雷蒙德·卡佛：告诉女人我们要出门

阿若

比尔一直是杰瑞最好的朋友。他们两人从小在南区一起长大，住在旧运动场附近，一起读完小学和中学，然后上艾森豪高中，在高中尽可能选修相同的老师，哥俩儿交换穿衬衫、毛衣、喇叭裤，与相同的女孩约会上床——只要有女孩可以约会上床。

夏天时他们一起打工——洗桃子、采樱桃、卷烟草——任何能赚点小钱又没有老板管东管西的零工，然后两人一起买了一辆车。在升上三年级前的夏天，他们把钱凑在一起，用三百二十五元美金买了一辆54年的红色普利茅斯。

他们轮流开，一切都很顺利。

但是杰瑞在上学期结束前结了婚，于是休学到罗伯斯超市找了一份正职。

至于比尔，他也和这个女孩约会过，她叫做卡萝，和杰瑞相处愉快。比尔只要有机会就去他们家，有了结婚的朋友让他觉得自己老了一点。他到他们家吃午餐和晚餐，一起听猫王、比尔海利和彗星合唱团（Bill Haley and the Comets）的唱片。

但有时候比尔还没离开，卡萝和杰瑞就开始要好起来，使得他必须起身离开，借口说要到加油站买个可乐，因为公寓里面只有一张床。有时候杰瑞和卡萝会直接到卧室，然后比尔必须到厨房，假装对橱柜或冰箱很感兴趣，而且没有竖起耳朵听。

所以他不再那么常去他们家；到了 6 月他毕业了，在铁工厂找了差事，然后加入民兵。一年后他也有了自己的地方，也有了固定的女朋友琳达。于是比尔和琳达会到杰瑞和卡萝家，喝点啤酒，听听唱片。

卡萝和琳达相处得很好。卡萝很有把握地说，琳达是个「诚实可靠」的人，比尔听了这句话很高兴。

杰瑞也喜欢琳达。「她很棒，」杰瑞说。

比尔和琳达结婚时，杰瑞是他们的男傧相。结婚喜宴是在唐纳利旅馆举行，杰瑞和比尔这对哥俩儿一起胡闹，搭着肩膀，乾掉一杯杯鸡尾酒。但在欢闹嘻笑中，比尔看着杰瑞，心想着杰瑞看起来好老，比 22 岁还老好多。杰瑞现在已经是两个孩子的父亲，升到了超市副理，而且卡萝又怀了第 3 胎。

他们每星期六和星期天都见面，如果放假还更常见面。如果天气好，他们就会到杰瑞家烤热狗，让小孩在塑料浅水池里玩水，那是杰瑞仅有的几样东西，就像许多他从超市拿回来的许多东西一样。

杰瑞的房子还不错。它在一座山坡上俯瞰纳奇斯市，附近也有一些房子，但不算太贴近。杰瑞的生活还算过得去。每次比尔、琳达、杰瑞、卡萝相聚时，一定是到杰瑞家里，因为杰瑞有烤肉架、唱片、还有太多的孩子得照顾。

