Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Literary Tuesday: Raymond Carver My Literary Godfather


In the early nineties my husband and I lived in a converted garage in Arcata. The garage, or “studio" as the landlady called it, had a dirty carpet, an organic garden in the backyard, loud crickets that chirped all night. I used to get out of bed and slip on my husband’s big black motorcycle boots and move the refrigerator so I could stomp on the crickets when they kept me from sleeping. We called it the Spider House for the big fat spiders that wove their webs in front of the doors in the fall. We used to feed them live crickets sometimes. We loved that place.

When we lived in Arcata I taught fourth grade at a Catholic elementary school in Eureka. Jim worked the cashier at the co-op and went to Humboldt State. We didn’t have cable television and nobody had internet access from home in those days. We had no money. We worked a lot and kept different hours. I spent long afternoons in the public library and took home stacks of books to fight back loneliness on the nights Jim worked late.

The first time I read a book of Raymond Carver stories I was stretched out on the nasty carpet of the studio in Arcata. Maybe rain hammered the roof. Maybe the bass from my neighbors' wild party rattled my windows. All I remember was reading a story of a broken down man stumbling home from a bar in Eureka and rolling on to my back and thinking, I am meant to write.

Raymond Carver’s stories are no bullshit. He saw truth where nobody cares about it. He dared to look at need and frustration and banality without flinching. It wasn’t that he wasn’t afraid or that he didn’t care. He saw weaknesses in people and noticed them. He didn’t hate his characters for their weaknesses but he didn’t glorify them either. He wasn’t dispassionate but neither was he cold. He noticed his characters in their down moments when they weren’t showing off for anybody, when they didn’t know what they looked like to people. He said the things you weren’t supposed to say.

In his personal life Raymond Carver overcame alcohol addiction. Lung cancer took him in 1988, four years before I even knew about him. You can read about his biography and his relationship with poet Tess Gallagher in interviews and books. I have nothing new to add here.

I never met Raymond Carver. Yet Raymond Carver is my literary godfather. If he didn’t write Nobody Said Anything, I never would have written The Cameraman, or The Saints, or any of the stories I’ve dared to write without any sort of soft-focus lens on my characters. I wasn’t brought up to be truthful. Nobody is. In that studio in Arcata, Raymond Carver reached out through his stories and said to me, tell the truth. It won’t set you free, but anyway tell it.

Tess Gallagher said in an article for The Sun that her husband was very careful about his energy level. A big part of his recovery from alcoholism was that he was careful never to get too tired. He put his own wellness and energy first before other people’s desires for him. He went home early and he didn’t over extend himself with obligations. He knew that if he did overextend himself, then he would get tired and once he got tired he would be vulnerable to the demons that had wrecked his life before he got into recovery. On top of that, if he became too tired he knew he would not be able to write. He protected himself in order to live and write.

Since those early Arcata years in a one-room studio, my life has grown obligations and over extensions like ivy. My house has a great many rooms.

Raymond Carver my literary godfather says to me, protect yourself for writing. Protect your time. It won’t guarantee anything, but protect it. Obligate yourself only to your health and your love and your art.

I wonder if I will listen this time as well.

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