Cathedral/Adieu to Carver...for now

Cathedral Review/Adieu to Carver…for now

Raymond Carver Factfile (1938-1988)

-          -    American short story writer, described by Rebein as ‘the acknowledged master’ of his genre, who initiated a revival of the genre in the 1980s and 1990s.

-          -   Born into a working class family that suffered deeply from the aftermath of the Great Depression.

-          -   Partook in a variety of tedious jobs, pursuing ‘full-time drinking as a serious pursuit’ in addition, something that took over much of his life.

-          -   In 1977 he ditched the alcohol, having destroyed both his health and family (something that is replicated in many of his tales). Soon after his second marriage to Tess Gallagher, his life came to an end.

-          -   The more specific description of his genre is dirty realism. Critic Buford notes how Carver’s tales are centred on ‘low-rent tragedies about people who watch day-time television, read cheap romances or listen to country and western music. They are…drifters in a world cluttered with junk food and the oppressive details of modern consumerism’. In a similar vein, Rebein emphasises how dirty realism focuses ‘one the small rather than the large’.  

-        -   Carver’s dirty realism, according to Budford supersedes  the  ‘“consciously experimental” writing of the literary postmodernists, which “seemed pretentious in comparison”’. This is a view I very much look forward to analysing as I attempt Nabokov and Burroughs later this summer.

-          -   Carver’s short stories that I’d recommend: Why Honey, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please, Neighbours & Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes of Will You Please Be Quiet, Please (1976), So Much Water So Close To Home, Gazebo, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Popular Mechanics of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981), Cathedral of Cathedral (1983). I’d also recommend reading The Bath of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love along with A Small Good Thing of Cathedral to get a sense of Carver’s editing process as they are both two versions of the same tale, the latter being published two years after the former.

One critic of Carver (whose name I have unfortunately forgotten) once described the four essentially ‘Carverian’ characteristics of his stories. These were that the tales described actual life, with ordinary people as the protagonists, that they had an emotional appeal and finally a moral purpose. For my use more than anything I decided to collate a few examples of each of these features.  Firstly, with regards to Carver portraying real life there is the example of Vitamins, a tale in which the protagonist’s wife has become completely absorbed by her job in selling vitamins, incidentally developing an addiction to the very products she sells. She once notes that ‘vitamins [are] all there is anymore’. This unglamorous depiction of life is essentially Carver. Also depicted in many of his tales are rather arduous, monotonous processes that one would briskly complete and forget they are so ingrained in everyday life, as seen in Careful, the protagonist and his wife having to deal with a blocked ear before they can go on to deeper discussions about the state of their marriage. Equally in Cathedral this dull sense is illuminated, the protagonist noting how he guesses he doesn’t ‘believe...in anything’, the sense of desperation clouding the lives of many described makes this rather understandable, how could there be a God among all the chaos? Carver’s tales depict ordinary people, the term ‘unemployed’ dotted all around the place and the protagonist of Cathedral for example being a completely normal guy with no added flair, as seen in his admitting that ‘[he] just [doesn’t] understand poetry’. This sense of the ordinary seen in Carver’s characters is none the more obvious in this following quote from the tale The Train.

‘the passengers had seen things more various than this in their lifetime. The world is filled with business of every sort, as they well knew. This still was not as bad, perhaps, as it could be. For this reason they scarcely gave another thought’

In essence, Carver is describing everyday events that usually we would skip past and forget; indeed it’s thanks to the intensity of his description that his tales are so powerful and gripping. Carver’s tale furthermore also have an emotional appeal, whether it be the moving last scene of Cathedral in which the protagonist helps a blind man sketch out such a building, in A Small Good Thing when after the death of his son a fully grown man ‘[begins] to weep’ or on the other side of the emotional scale, the infuriating nature of the cheating wife of Fever who hypocritically ‘[looks] into [her betrayed husband’s] karma’. There are also morals in many of Carver’s tales, though some more oblique than others. Cathedral for instance celebrates being non-judgemental as a previous cynic manages to empathise with a blind man, Fever does suggest a sense of karma as the betrayed husband looks forward to a prosperous future with his kids and his girlfriend whilst his wife starts to regret her rashness whilst Chef’s House poses the argument of the impossibility to revive the past into the present.

