00:47.320 --> 00:00:50.259 a giant, a quiet giant, maybe, but a giant nonetheless. 00:00:50.439 --> 00:00:52.380 We are looking at the life and work of Raymond 00:00:52.380 --> 00:00:55.590 Carver. Carver, yes. Now, if you have taken a 00:00:55.590 --> 00:00:57.570 creative writing class in the last 40 years, 00:00:57.609 --> 00:00:59.950 or even if you've just casually browsed a bookstore's 00:00:59.950 --> 00:01:01.850 fiction section, you know this name. Oh, you 00:01:01.850 --> 00:01:04.450 do? You have felt this man's influence, whether 00:01:04.450 --> 00:01:07.230 you realize it or not. He is often called the 00:01:07.230 --> 00:01:10.260 American Chekhov. And that's not just some, you 00:01:10.260 --> 00:01:12.540 know, fancy marketing phrase. It's a real comparison. 00:01:12.579 --> 00:01:16.379 Right. He is basically credited with single handedly 00:01:16.379 --> 00:01:19.859 revitalizing the short story form in the 1980s. 00:01:19.859 --> 00:01:22.019 It is honestly hard to overstate how influential 00:01:22.019 --> 00:01:24.560 he was. You have to understand the context before 00:01:24.560 --> 00:01:27.319 Carver hit the scene. The literary landscape 00:01:27.319 --> 00:01:30.180 in America was. Well, it was very different. 00:01:30.439 --> 00:01:33.159 You had high modernism. You had metafiction writers 00:01:33.159 --> 00:01:35.859 who were writing about writing. It was very cerebral, 00:01:36.019 --> 00:01:39.000 very tricky, sometimes a bit academic. Very exclusive 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:41.400 in a way. Very exclusive. And then suddenly here 00:01:41.400 --> 00:01:44.659 comes Raymond Carver with these brutal, simple, 00:01:44.920 --> 00:01:48.879 honest stories about working class people. It 00:01:48.879 --> 00:01:50.560 just changed the temperature of American fiction. 00:01:50.719 --> 00:01:53.180 It grounded it again. But what makes this deep 00:01:53.180 --> 00:01:55.739 dive so fascinating to me and why I was so excited 00:01:55.739 --> 00:01:58.400 to dig through the stack of sources is that the 00:01:58.400 --> 00:02:00.500 story of Raymond Carver is just as compelling 00:02:00.500 --> 00:02:02.980 and frankly just as tragic and triumphant as 00:02:02.980 --> 00:02:05.519 anything he ever wrote. This isn't just a biography 00:02:05.519 --> 00:02:07.920 of a writer who sat in a room and typed for 30 00:02:07.920 --> 00:02:10.340 years. Not at all. It's a survival story. This 00:02:10.340 --> 00:02:13.439 is a case study in Dirty Realism. It's a brutal 00:02:13.439 --> 00:02:16.060 look at the struggle between making art and just 00:02:16.060 --> 00:02:19.620 trying to survive the day. It's a study in poverty. 00:02:20.250 --> 00:02:23.569 in alcoholism, and crucially, in the ethics of 00:02:23.569 --> 00:02:26.009 editing. We are going to get into some really 00:02:26.009 --> 00:02:28.409 messy territory regarding authorship today. Oh, 00:02:28.469 --> 00:02:30.990 the Gordon Lisch controversy. Yeah. That is the 00:02:30.990 --> 00:02:33.250 elephant in the room. We absolutely have to unpack 00:02:33.250 --> 00:02:36.110 that because it changes how you read every single 00:02:36.110 --> 00:02:38.849 word Carver published. It really does. It's fundamental. 00:02:39.009 --> 00:02:42.129 And structurally, his life is so clean cut, it 00:02:42.129 --> 00:02:44.960 almost feels scripted. He strictly divided his 00:02:44.960 --> 00:02:46.900 existence into two parts. He actually referred 00:02:46.900 --> 00:02:49.259 to them that way. He did. His first life and 00:02:49.259 --> 00:02:51.939 his second life. That distinction is vital, isn't 00:02:51.939 --> 00:02:54.120 it? It's everything. You have the first life, 00:02:54.219 --> 00:02:58.409 which was defined by chaos. Poverty, bad decisions, 00:02:58.530 --> 00:03:01.310 and a really severe life -threatening battle 00:03:01.310 --> 00:03:04.710 with alcoholism. Total collapse. Just utter collapse. 00:03:04.990 --> 00:03:07.150 And then you have the second life, which was 00:03:07.150 --> 00:03:09.949 this miraculous period of sobriety, redemption, 00:03:10.349 --> 00:03:13.270 and global acclaim. It's a redemption arc, but 00:03:13.270 --> 00:03:15.389 it's a gritty one. It's not a Disney movie. No, 00:03:15.449 --> 00:03:18.300 not at all. So we have a lot of material to get 00:03:18.300 --> 00:03:20.819 through. We are pulling from biographical accounts, 00:03:21.120 --> 00:03:23.939 publication histories, details regarding his 00:03:23.939 --> 00:03:25.879 literary estate, and even some really interesting 00:03:25.879 --> 00:03:28.319 notes on the film adaptations of his work. We've 00:03:28.319 --> 00:03:31.219 got a lot to unpack. Okay, so here is our mission 00:03:31.219 --> 00:03:34.139 statement for this deep dive. We want to understand 00:03:34.139 --> 00:03:37.319 how a guy from a blue -collar sawmill town in 00:03:37.319 --> 00:03:40.520 the Pacific Northwest, a guy who didn't even 00:03:40.520 --> 00:03:43.360 finish his master's degree, ended up shaping 00:03:43.360 --> 00:03:46.740 an entire literary movement. Right. How does 00:03:46.740 --> 00:03:49.500 that guy become the guy? Exactly. Then we need 00:03:49.500 --> 00:03:51.479 to unpack the massive controversy surrounding 00:03:51.479 --> 00:03:54.900 his famous minimalist style. Specifically, how 00:03:54.900 --> 00:03:56.919 much of that was actually him and how much was 00:03:56.919 --> 00:03:59.439 his editor, Gordon Lish? The million dollar question. 00:03:59.699 --> 00:04:01.240 And finally, we're going to look at that redemption 00:04:01.240 --> 00:04:03.539 arc because honestly, it's one of the most compelling 00:04:03.539 --> 00:04:06.159 comebacks in literary history. It really is. 00:04:06.300 --> 00:04:09.020 And I think to understand any of that, we have 00:04:09.020 --> 00:04:11.400 to start at the very beginning. We have to look 00:04:11.400 --> 00:04:14.360 at where he came from because with Carver. Geography 00:04:14.360 --> 00:04:17.500 isn't just a setting. It's a character. It's 00:04:17.500 --> 00:04:21.519 destiny. Let's go there. Segment one, the blue 00:04:21.519 --> 00:04:25.160 -collar roots. Raymond Clevey Carver Jr. was 00:04:25.160 --> 00:04:29.399 born on May 25, 1938, in Klatskanie, Oregon. 00:04:29.699 --> 00:04:31.800 Which is a mill town on the Columbia River. Yeah. 00:04:31.920 --> 00:04:33.560 But he mostly grew up in Yakima, Washington. 00:04:33.839 --> 00:04:35.519 Now let's paint the picture for the listener. 00:04:35.699 --> 00:04:39.480 When we say Yakima in the 1940s and 50s, we aren't 00:04:39.480 --> 00:04:42.079 talking about the Pacific Northwest of Portlandia. 