When I was taking writing workshops and classes back in the nineties, Carver was the gold metal standard for short stories. I doubt he is now. White, male, alcoholic writers are not held in such high esteem. And Carver's trajectory has been complicated by the knowledge that his editor, Gordon Lish, edited with a very heavy pencil. Are we reading Carver or Lish? I am very far from an authority on this but it's interesting. Lish favored minimal story telling. Whole characters and plot lines disappeared when he got hold of them. Carver was evolving into a different sort of writer although he trembled with fear of Lish's disapproval well into his career.
This story was first published in the UCSB literary journal when he was teaching there. The student that secured it was awestruck at her luck in persuading Carver to give her something to publish.
Anyway, "So Much Water, So Far From Home" is the story of a group of men on a fishing trip that find the nude dead body of a girl and do nothing about it for the two days of their trip, reasoning she is dead and what good will ruining their trip do her.
When Stuart's wife hears the story she is appalled and it quickly sabotages what was a shaky marriage anyway. Stuart's lack of action and then lack of remorse disgusts her. Various other issues in their marital history arise and there is always the undercurrent of violence. Stuart is constantly warning her about "riling him up." This is a very complex story in many ways. It is available online and it is part of the movie by Robert Altman (Short Cuts) and also the Australian movie JINDABYNE.
8 comments:
I gather it's rather dumbed down or at least treated more slightly in SHORT CUTS...I haven't read it yet, and haven't seen SHORT CUTS since it was newish. You are definitely not the only person I know who has less than slavish admiration for Lish and his attempt to push minimalism at the expense of all else...didn't know Carver was feeling trapped by his professional relation with Lish. That's sad, and probably relatively clear-eyed.
That is a really interesting background, Patti, on both author and editor. One does wonder sometimes whose voice is really being heard. And it's interesting to think about how authors' stars rise and fall, so to sepak.
You're right that writers rise and fall like the Stock Market. Carver was the Gold Standard in the 1990s. Now, not so much. If offered a choice between a Carver story and an Alice Munro story, I'll pick the Munro.
I've read a lot of Carver (including this) and liked most of them. I've read about Gordon Lish with reference to more than one author, though Carver is the one that comes immediately to mind.
No exciting stories to report on this week. Finished the Carr and Silverberg collections and I'm reading another by Tessa Hadley (MARRIED LOVE and Other Stories) and Junot Diaz (his first, DROWN). So far the Hadley is of less interest to me than her previous collection, though one story - "A Mouthful of Cut Glass" - is similar to a story in the previous collection ("Buckets of Blood") in that the narrator is a young woman who grew up in a cold vicarage near Cambridge with seven siblings. In this one, she convinces her (college) boyfriend to take her to his childhood home in Birmingham to meet his parents. Later, she has him visit her family at the vicarage. "Buckets of Blood" is far the more interesting story, though I still like her writing. Unless this picks up soon, I will not be reading her third collection any time soon.
Shouldn't it be the writing, not the gender or skin color, that matters? I guess not, these days. I have only read one or two stories by him, but I enjoyed them.
To some extent, but for most of our history we have only been interested in a particular point of view. Look at a syllabus from the sixties, from your own college years and how many minority authors were included. I can remember none. And women did not fare much better.If the writing never even gets out there how can it be read. A college syllabus today includes many minority writers. That has to be a good thing.
Jeff-I often find that if I read collections one after another, they begin to run together in my head. I read another Carver after this called "Elephant" and it was so strange. But a day later, I am thinking it was pretty brilliant in capturing the way people talk.
I read a few stories from Short Cuts in the last year and I did not like any of them. Obviously this was not one of them because I don't remember it, and it sounds more interesting. Too bad I gave up on the book.
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