Bell, complaining about Carver’s tale The Bridle posed the argument that all of his characters are nasty and unpleasant, a sense of malice indeed overpowering all of his tales along with this 'nihilistic vision of the world'. This is an argument that I wish to evaluate. For the stories that support this rash conclusion there is The Compartment, in which the protagonist notes how his son ‘had turned the young girl he had courted and wedded into a nervous alcoholic woman whom [he] alternately pitied and bullied’ and Vitamins, a tale filled to the brim with hypocrisy as after denouncing one of his wife’s colleagues who had made a move on her as a ‘lesbo bitch’, the protagonist reveals that he has ‘the hots’ for another. Indeed the initially overwhelming concentration of anger, violence, divorce and infidelity into Carver’s tales does seem to prove Bell correct. The Bridle itself, the tale from which this thesis was developed, is similarly bleak, one such character noting that ‘dreams…are what you wake up from’ when describing her limited prospects in life. However, although the majority of Carver’s tales are cloaked in nastiness and seem rather drab, there are some more sensitive examples. Cathedral, as aforementioned consists of some incredibly moving scenes which exemplify human kindness whilst in A Small Good Thing the ending scene somewhat challenges Budford’s stark opinion.

‘they talked on into the early morning, the high, pale cast of light in the windows, and they did not think of leaving’

Here, a lonely baker connects with two distraught parents (who’ve just lost their son) over their sadness and thus one positive comes out from the sorrow that pollutes the tale. Thus, although Bell's thesis might stand strong for a number of Carver’s tales, it certainly is not true for all of them.

Something that has always been a point of interest for me circa Carver is whether an author such as him, whose mission is to display the truth of suburban American life, found any means to challenge social views at a time to challenge sexism and racism which were still rather rife in America during his time, his characters still referring to black people as ‘negroes’ throughout. Reading Cathedral (the whole collection that is) I found there to be a few starkly feminist moments that demanded noting. The most prominent of these moments is clearly in The Bridle in which the female protagonist challenges her lazy, couch-potato of a husband in the following passage:

‘I don’t answer him. Why should I?’

Here her standing up against maltreatment and thus turning away from the ideal of the submissive housewife, still rather prominent in the 1980s, is striking. It’s also noteworthy how the singular first person of ‘I’ is being used, the woman fighting for her needs and rights. Even though subtle, meaningless racial prejudices remain in Carver’s tales, the protagonist of Cathedral mockingly asking whether the blind man’s ‘wife [was] a negro?’ in a jokey manner. However this is somewhat overshadowed by One Small Good Thing in which the protagonist is able to relate to and empathise with a ‘negro family’ as they are both suffering over the loss of their sons. Thus, although Carver does set up to portray American life as it is in his tales, along with the many prejudices existing, he does find time to challenge the many prejudices that were still rife in the USA in the 1980s.

To conclude, for me the clear star of the collection was the ultimate tale Cathedral, it showed a side to Carver that is often missed, the sensitive and moving tale being devoid of the usual violence and mistrust that prevails. The transformation from the at first prejudiced main towards the blind man to the sense of connection at the end is indeed breath-taking. Indeed, generally, I’ve found that with time I’ve been able to appreciate Carver’s works more and more, moving passed the immediate sense of deterrence. One more thing to note was the difference between One Small Good Thing and The Bath, the former appearing in this collection and the later earlier on in WWTAWWTAL. They are two versions of the same story, the former being somewhat extended, and I found one particular difference between the two of note. In The Bath, a child, having seen his friend’s being run over, shows a deep indifference and walks on. However in this version there’s at least some emotion ‘[the] friend dropp[ing] the potato chips and start[ing] to cry’. Perhaps this less abnormal reaction suggests a change of opinion on Carver’s part towards human nature, thus challenging further Bell's argument for nastiness dominating his tales, or perhaps I’m reading too much into things…

Carver will be sadly missed as my daily read as I move onto the world of Woolf (quite a leap I know), especially now since I feel I’ve finally began to appreciate the intensity and occasional brilliance of his tales. I would recommend Carver to anyone wishing to try something slightly different and would definitely recommend perseverance in order to fully appreciate his tales.