00:04:42.139 --> 00:04:44.610 Oh no! We aren't talking about artisanal coffee 00:04:44.610 --> 00:04:47.129 shops and tech startups. No, absolutely not. 00:04:47.269 --> 00:04:50.490 This is harsh, dry country. It's the eastern 00:04:50.490 --> 00:04:53.110 side of the Cascades. It's agricultural and industrial. 00:04:53.430 --> 00:04:56.129 It's apple orchards and sawmills. Yeah. It's 00:04:56.129 --> 00:04:57.629 a place where you work with your hands and your 00:04:57.629 --> 00:04:59.829 body breaks down by the time you're 50. It's 00:04:59.829 --> 00:05:01.569 a tough place. And I think when people picture 00:05:01.569 --> 00:05:04.050 a famous writer, they imagine someone growing 00:05:04.050 --> 00:05:06.629 up in a house full of books, maybe parents who 00:05:06.629 --> 00:05:09.610 are professors or lawyers. A certain level of 00:05:09.610 --> 00:05:11.910 comfort. Right. They imagine a certain level 00:05:11.910 --> 00:05:13.750 of comfort. That was not the Carver household. 00:05:14.089 --> 00:05:16.730 Not even close. And this is crucial context. 00:05:17.009 --> 00:05:20.550 His father, Clevey Raymond Carver, was a sawmill 00:05:20.550 --> 00:05:23.269 worker originally from Arkansas. He was a fisherman 00:05:23.269 --> 00:05:26.730 and, importantly for our story later, a very 00:05:26.730 --> 00:05:30.050 heavy drinker. A functional alcoholic for a time. 00:05:30.110 --> 00:05:32.920 For a time. And his mother, Ella. worked on and 00:05:32.920 --> 00:05:35.279 off as a waitress and a retail clerk. She was 00:05:35.279 --> 00:05:37.459 always trying to hold things together. So to 00:05:37.459 --> 00:05:39.300 be clear, we are talking about the working poor. 00:05:39.459 --> 00:05:42.319 Yes, and that distinction is vital. A lot of 00:05:42.319 --> 00:05:44.560 writers observe the working class. They might 00:05:44.560 --> 00:05:46.920 go on a poverty tour to get material for their 00:05:46.920 --> 00:05:49.519 novel, or they might work a summer job in a factory 00:05:49.519 --> 00:05:51.839 to see what it's like. Sure, research. Carver 00:05:51.839 --> 00:05:53.959 didn't do that. He was the working poor. He grew 00:05:53.959 --> 00:05:56.019 up in that environment. His brother James was 00:05:56.019 --> 00:05:59.139 born in 1943, and the family dynamic was always 00:05:59.139 --> 00:06:02.740 centered on just getting by. The anxiety of if 00:06:02.740 --> 00:06:05.319 the car breaks down, we don't eat was the baseline 00:06:05.319 --> 00:06:08.300 hum of his childhood. Wow. And his early interests, 00:06:08.379 --> 00:06:10.360 they really reflect that environment, too. The 00:06:10.360 --> 00:06:12.740 documentation says he wasn't reading high theory 00:06:12.740 --> 00:06:14.980 or French philosophy. No, no. He was reading 00:06:14.980 --> 00:06:17.959 novels by Mickey Spillane. He was reading publications 00:06:17.959 --> 00:06:21.079 like Sports Afield and Outdoor Life. He was out 00:06:21.079 --> 00:06:23.279 hunting and fishing with his friends and family. 00:06:23.439 --> 00:06:26.420 Exactly. He was immersed in the outdoors and 00:06:26.420 --> 00:06:28.720 the gritty reality of that specific American 00:06:28.720 --> 00:06:31.699 landscape. It grinded him. When he wrote about 00:06:31.699 --> 00:06:34.899 fishing or hunting later in his stories, he wasn't 00:06:34.899 --> 00:06:37.259 looking up the terminology in a library. He lived 00:06:37.259 --> 00:06:39.360 it. He lived it. Right. When a character in a 00:06:39.360 --> 00:06:42.519 Carver story claims a fish, Carver knows exactly 00:06:42.519 --> 00:06:44.399 what that smells like, the texture of the scales, 00:06:44.600 --> 00:06:47.089 the sound the knife makes. That authenticity 00:06:47.089 --> 00:06:49.509 is something you can't fake. You feel it on the 00:06:49.509 --> 00:06:52.189 page. Now we have to talk about how quickly adulthood 00:06:52.189 --> 00:06:54.490 hit him, because this blows my mind, and I think 00:06:54.490 --> 00:06:56.449 it really explains the pressure cooker that his 00:06:56.449 --> 00:06:59.189 life became. He graduated from Yakima High School 00:06:59.189 --> 00:07:02.269 in 1956, and then he immediately started working 00:07:02.269 --> 00:07:05.529 with his father at a sawmill in California. The 00:07:05.529 --> 00:07:08.910 path was set. Graduate, work at the mill, die 00:07:08.910 --> 00:07:11.009 at the mill. That was the trajectory. There was 00:07:11.009 --> 00:07:13.790 no college fund waiting for him. But then, boom, 00:07:13.970 --> 00:07:16.769 June 1957. The turning point. Or what seemed 00:07:16.769 --> 00:07:21.149 like one. He is 19 years old. He marries Marianne 00:07:21.149 --> 00:07:23.610 Burke. How old was she? She was 16. Just 16. 00:07:23.790 --> 00:07:26.089 She had just graduated from a private Episcopal 00:07:26.089 --> 00:07:28.389 school for girls. A completely different world. 00:07:28.550 --> 00:07:31.850 19 and 16. They were babies. They were essentially 00:07:31.850 --> 00:07:35.189 kids playing house, except the stakes were incredibly 00:07:35.189 --> 00:07:38.569 real. And they didn't waste any time. Not at 00:07:38.569 --> 00:07:41.410 all. Their daughter, Christine, was born in December 00:07:41.410 --> 00:07:45.209 of that same year, 1957. And their son, Vance, 00:07:45.370 --> 00:07:47.970 came along just a year later. So before he's 00:07:47.970 --> 00:07:50.089 even old enough to legally drink, he's a husband 00:07:50.089 --> 00:07:52.389 and a father of two. I just can't imagine that 00:07:52.389 --> 00:07:55.009 pressure. And this sets up the dynamic that would 00:07:55.009 --> 00:07:58.029 dominate the next 20 years of his life. The grind. 00:07:58.610 --> 00:08:01.180 The struggle for time. The struggle for money. 00:08:01.279 --> 00:08:03.480 This is where the tragedy of the first life begins. 00:08:03.779 --> 00:08:05.759 Not because they were bad people, but because 00:08:05.759 --> 00:08:08.139 the economic trap was sprung before they even 00:08:08.139 --> 00:08:10.319 knew what was happening. OK, let's list some 00:08:10.319 --> 00:08:11.879 of the jobs he helped just to give the listener 00:08:11.879 --> 00:08:13.500 a sense of this. I'm looking at the list here 00:08:13.500 --> 00:08:16.980 from our sources and it's just it's brutal. Delivery 00:08:16.980 --> 00:08:20.920 man, janitor, library assistant, sawmill laborer. 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:24.220 And meanwhile, Marianne is working as an administrative 00:08:24.220 --> 00:08:27.300 assistant, a salesperson, a waitress and later 00:08:27.300 --> 00:08:29.709 a high school English teacher. Whatever it took. 00:08:29.889 --> 00:08:32.350 It was a constant hustle. They were always broke. 