Raymond Carver

The tenth and last book of The New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2009 is Raymond Carver, an exhaustively researched biography of the writer of short stories and poems by Carol Sklenicka. Earlier this year I read another literary biography, Cheever, and his story has some eerie parallels with Carver's. In fact, the two both appear in each other's biographies, as they were briefly close friends while Carver was a student at the Iowa Writer's Workshop and Cheever was a teacher.

Both were acclaimed short story writers, perhaps the greatest two American practitioners of the century, and both became degenerate alcoholics. But both cleaned up their acts, reached rapprochement with their children, and received high acclaim. They also both died of cancer, Carver at the far too young age of 50.

As with Cheever, I came to this book largely unfamiliar with the subject. To my knowledge I've never read a word of Carver--the only way I know him is the Robert Altman film Short Cuts, which dramatizes a number of his stories. I am interested in reading more, though. To many, he was the Anton Chekhov of America.

Carver was born in Oregon and raised in Yakima, Washington, and then kicked around northern California. Sklenicka's greatest skill exhibited in this book is her capturing a sense of place, and she really needed it, because Carver was itinerant, to put it mildly. He and his wife, Maryann, (they married as teenagers) and two children moved about constantly. Sklenicka paints vivid portraits of small towns in California, and places as disparate as El Paso, Vermont, and Israel. The life the Carvers led was precarious, as they were frequently broke, but there's a certain vicarious thrill to the lifestyle of writers of literary fiction, most of whom go from college to college for teaching jobs, hoping to sell to small magazines, waiting for the big break.

Carver's break came when his friend Gordon Lish became fiction editor at Esquire. He championed Carver's stories, and was his first outlet to the greater public. But the relationship with Lish was complicated, and Sklenicka details the pain involved in the publication of Carver's collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, in which Lish took previously published stories and practically rewrote them.

Eventually Carver would hit the big time and outgrow Lish's protection, which Lish seemed to resent. Carver hitched his wagon to another editor, Gary Fisketjon, who started the Vintage Contemporary line of paperback originals. Carver's Cathedral was the first of that imprint (Jay McInerny, who was a student of Carver's, was second with Bright Lights, Big City). Oh, how I remember those books, which I read when I was in my early twenties and imagined myself getting one of them published. Some consolation--Carver was in his forties before he earned a significant income.

In fact, Carver, for all his early misery, ended up leading something of a charmed last act. He received an award that made my eyes bug out: the Strauss Living Award, which paid him $3,500 a year for five years, on the condition that he not hold a full-time job (this was early 80s money). After his long, tempestuous marriage with Maryann (on their second honeymoon he clubbed her with a wine bottle) he found happiness with poet Tess Gallagher. He never won a Pulitzer, but he was generally conceded to be a master of the short story.

He never wrote a novel, though he talked about it often. Many categorize him as a minimalist, though Sklenicka expertly expands upon that definition. Most of his stories are about marriage and its difficulties, with characters down on their luck. One Atlantic Monthly subscriber, after reading a Carver story, wrote and asked why someone like him should care about Carver's characters.

The book is also full of life concerning the writing community. Everyone seemed to know everyone. In addition to Cheever, almost every major writer of the 60s, 70s, and 80s makes a cameo. Carver studied under the legendary John Gardner while at Chico State, and became good friends with Richard Ford. But perhaps my favorite story was when Carver, while teaching at UC-Santa Cruz, invited dipsomaniacal poet Charles Bukowski for a visit. It went about as one might expect. A colleague remembered: "Bukowski, drinking everything in sight, muttered, bragged, cursed, and, getting drunker by the minute, grabbed the girls and mashed his whiskery face against theirs, or shot his hand to the crotch of their jeans or down their blouses...girls screamed and ran from the house...more cerebral students sat back and stared straight ahead, probably stoned...Ray started drinking."

Raymond Carver was not an easy man to admire. In addition to his drunkenness and spouse abuse, he seemed to have a complete disregard for financial responsibility. He was once tried for defrauding the state of California by collecting unemployment benefits while actually employed. As Sklenicka quoted Carver: "'You never start out in life with the intention of becoming a bankrupt or an alcoholic or a thief. Or a liar," Carver said later. As the bottom of his alcoholism sank lower and lower, he had become all of those things." Yet, as this book comes to its touching conclusion, one can't help feel sympathy for the man, although I imagine there are some that would have tired of his antics a few hundred pages earlier.