00:08:32.509 --> 00:08:35.230 They were moving from rental to rental. Bankruptcy 00:08:35.230 --> 00:08:37.889 was always looming over their heads. They filed 00:08:37.889 --> 00:08:41.370 for bankruptcy twice, I believe. Twice. And this 00:08:41.370 --> 00:08:44.149 is where we find one of those huge aha moments 00:08:44.149 --> 00:08:47.429 regarding his writing style. Yes. This is so 00:08:47.429 --> 00:08:50.789 important. Go on. There's a persistent myth that 00:08:50.789 --> 00:08:53.929 Carver's style, that short, punchy, minimalist 00:08:53.929 --> 00:08:57.360 style, was purely an aesthetic choice. that he 00:08:57.360 --> 00:09:00.000 sat down in a leather chair and decided, I shall 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:03.539 be a minimalist. Right. As if. But when you look 00:09:03.539 --> 00:09:05.960 at his life, you realize it was a logistical 00:09:05.960 --> 00:09:08.720 necessity. There was a specific anecdote about 00:09:08.720 --> 00:09:11.340 his time in Sacramento in the mid -60s. He was 00:09:11.340 --> 00:09:13.600 working as a night custodian at Mercy Hospital. 00:09:13.740 --> 00:09:15.500 Oh, I love this story. It's so cinematic. So 00:09:15.500 --> 00:09:17.460 he's the janitor. He's pushing a mop. He's the 00:09:17.460 --> 00:09:19.399 janitor. But he figures out a system. He would 00:09:19.399 --> 00:09:21.820 do all the janitorial work, cleaning the floors, 00:09:21.919 --> 00:09:23.539 the toilets, the trash, everything in the first 00:09:23.539 --> 00:09:26.240 hour of his shift. Just a mad dash of cleaning. 00:09:26.620 --> 00:09:28.419 So he could sit down and write for the rest of 00:09:28.419 --> 00:09:31.000 the shift. Wow. In some back closet, probably. 00:09:31.340 --> 00:09:33.620 Exactly. Think about what that does to your writing. 00:09:33.720 --> 00:09:37.179 You are exhausted. You are smelling bleach. You 00:09:37.179 --> 00:09:39.419 are stealing time from your employer. You are 00:09:39.419 --> 00:09:41.960 worried about money. You're not writing a symphony. 00:09:42.159 --> 00:09:44.240 No. You don't have the luxury of spending four 00:09:44.240 --> 00:09:47.440 years plotting out a 600 -page novel with complex 00:09:47.440 --> 00:09:50.759 subplots and sprawling genealogies. You need 00:09:50.759 --> 00:09:52.559 to write something you can finish in one sitting. 00:09:52.720 --> 00:09:54.710 Because if you don't finish it tonight... You 00:09:54.710 --> 00:09:56.230 might not get a chance to come back to it for 00:09:56.230 --> 00:09:59.750 a week or ever. Precisely. The format of his 00:09:59.750 --> 00:10:03.009 work, short stories and poems, wasn't just an 00:10:03.009 --> 00:10:05.590 aesthetic choice initially. It was a logistical 00:10:05.590 --> 00:10:09.009 necessity. His lifestyle dictated his form. He 00:10:09.009 --> 00:10:10.909 wrote short pieces because that's all he had 00:10:10.909 --> 00:10:13.309 the bandwidth for. He needed works that were 00:10:13.309 --> 00:10:14.929 portable, that he could hold in his head while 00:10:14.929 --> 00:10:17.159 he was mopping a floor. That makes so much sense. 00:10:17.179 --> 00:10:18.980 It's like the pressure of his life compressed 00:10:18.980 --> 00:10:21.360 the coal into these little diamonds of stories. 00:10:21.720 --> 00:10:24.299 But he did try to get a formal education in writing, 00:10:24.379 --> 00:10:26.399 right? He did. It wasn't all just writing in 00:10:26.399 --> 00:10:29.299 hospital closets. No, he did. And this leads 00:10:29.299 --> 00:10:31.980 us to the education of a writer. He moved his 00:10:31.980 --> 00:10:34.519 family to Paradise, California. Ironic name, 00:10:34.700 --> 00:10:37.080 given their struggles. Very ironic. This was 00:10:37.080 --> 00:10:40.500 in 1958. He started attending Chico State College. 00:10:40.720 --> 00:10:43.840 And this is where fate stepped in. He enrolled 00:10:43.840 --> 00:10:46.320 in a creative writing course taught by John Gardner. 00:10:46.440 --> 00:10:49.259 John Gardner, the famous novelist? Grendel, the 00:10:49.259 --> 00:10:51.940 sunlight dialogues? Yes, though at the time he 00:10:51.940 --> 00:10:54.159 was a recent doctoral graduate, just a young, 00:10:54.220 --> 00:10:57.240 passionate professor. But he became a massive 00:10:57.240 --> 00:11:00.320 mentor for Carver. He saw the talent immediately. 00:11:00.899 --> 00:11:03.519 What did he do? Well, for Run, he gave Carver 00:11:03.519 --> 00:11:05.580 the key to his office so he could write on weekends. 00:11:06.139 --> 00:11:09.179 Just an incredible act of generosity. But more 00:11:09.179 --> 00:11:11.580 importantly... Gardner gave him a piece of advice 00:11:11.580 --> 00:11:13.740 that is almost legendary now. We talked about 00:11:13.740 --> 00:11:16.200 minimalism earlier. Well, Gardner started planting 00:11:16.200 --> 00:11:18.879 those seeds. What was the advice? Gardner told 00:11:18.879 --> 00:11:21.580 him to use 15 words instead of 25. Use 15 words 00:11:21.580 --> 00:11:24.440 instead of 25. Okay, that's specific. It's about 00:11:24.440 --> 00:11:27.360 economy. It's about cutting the fat. Gardner 00:11:27.360 --> 00:11:29.120 was teaching him that every word has to fight 00:11:29.120 --> 00:11:31.639 for its life on the page. If a word isn't doing 00:11:31.639 --> 00:11:34.639 work, fire it. Get rid of it. Now, keep that 00:11:34.639 --> 00:11:37.019 in mind. Because later, when we talk about his 00:11:37.019 --> 00:11:38.700 editor, Gordon Lish, we're going to see that 00:11:38.700 --> 00:11:42.220 ratio get even more extreme. Yeah. But Gardner 00:11:42.220 --> 00:11:44.539 was the first one to tell him, keep it tight. 00:11:45.200 --> 00:11:47.759 Don't show off. Just tell the truth. After Chico 00:11:47.759 --> 00:11:50.080 State, he moved to Humboldt State College in 00:11:50.080 --> 00:11:53.039 Arcata. He's studying under Richard Cortez Day. 00:11:53.259 --> 00:11:55.659 He's serving as the editor for the literary magazine 00:11:55.659 --> 00:11:58.379 there called Toyon. Right. He's getting his B 00:11:58.379 --> 00:12:02.139 .A. in general studies. Interestingly. He avoided 00:12:02.139 --> 00:12:04.080 the foreign language requirements, which is a 00:12:04.080 --> 00:12:06.320 very Carver detail. He just wanted to focus on 00:12:06.320 --> 00:12:07.980 the writing. He wasn't trying to be an academic. 00:12:08.200 --> 00:12:11.480 No. And despite having a B -minus average, because, 00:12:11.519 --> 00:12:13.580 again, he was prioritizing his own writing over 00:12:13.580 --> 00:12:16.259 coursework, he got accepted into the holy grail 00:12:16.259 --> 00:12:18.679 of writing programs, the Iowa Writers Workshop. 00:12:19.100 --> 00:12:21.279 This is the big leagues. This is where the literary 00:12:21.279 --> 00:12:24.179 elite are made. Flannery O 'Connor, Kurt Vonnegut, 00:12:24.240 --> 00:12:27.860 Philip Roth. The list of Iowa alumni is insane. 00:12:28.179 --> 00:12:30.559 It's the pinnacle. He gets a $1 ,000 fellowship 00:12:30.559 --> 00:12:34.419 for the 1963 -1964 academic year. So the blue 00:12:34.419 --> 00:12:36.980 -collar kid from Yakima packs up the family and 00:12:36.980 --> 00:12:39.720 heads to Iowa. How did that go? Not well. Not 00:12:39.720 --> 00:12:43.860 well. No. It was basically a disaster. He felt 00:12:43.860 --> 00:12:47.029 completely out of place. You have to remember, 00:12:47.169 --> 00:12:50.330 the Iowa Writers Workshop was a very upper -middle 00:12:50.330 --> 00:12:53.590 -class milieu, as the sources describe it. You 00:12:53.590 --> 00:12:56.090 had kids from Harvard and Yale. They didn't have 00:12:56.090 --> 00:12:58.029 wives and children. They weren't worried about 00:12:58.029 --> 00:13:00.009 paying the electric bill. They were there to 00:13:00.009 --> 00:13:03.110 discuss theory with a capital T. And Carver's 00:13:03.110 --> 00:13:05.389 there, probably wearing cheap clothes, worrying 00:13:05.389 --> 00:13:07.590 about feeding his kids, feeling like a total 00:13:07.590 --> 00:13:10.649 alien. He was culturally alienated. He was homesick 00:13:10.649 --> 00:13:13.210 for California. He only completed 12 credits. 00:13:13.740 --> 00:13:16.519 He didn't even finish the degree. No. He left 00:13:16.519 --> 00:13:20.120 after one year. He didn't get the MFA. In fact, 00:13:20.220 --> 00:13:23.379 later on his CV, he falsely claimed he got the 00:13:23.379 --> 00:13:25.740 MFA, which shows you how much pressure he felt 00:13:25.740 --> 00:13:28.259 about credentials. And the shame. And how much 00:13:28.259 --> 00:13:30.360 shame he carried about leaving. But the reality 00:13:30.360 --> 00:13:32.779 was he couldn't afford to stay, emotionally or 00:13:32.779 --> 00:13:35.179 financially. Mary Ann even tried to intercede 00:13:35.179 --> 00:13:37.159 with the program director to get him more money, 00:13:37.259 --> 00:13:40.139 comparing his plate to Tennessee Williams, but 00:13:40.139 --> 00:13:42.710 it didn't work. Wow. Carver eventually just decided 00:13:42.710 --> 00:13:44.990 to leave. He couldn't do it. That class tension 00:13:44.990 --> 00:13:48.090 seems like it really defined him. He was talented 00:13:48.090 --> 00:13:49.950 enough to be in the room with the elite, but 00:13:49.950 --> 00:13:52.350 he never felt like he belonged in the room. Exactly. 00:13:52.809 --> 00:13:57.090 And that tension fuels the stories. Yeah. His 00:13:57.090 --> 00:13:59.990 characters are often people who feel life is 00:13:59.990 --> 00:14:01.769 happening to them, people who are on the outside 00:14:01.769 --> 00:14:04.549 looking in. They're bewildered by their own bad 00:14:04.549 --> 00:14:06.970 luck. They don't have the language of the elite 00:14:06.970 --> 00:14:09.830 to explain their own pain. So he goes back to 00:14:09.830 --> 00:14:12.820 California. And for a while, it looks like he 00:14:12.820 --> 00:14:14.980 might go the straight and narrow path. He gets 00:14:14.980 --> 00:14:17.700 a white -collar job. Yeah, this is the late 60s. 00:14:17.700 --> 00:14:20.000 Yeah. A brief moment of stability or what looked 00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:22.399 like it. He moves to Palo Alto and works at Science 00:14:22.399 --> 00:14:25.240 Research Associates, which was a subsidiary of 00:14:25.240 --> 00:14:27.200 IBM as a textbook editor. Yeah, he's wearing 00:14:27.200 --> 00:14:29.799 a tie, editing textbooks. It was a transition 00:14:29.799 --> 00:14:32.659 period. He's making connections, too. He meets 00:14:32.659 --> 00:14:34.679 Gordon Lish around this time, who was working 00:14:34.679 --> 00:14:36.740 across the street at a place called Behavioral 00:14:36.740 --> 00:14:38.820 Research Laboratories. They started grabbing 00:14:38.820 --> 00:14:41.580 drinks together. Ah, okay. Put a pin in that 00:14:41.580 --> 00:14:44.559 name. Gordon Lish. That relationship is going 00:14:44.559 --> 00:14:47.159 to become the most important and most volatile 00:14:47.159 --> 00:14:49.559 creative partnership of his life. Absolutely. 00:14:49.779 --> 00:14:51.860 Before we get to the literary stardom, we have 00:14:51.860 --> 00:14:53.360 to go through the darkness. We have to talk about 00:14:53.360 --> 00:14:56.200 the first life and the collapse. Right. Segment 00:14:56.200 --> 00:14:59.899 three, the alcoholism. The sources say the serious 00:14:59.899 --> 00:15:02.220 drinking really kicked into high gear around 00:15:02.220 --> 00:15:06.360 1973 or 1974. That's the timeline. Carver admitted 00:15:06.360 --> 00:15:09.320 himself that he gave up writing and took to full 00:15:09.320 --> 00:15:11.299 -time drinking. Full -time drinking. That's his 00:15:11.299 --> 00:15:14.159 phrase. His phrase. It wasn't just a bad habit. 00:15:14.240 --> 00:15:16.500 It was a consumption of his entire existence. 00:15:16.840 --> 00:15:18.580 Yeah. We aren't talking about having a glass 00:15:18.580 --> 00:15:20.460 of wine with dinner. We were talking about vodka 00:15:20.460 --> 00:15:22.980 in the morning. We were talking about blackouts. 00:15:23.240 --> 00:15:25.440 There's this infamous period where he returns 00:15:25.440 --> 00:15:28.080 to Iowa, of all places, as a visiting lecturer. 00:15:28.340 --> 00:15:30.240 And he's teaching alongside another literary 00:15:30.240 --> 00:15:33.059 giant, John Cheever. Teaching might be a strong 00:15:33.059 --> 00:15:36.460 word. Laughs. Right. The source says Carver stated 00:15:36.460 --> 00:15:39.139 they did less teaching than drinking and almost 00:15:39.139 --> 00:15:41.940 no writing. It's one of the great tragic pairings 00:15:41.940 --> 00:15:44.320 in American letters. Cheevers was also a terrible 00:15:44.320 --> 00:15:47.139 alcoholic. So you had these two brilliant writers, 00:15:47.259 --> 00:15:50.539 these two masters of the short form, just enabling 00:15:50.539 --> 00:15:52.980 each other's self -destruction. Can you imagine 00:15:52.980 --> 00:15:55.580 being a student in that class? You have Raymond 00:15:55.580 --> 00:15:57.500 Carver and John Cheever, two of the greatest 00:15:57.500 --> 00:15:59.940 American writers, and they are just getting smashed 00:15:59.940 --> 00:16:03.059 together. It sounds romantic in a tragic bohemian 00:16:03.059 --> 00:16:06.500 way. the tortured artist trope. But the reality 00:16:06.500 --> 00:16:09.820 was grim. It was messy. It was sad. Carver was 00:16:09.820 --> 00:16:11.960 also trying to juggle teaching gigs at UC Santa 00:16:11.960 --> 00:16:14.720 Cruz and Berkeley at the same time. He was commuting, 00:16:14.720 --> 00:16:18.539 or trying to, but he was missing classes. He 00:16:18.539 --> 00:16:20.340 was hospitalized for alcohol -related illnesses. 00:16:20.799 --> 00:16:23.279 Eventually, he was gently asked to resign. He 00:16:23.279 --> 00:16:25.159 was burning bridges everywhere he went. He couldn't 00:16:25.159 --> 00:16:27.659 hold a job. And the toll this took on his family, 00:16:27.779 --> 00:16:30.470 reading about it is heartbreaking. We have the 00:16:30.470 --> 00:16:32.789 account from Marianne Burke Carver's memoir, 00:16:33.009 --> 00:16:35.149 What It Used to Be Like. It is heartbreaking. 00:16:35.629 --> 00:16:39.009 The fall began in earnest around 1972. He started 00:16:39.009 --> 00:16:41.940 an affair. The drinking escalated. Marianne writes 00:16:41.940 --> 00:16:44.639 that by the fall of 1974, he was more dead than 00:16:44.639 --> 00:16:46.740 alive. More dead than alive. That phrase just 00:16:46.740 --> 00:16:48.639 sticks with you. She had to drop out of her own 00:16:48.639 --> 00:16:51.240 Ph .D. program to drive him to his classes because 00:16:51.240 --> 00:16:53.039 he couldn't drive himself. He'd lost his license. 00:16:53.179 --> 00:16:55.039 And it wasn't just negligence. There was physical 00:16:55.039 --> 00:16:57.559 abuse. Right. We can't shy away from that part. 00:16:57.720 --> 00:16:59.799 We can't. There were smashed bottles. There was 00:16:59.799 --> 00:17:03.139 violence. It was a chaotic, dangerous household 00:17:03.139 --> 00:17:05.779 for her and for the kids. And she stayed for 00:17:05.779 --> 00:17:08.660 a long time. She said she wanted to hang in there 00:17:08.660 --> 00:17:10.839 for the long haul. She thought she could outlast 00:17:10.839 --> 00:17:13.279 the drinking. That's a very common dynamic in 00:17:13.279 --> 00:17:15.599 these situations. She remembered the boy she 00:17:15.599 --> 00:17:18.799 married at 16. She believed in his talent. She 00:17:18.799 --> 00:17:21.039 was his first and most important editor in many 00:17:21.039 --> 00:17:23.839 ways. But there was a breaking point. When was 00:17:23.839 --> 00:17:27.519 that? It happened in 1978. Carver had started 00:17:27.519 --> 00:17:30.759 a new teaching position in El Paso. And he met 00:17:30.759 --> 00:17:33.869 someone else. He tried to invite his new partner 00:17:33.869 --> 00:17:36.849 to Thanksgiving. Oh, wow. With Marianne and the 00:17:36.849 --> 00:17:40.569 family? Yes. That's a bridge too far. Unbelievable. 00:17:41.029 --> 00:17:43.690 Yeah. And Marianne realized, I've gone through 00:17:43.690 --> 00:17:45.410 all these years fighting to keep it balanced, 00:17:45.430 --> 00:17:48.390 and here it is coming at me again. She realized 00:17:48.390 --> 00:17:50.690 she had to save herself. It's important, though, 00:17:50.710 --> 00:17:53.170 isn't it, to not just gloss over this? When we 00:17:53.170 --> 00:17:55.869 read his stories about broken marriages and desperate 00:17:55.869 --> 00:17:58.509 people sitting at kitchen tables drinking gin... 00:17:58.839 --> 00:18:01.359 We need to know he isn't making this up. He isn't 00:18:01.359 --> 00:18:03.640 imagining what a bad marriage feels like. He 00:18:03.640 --> 00:18:06.339 isn't. He rode from the trenches. And he believed, 00:18:06.400 --> 00:18:09.079 truly, that he would have died at age 40 if he 00:18:09.079 --> 00:18:11.660 hadn't stopped. He was hospitalized three times 00:18:11.660 --> 00:18:14.859 between 1976 and 1977. He was on the brink of 00:18:14.859 --> 00:18:17.599 death. His liver was failing. His brain was frying. 00:18:17.880 --> 00:18:21.079 But then the miracle happens. Segment four, the 00:18:21.079 --> 00:18:24.619 second life. June 2nd, 1977. That's the date. 00:18:24.740 --> 00:18:26.740 That is the date Raymond Carver stopped drinking. 00:18:27.230 --> 00:18:29.309 He did it with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. 00:18:29.690 --> 00:18:32.130 And he drew a hard line in the sand. Everything 00:18:32.130 --> 00:18:35.269 after June Tekken, 1977, he called his second 00:18:35.269 --> 00:18:37.529 life. It's amazing that he could pinpoint it 00:18:37.529 --> 00:18:40.329 so precisely. It's like a rebirth. And shortly 00:18:40.329 --> 00:18:43.690 after this, in November 1977, he meets Tess Gallagher 00:18:43.690 --> 00:18:46.089 at a conference in Dallas. Tess Gallagher is 00:18:46.089 --> 00:18:48.509 a phenomenal poet in her own right. And this 00:18:48.509 --> 00:18:50.450 relationship was completely different from his 00:18:50.450 --> 00:18:52.920 first marriage. How so? It was a meeting of literary 00:18:52.920 --> 00:18:55.319 peers. It wasn't founded on teenage dependency 00:18:55.319 --> 00:18:58.000 or the chaos of survival. It was two mature artists 00:18:58.000 --> 00:19:00.619 finding each other. They moved in together, lived 00:19:00.619 --> 00:19:04.279 in El Paso, Tucson, and finally settled in Syracuse, 00:19:04.279 --> 00:19:06.640 New York. And I love this detail about their 00:19:06.640 --> 00:19:09.160 life in Syracuse. Apparently they were so popular 00:19:09.160 --> 00:19:11.240 and their house was such a hub for students and 00:19:11.240 --> 00:19:13.319 friends that they had to hang a sign outside 00:19:13.319 --> 00:19:16.339 to stop interruptions. Writers at work. Writers 00:19:16.339 --> 00:19:19.420 at work. Like, go away. We are being geniuses 00:19:19.420 --> 00:19:21.980 in here. But it shows the stability he finally 00:19:21.980 --> 00:19:25.140 found. Tess managed the household. She managed 00:19:25.140 --> 00:19:27.380 his estate later. But she also protected his 00:19:27.380 --> 00:19:29.700 time. This stability allowed his work to flourish 00:19:29.700 --> 00:19:32.579 in a way it never could during the chaos of the 00:19:32.579 --> 00:19:34.619 first life. He wasn't writing in a janitor's 00:19:34.619 --> 00:19:37.680 closet anymore. No. He had a room. He had peace. 00:19:37.920 --> 00:19:40.240 He had a partner who understood the work. So 00:19:40.240 --> 00:19:43.019 he's sober. He's happy or at least stable. He's 00:19:43.019 --> 00:19:45.720 with Tess. But now we have to talk about the 00:19:45.720 --> 00:19:48.079 work itself. And this brings us to the biggest 00:19:48.079 --> 00:19:51.220 controversy in Carver scholarship. Segment five, 00:19:51.599 --> 00:19:55.059 the minimalist controversy and Gordon Lish. OK, 00:19:55.119 --> 00:19:57.400 let's unpack this because this is the stuff that 00:19:57.400 --> 00:19:59.980 literary critics fight wars over. This gets to 00:19:59.980 --> 00:20:01.759 the heart of what it means to be an author. First, 00:20:01.960 --> 00:20:04.960 let's define the terms. Dirty realism. What is 00:20:04.960 --> 00:20:07.880 it? Dirty realism is a label critics apply to 00:20:07.880 --> 00:20:10.819 a group of writers in the 70s and 80s. Carver, 00:20:10.920 --> 00:20:14.349 Richard Ford, Tobias Wolfe. It refers to fiction 00:20:14.349 --> 00:20:17.430 about blue -collar, marginalized people. It focuses 00:20:17.430 --> 00:20:19.569 on the sadness and loss in the everyday lives 00:20:19.569 --> 00:20:22.130 of ordinary people. It's not about kings and 00:20:22.130 --> 00:20:24.430 queens or professors. It's about the guy who 00:20:24.430 --> 00:20:26.750 sells vitamins door -to -door and his wife who's 00:20:26.750 --> 00:20:29.569 leaving him. It's about people who shop at Kmart 00:20:29.569 --> 00:20:32.130 and drink cheap beer. And then there's minimalism. 00:20:32.269 --> 00:20:35.109 Right. Minimalism refers to the style. Sparse, 00:20:35.230 --> 00:20:39.279 brief, omitted details, no adverbs. The idea 00:20:39.279 --> 00:20:41.299 is that what you don't say is as important as 00:20:41.299 --> 00:20:44.000 what you do say. It's the iceberg theory, 10 00:20:44.000 --> 00:20:47.480 % on the surface, 90 % underwater. The reader 00:20:47.480 --> 00:20:49.980 has to do the work. But here's the thing. Carver 00:20:49.980 --> 00:20:52.240 rejected these categories. He didn't like being 00:20:52.240 --> 00:20:54.380 called a minimalist. Yeah. He felt it was diminutive. 00:20:54.480 --> 00:20:56.400 He thought it implied his work was small or lacked 00:20:56.400 --> 00:20:58.480 ambition. He just thought he was writing stories. 00:20:59.000 --> 00:21:02.000 But the reason his stories became the definition 00:21:02.000 --> 00:21:04.380 of minimalism has a lot to do with Gordon Lish. 00:21:04.779 --> 00:21:07.180 Okay, so we mentioned Lish earlier. He was the 00:21:07.180 --> 00:21:10.039 fiction editor at Esquire magazine. He was a 00:21:10.039 --> 00:21:12.640 major champion of Carver's work. He was known 00:21:12.640 --> 00:21:15.000 as Captain Fiction. He was a kingmaker. Yeah. 00:21:15.079 --> 00:21:17.579 If Lish liked you, your career was made. Yeah. 00:21:17.740 --> 00:21:21.779 But he was also, let's say, hands -on. Hands 00:21:21.779 --> 00:21:24.200 -on is putting it mildly. The documents we have, 00:21:24.279 --> 00:21:27.779 the letters, the marked up manuscripts. It's 00:21:27.779 --> 00:21:30.819 shocking. Lish was aggressive. Remember John 00:21:30.819 --> 00:21:33.849 Gardner's advice? Use 15 words instead of 25. 00:21:34.269 --> 00:21:37.309 Yeah. Lish's philosophy was use five words in 00:21:37.309 --> 00:21:40.009 place of 15. Or better yet, say nothing at all. 00:21:40.049 --> 00:21:42.869 Wow. That's a huge difference. It's a fundamental 00:21:42.869 --> 00:21:45.569 difference in worldview. He performed what has 00:21:45.569 --> 00:21:47.730 been called a surgical amputation on the Carver 00:21:47.730 --> 00:21:50.089 stories. He would take a story Carver submitted 00:21:50.089 --> 00:21:52.190 and he would cut it down to the bone. How much 00:21:52.190 --> 00:21:54.349 are we talking about? You would cut 40, 50, sometimes 00:21:54.349 --> 00:21:56.609 70 percent of the text. He would change the titles. 00:21:56.750 --> 00:21:58.289 He would change the endings. He would change 00:21:58.289 --> 00:22:00.650 the tone. He would strip away sentimentality, 00:22:00.650 --> 00:22:02.730 make it bleaker, harder, colder. And Carver let 00:22:02.730 --> 00:22:05.769 him do this. Why? For a while, yes. You have 00:22:05.769 --> 00:22:07.990 to understand the power dynamic. Carver was insecure. 00:22:08.369 --> 00:22:10.690 He was a recovering alcoholic. He needed the 00:22:10.690 --> 00:22:12.670 validation. He needed the publication credits. 00:22:13.130 --> 00:22:16.259 Lish. was powerful at Esquire. He felt he didn't 00:22:16.259 --> 00:22:17.859 have a choice. He felt he didn't have a choice, 00:22:17.920 --> 00:22:20.400 so Carver allowed it. He suppressed his own instincts. 00:22:20.660 --> 00:22:24.099 He was grateful, in a way, but also deeply troubled 00:22:24.099 --> 00:22:27.299 by it. The result was the 1981 collection, what 00:22:27.299 --> 00:22:30.000 we talk about when we talk about love. This is 00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:32.700 the breakout book. It made Carver famous. It 00:22:32.700 --> 00:22:36.559 put him on the map. But it is heavily, heavily 00:22:36.559 --> 00:22:39.119 influenced by Lish's editing. It is the Bible 00:22:39.119 --> 00:22:41.900 of Minimalism. Yeah. But is it Carver? That's 00:22:41.900 --> 00:22:43.799 the question. Eventually, Carver started to push 00:22:43.799 --> 00:22:47.160 back. He did. He felt his work was being hijacked. 00:22:47.279 --> 00:22:49.559 He wrote a letter to Lish at one point begging 00:22:49.559 --> 00:22:51.559 him to stop, saying he felt like he was losing 00:22:51.559 --> 00:22:53.619 his soul. He said, I can't take this anymore. 00:22:53.799 --> 00:22:55.440 If the book has to be this way, I don't want 00:22:55.440 --> 00:22:57.900 to publish it. And what did Lish do? He basically 00:22:57.900 --> 00:23:00.619 ignored him. Lish went ahead anyway. By the time 00:23:00.619 --> 00:23:03.319 The Collection Cathedral came out in 1983, Carver 00:23:03.319 --> 00:23:05.940 had regained more control. He was famous enough 00:23:05.940 --> 00:23:08.619 to say no. And Cathedral is different, right? 00:23:08.720 --> 00:23:10.819 The tone is different. Very different. It's widely 00:23:10.819 --> 00:23:13.720 considered his masterpiece. The stories are longer. 00:23:13.920 --> 00:23:16.180 They're more generous. They're more optimistic. 00:23:16.380 --> 00:23:18.880 Yeah. If you read the story Cathedral, it ends 00:23:18.880 --> 00:23:21.059 with a moment of connection and transcendence. 00:23:21.440 --> 00:23:24.339 A blind man and a narrator drawing a cathedral 00:23:24.339 --> 00:23:27.059 together on a piece of paper. It's a moment of 00:23:27.059 --> 00:23:30.799 pure empathy. It's not just bleak despair. That 00:23:30.799 --> 00:23:33.539 was Carver moving away from Lish's shadow. And 00:23:33.539 --> 00:23:35.759 this controversy didn't end when Carver died. 00:23:35.900 --> 00:23:39.880 In fact, it kind of exploded in 2009. Yes. Tess 00:23:39.880 --> 00:23:43.039 Gallagher, his widow, knew the truth. She had 00:23:43.039 --> 00:23:45.140 the original manuscripts, the versions Carver 00:23:45.140 --> 00:23:47.880 typed, before Lish got his red pen out. Yeah. 00:23:47.960 --> 00:23:49.779 She fought for years to have the stories published 00:23:49.779 --> 00:23:51.990 as Carver originally wrote them. And that resulted 00:23:51.990 --> 00:23:54.430 in the book Beginners. Exactly. Beginners was 00:23:54.430 --> 00:23:57.089 published in 2009 by the Library of America. 00:23:57.349 --> 00:24:00.109 It contains the original unedited versions of 00:24:00.109 --> 00:24:02.109 the stories from what we talk about. So now as 00:24:02.109 --> 00:24:03.869 a reader, you can actually compare them side 00:24:03.869 --> 00:24:06.269 by side. You can play detective. You can read 00:24:06.269 --> 00:24:09.869 the bath version and a small good thing. The 00:24:09.869 --> 00:24:12.690 Carver version. And the difference is staggering. 00:24:13.230 --> 00:24:15.450 It's not just a few word changes. It's a complete 00:24:15.450 --> 00:24:17.769 change in philosophy. Let's look at that example. 00:24:17.930 --> 00:24:21.349 Walk us through it. Okay, so in the bath, a young 00:24:21.349 --> 00:24:24.410 boy is hit by a car on his birthday and goes 00:24:24.410 --> 00:24:28.109 into a coma. The parents are terrified. The baker 00:24:28.109 --> 00:24:29.990 keeps calling the house about the birthday cake, 00:24:30.069 --> 00:24:32.349 not knowing what happened. In the Lish version, 00:24:32.589 --> 00:24:35.029 the story ends abruptly. The baker calls again, 00:24:35.210 --> 00:24:37.930 and it feels like a menace. It feels like existential 00:24:37.930 --> 00:24:41.089 dread. It's cold. In the Carver version, a small 00:24:41.089 --> 00:24:43.759 good thing. In A Small Good Thing, the story 00:24:43.759 --> 00:24:46.460 continues for another 10 or 15 pages. The boy 00:24:46.460 --> 00:24:49.000 dies. The parents are broken. They go to the 00:24:49.000 --> 00:24:52.160 bakery to confront the baker. The baker realizes 00:24:52.160 --> 00:24:55.299 his mistake. He didn't know the boy died. He 00:24:55.299 --> 00:24:58.039 is mortified. He apologizes. Wow. He sits them 00:24:58.039 --> 00:25:00.119 down. He gives them warm rolls to eat. He tells 00:25:00.119 --> 00:25:02.460 them eating is a small good thing in a time like 00:25:02.460 --> 00:25:04.640 this. And they sit there together until morning, 00:25:04.740 --> 00:25:07.319 finding comfort in each other, finding a moment 00:25:07.319 --> 00:25:10.039 of grace in the darkness. That completely changes 00:25:10.039 --> 00:25:11.819 the meaning of the story. It turns it from a 00:25:11.819 --> 00:25:14.220 horror story into a story about communion and 00:25:14.220 --> 00:25:17.440 forgiveness. Exactly. It shows the real Carver 00:25:17.440 --> 00:25:20.880 versus the Lish Carver. Lish wanted cool, detached 00:25:20.880 --> 00:25:23.920 shock. Carver wanted human connection, however 00:25:23.920 --> 00:25:26.799 small. That is fascinating. It really makes you 00:25:26.799 --> 00:25:28.839 question the concept of authorship. Like who 00:25:28.839 --> 00:25:30.720 actually wrote the classic version? Was it the 00:25:30.720 --> 00:25:33.119 writer or the editor who cut 50 percent of the 00:25:33.119 --> 00:25:36.059 words? It's the great debate. Some people prefer 00:25:36.059 --> 00:25:38.539 the Lisch versions because they are so punchy 00:25:38.539 --> 00:25:41.160 and unique. They have this icy precision. Others 00:25:41.160 --> 00:25:43.019 prefer the Carver versions because they have 00:25:43.019 --> 00:25:45.660 more heart. But you can't tell the story of Raymond 00:25:45.660 --> 00:25:47.579 Carver without talking about that tug of war. 00:25:47.700 --> 00:25:49.200 OK, let's quickly run through the major works 00:25:49.200 --> 00:25:51.140 for listeners who want to start reading. We mentioned 00:25:51.140 --> 00:25:53.750 what we talk about. And cathedral. What else? 00:25:53.950 --> 00:25:56.430 His first major collection was Will You Please 00:25:56.430 --> 00:26:00.950 Be Quiet, Please? in 1976. That was pre -Lish's 00:26:00.950 --> 00:26:03.230 heaviest edits, and it was shortlisted for the 00:26:03.230 --> 00:26:05.029 National Book Award. That's a great place to 00:26:05.029 --> 00:26:07.089 start. Okay. And then shortly before he died, 00:26:07.210 --> 00:26:09.650 he published Where I'm Calling From in 1988, 00:26:10.029 --> 00:26:12.390 which is the definitive collection of his stories. 00:26:12.569 --> 00:26:15.549 It has new stories and his own curated selection 00:26:15.549 --> 00:26:18.130 of the old ones. If you buy one book, buy that 00:26:18.130 --> 00:26:20.440 one. And we shouldn't ignore his poetry. He was 00:26:20.440 --> 00:26:22.880 a serious poet. He thought of himself as a poet 00:26:22.880 --> 00:26:26.259 first, sometimes. He was. Collections like Ultramarine 00:26:26.259 --> 00:26:29.839 and All of Us. His poetry is very similar to 00:26:29.839 --> 00:26:33.660 his fiction -accessible narrative, clear. You 00:26:33.660 --> 00:26:35.859 can understand it in one reading. He didn't believe 00:26:35.859 --> 00:26:38.279 in hiding the meaning behind complex metaphors. 00:26:38.380 --> 00:26:40.680 He wanted to communicate directly with the reader. 00:26:40.920 --> 00:26:43.279 Which brings us to the end of the road, segment 00:26:43.279 --> 00:26:46.660 seven. Death and legacy. It happens so fast. 00:26:46.859 --> 00:26:49.180 He gets sober in 77. He has this incredible decade 00:26:49.180 --> 00:26:53.140 of work. And then... Lung cancer. He was a heavy 00:26:53.140 --> 00:26:56.000 smoker. Cigarettes were a prop in all his stories, 00:26:56.039 --> 00:26:58.359 and they were a prop in his life. He was diagnosed 00:26:58.359 --> 00:27:01.940 in 1988. He died on August Tech in 1988. He was 00:27:01.940 --> 00:27:04.779 only 50 years old. 50. That is tragically young. 00:27:04.880 --> 00:27:06.640 He was just getting started with his second life. 00:27:06.900 --> 00:27:09.039 It is. But remember, he thought he would die 00:27:09.039 --> 00:27:11.720 at 40 from the drink. So he viewed those last 00:27:11.720 --> 00:27:14.579 10 years as... Gravy. Gravy. That's the title 00:27:14.579 --> 00:27:16.660 of one of his last poems. He talks about this 00:27:16.660 --> 00:27:19.440 explicit idea that every day he lived past his 00:27:19.440 --> 00:27:22.359 drinking days was a bonus. It was all gravy. 00:27:22.599 --> 00:27:25.200 He and Tess managed to get married just six weeks 00:27:25.200 --> 00:27:27.859 before he died in Reno, Nevada. A proper ending 00:27:27.859 --> 00:27:30.779 to their partnership. A validation of their bond. 00:27:31.079 --> 00:27:33.339 It was important to both of them. And I want 00:27:33.339 --> 00:27:35.359 to read the inscription on his tombstone because 00:27:35.359 --> 00:27:37.740 it is one of the most beautiful epitaphs I've 00:27:37.740 --> 00:27:40.279 ever heard. It's from his poem Late Fragment. 00:27:40.440 --> 00:27:43.000 Please do. It says it all. It reads, And did 00:27:43.000 --> 00:27:46.160 you get what you wanted from this life? Even 00:27:46.160 --> 00:27:49.980 so, I did. And what did you want? To call myself 00:27:49.980 --> 00:27:53.380 beloved? To feel myself beloved on the earth? 00:27:53.680 --> 00:27:57.259 It chills me every time. Even so. Even with the 00:27:57.259 --> 00:27:59.500 alcoholism, even with the poverty, even with 00:27:59.500 --> 00:28:01.220 the abuse and the failures and the struggle, 00:28:01.359 --> 00:28:05.039 did you get what you wanted? I did. To feel himself 00:28:05.039 --> 00:28:07.160 beloved. For a guy who spent the first half of 00:28:07.160 --> 00:28:09.140 his life feeling broken and unworthy, that is 00:28:09.140 --> 00:28:11.720 a powerful statement of redemption. It really 00:28:11.720 --> 00:28:14.579 is. It recontextualizes all the pain. It wasn't 00:28:14.579 --> 00:28:16.799 a tragedy in the end. It was a triumph. He got 00:28:16.799 --> 00:28:19.119 what he wanted. Now, even if our listeners haven't 00:28:19.119 --> 00:28:20.960 read Carver, they've probably seen his influence 00:28:20.960 --> 00:28:23.500 in pop culture. Oh, definitely. The most famous 00:28:23.500 --> 00:28:26.259 adaptation is Robert Altman's film Shortcuts 00:28:26.259 --> 00:28:29.420 from 1993. Altman took nine of Carver's stories 00:28:29.420 --> 00:28:32.880 in a poem. and wove them together into this massive 00:28:32.880 --> 00:28:35.920 Los Angeles tapestry. It captures the mood perfectly, 00:28:36.079 --> 00:28:38.740 even if the setting is different. It's a masterwork 00:28:38.740 --> 00:28:41.160 of adaptation. And then more recently, the movie 00:28:41.160 --> 00:28:43.380 Birdman, the one that won Best Picture in 2015. 00:28:43.839 --> 00:28:45.880 Right. The main character in Birdman, played 00:28:45.880 --> 00:28:48.779 by Michael Keaton, is obsessed with putting on 00:28:48.779 --> 00:28:51.339 a play based on what we talk about when we talk 00:28:51.339 --> 00:28:53.980 about love. And the reason is that he has this 00:28:53.980 --> 00:28:56.579 cocktail napkin signed by Carver from years ago. 00:28:57.319 --> 00:28:59.779 The movie is basically haunted by Carver's ghost. 00:29:00.019 --> 00:29:03.000 It shows how much Carver represents artistic 00:29:03.000 --> 00:29:05.400 integrity to people. And there's that Will Ferrell 00:29:05.400 --> 00:29:07.440 movie, Everything Must Go. Based on the story, 00:29:07.559 --> 00:29:10.500 Why Don't You Dance? Which is a classic Carver 00:29:10.500 --> 00:29:12.299 setup. A guy puts all his furniture out on the 00:29:12.299 --> 00:29:14.299 front lawn and just sits there drinking. It's 00:29:14.299 --> 00:29:17.519 funny, but it's incredibly sad. Which is Carver, 00:29:17.579 --> 00:29:20.740 in a nutshell. That tragic comic tone. So what 00:29:20.740 --> 00:29:23.000 does this all mean? As we wrap up this deep dive, 00:29:23.200 --> 00:29:25.099 what are the big takeaways? If you're going to 00:29:25.099 --> 00:29:26.920 remember three things about Carver, what are 00:29:26.920 --> 00:29:29.140 they? I think there are three main things. First, 00:29:29.299 --> 00:29:32.240 Carver transformed American literature by looking 00:29:32.240 --> 00:29:34.640 at the people everyone else was ignoring. The 00:29:34.640 --> 00:29:36.819 ordinary, the marginalized, the people living 00:29:36.819 --> 00:29:40.079 paycheck to paycheck. He gave them a voice. He 00:29:40.079 --> 00:29:42.099 showed that their lives had dignity and trauma. 00:29:42.420 --> 00:29:45.579 Second. The power of the second life. His life 00:29:45.579 --> 00:29:47.259 is a testament to the fact that you can come 00:29:47.259 --> 00:29:50.230 back from the brink. You can be... more dead 00:29:50.230 --> 00:29:52.690 than alive and still find 10 years of brilliance 00:29:52.690 --> 00:29:55.970 and love, it is a profound message of hope. And 00:29:55.970 --> 00:29:58.690 third? The complexity of art. Yeah. The Lish 00:29:58.690 --> 00:30:01.509 controversy teaches us that a genius writer doesn't 00:30:01.509 --> 00:30:04.289 work in a vacuum. The tension between Carver's 00:30:04.289 --> 00:30:06.970 raw material and Lish's ruthless editing created 00:30:06.970 --> 00:30:09.369 a style that defined a decade. It shows that 00:30:09.369 --> 00:30:11.490 art is often a collaborative, messy process. 00:30:11.809 --> 00:30:14.250 It's a messy, beautiful legacy. It is. Okay, 00:30:14.309 --> 00:30:16.670 here is my final provocative thought for you, 00:30:16.789 --> 00:30:19.279 the listener. We talked about minimalism. We 00:30:19.279 --> 00:30:21.279 talked about writing in the margins of a janitorial 00:30:21.279 --> 00:30:24.299 shift. I want you to ask yourself, how much of 00:30:24.299 --> 00:30:26.420 that famous minimalist style, that style that 00:30:26.420 --> 00:30:28.000 changed the course of writing, was an artistic 00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:30.299 choice? And how much of it was just logistical 00:30:30.299 --> 00:30:32.819 necessity? Did he write short because he wanted 00:30:32.819 --> 00:30:34.859 to or because he was cleaning floors at Mercy 00:30:34.859 --> 00:30:37.519 Hospital and only had an hour? And how much was 00:30:37.519 --> 00:30:40.559 it Gordon Lish forcing his hand? Where does art 00:30:40.559 --> 00:30:43.940 come from? Choice or circumstance? And to add 00:30:43.940 --> 00:30:46.420 to that, I'd encourage everyone to go read Beginners. 00:30:46.750 --> 00:30:49.809 Read the story, A Small Good Thing. Then read 00:30:49.809 --> 00:30:52.430 the Lish version, The Bath. You decide which 00:30:52.430 --> 00:30:55.069 one feels truer. You decide who the real Raymond 00:30:55.069 --> 00:30:57.630 Carver was. It's a fascinating exercise. I love 00:30:57.630 --> 00:30:59.789 that assignment. Go be the critic. Thank you 00:30:59.789 --> 00:31:02.250 so much for joining us on this deep dive into 00:31:02.250 --> 00:31:04.109 the life of Raymond Carver. We'll see you next 00:31:04.109 --> 00:31:04.849 time. Keep reading.