事情发生那天是一个星期天在杰瑞家。

女人在厨房收拾东西。杰瑞的两个女儿正在前院把塑料球丢到浅水池，尖叫着泼水玩耍。

杰瑞和比尔坐在庭院里的躺椅上，喝着啤酒，无所事事。

大部份都是比尔在讲话——他们认识的人啊、铁工厂啊、他打算买的四门庞迪雅克。

杰瑞盯着晒衣绳，有时候盯着车库里的那辆 68 年的雪佛兰。比尔在想杰瑞怎么变得这么深沈，他总是凝望着什么东西，几乎不太说话。

比尔在椅子移动了一下，点了一根烟。

他说：「你怎么了？你知道我的意思。」

杰瑞把啤酒喝完，然后把啤酒罐压扁。他耸了耸肩。

「你知道嘛，」他说。

比尔点点头。

然后杰瑞说：「我们去兜个风吧。」

「听起来不错，」比尔说。「我去告诉女人我们要出门。」

他们走纳奇斯河公路到格利市，杰瑞开车。那天的天气晴朗暖和，凉风吹进车内。

「我们要去哪里里？」比尔说。

「去打几球。」

「好啊，」比尔看到杰瑞高兴起来，就觉得放心很多。

「男人应该出门透透气，」杰瑞看着比尔说：「你知道我在说什么吧？」

比尔知道。他喜欢和铁工厂的朋友每星期五晚上打保龄球，喜欢下班后和工厂的小杰一起喝几杯啤酒。他知道男人得要出门透透气。

「店还在，」杰瑞说，他们把车开到「瑞克酒吧」前面的石子路上。

他们走进屋内，比尔帮杰瑞挡着门。杰瑞走入屋内时作势轻轻揍了一下比尔的肚子。

「稀客呀！」

说话的是瑞利。

「你们俩怎么那么久没来？」

瑞利从柜台后面走出来，咧嘴笑着。他很壮，穿着一件短袖夏威夷衫，衣摆放在牛仔裤外面。瑞利说：「你们俩个过得怎么样啊？」

「哎呀，快渴死了，给我们两杯 Olys，」杰瑞说着，对比尔眨了眨眼。「你还好吗，瑞利？」杰瑞说。

瑞利说：「怎么样，你们过得如何？在哪里里工作？有没有兼什么差？杰瑞，上次我看见你的时候，是你老母亲去世 6 个月前。」

杰瑞站着一会儿，眨了眨眼睛。

「来点 Olys 吧？」比尔说。

他们选了窗边的高脚凳坐下。杰瑞说：「这是什么鬼地方，瑞利？星期天下午连个妞儿都没有？」

瑞利笑了：「我猜她们都去教堂祷告了吧。」

他们各自喝了五罐啤酒，花了两小时打几盘撞球。瑞利坐在高脚凳上一边说话，一边看他们打球。比尔一直在看表，然后看着杰瑞。

比尔说：「你在想什么，杰瑞？你想做什么？」

杰瑞喝完啤酒，把啤酒罐压扁，然后他站在那里一会儿，把啤酒罐拿在手里打转。

回到公路上，杰瑞猛踩油门——时速表在 85 哩和 90 哩之间跳来跳去。他们才刚超过一辆载满家具的老货车，就看见那两个女孩。

「你看！」杰瑞说着，车速慢了下来。「我可以把把看。」

杰瑞又开了约莫一哩，然后把车停到路边。杰瑞说：「我们试试看吧。」

「老天，」比尔说，「不好吧。」

「我可以试试看。」杰瑞说。

比尔说：「不好吧。」

「真受不了你！」

比尔瞄了手表一眼，然后四周看一看。他说：「你负责讲话，我不太行了。」

杰瑞把车掉头，按了按喇叭。

当他几乎快要驶到女孩附近时，他把车速减慢，把雪佛兰开到她们对面的路肩停下。两个女孩继续踩着脚踏车，但她们彼此对望笑了。靠里面的那个女孩深色头发，身材高挑瘦长。另一个淡色头发，身材较小。她们都穿着短裤和背心。

「贱人，」杰瑞说。他等其它的车子驶过，打算回转。

「我对付那个褐头发的，」他说：「小的那个给你。」

比尔把背往后靠，碰了一下他的太阳眼镜边。「她们不会理我们的。」比尔说。

「待会儿她们会在你的车窗那边，」杰瑞说。

他把车回转，往回头开。「准备好了，」杰瑞说。

「嗨！」比尔对骑着脚踏车的女孩说：「我叫比尔，」比尔说。

「很好，」褐头发的说。

「你们要去哪里里？」比尔问道。

女孩们没有回答，小个子的笑了。她们继续骑着车，杰瑞继续开着车。

「别这样嘛，你们要去哪里里？」比尔说。

「没去哪里里，」小个子的说。

「没去哪里里是哪里里啊？」比尔说。

「干嘛告诉你们？」小个子的说。
「我已经说我的名字了啊，」比尔说。「你们呢？我的朋友叫杰瑞，」比尔说女孩彼此对望了一眼，笑了。

一辆车从后面驶近，按了喇叭。

「闭嘴！」杰瑞说。

他把车往旁边开，让后面的车超前，然后他开上前和女孩们并行。

比尔说：「我们可以载你们一程，载你们去想去的地方，绝对没问题。你们踩脚踏车一定很累了，你们看起来很累喔。太多运动对身体不好喔，特别是女生。」

两个女孩笑了。

「看吧？」比尔说，「告诉我们名字吧？」

「我是芭芭拉，她是夏侬，」小个子的说。

「太好了！」杰瑞说：「问她们要去哪里里？」

「你们两位小姐要去哪里里啊？」比尔说：「芭比？」

她笑了。「没去哪里里，」她说：「只是沿着路走而已。」

「沿着路走去哪里里？」

「你要我告诉他们吗？」她对另一个女孩说。

「我不在乎，」另一个女孩说：「没差别，」她说：「反正我不会随便和什么人去哪里里的，」名叫夏侬的女孩这么说。

「你们要去哪里里？」比尔说：「你们要去彼丘罗克？」

两个女孩笑了。

「她们就是要去那里。」杰瑞说。

他踩了油门，把车开到路肩停下，这样一来两个女孩必须从他旁边经过。

「别这样，」杰瑞说：「别这样嘛，我们都彼此介绍过了。」

两个女孩踩着踏板继续前进。

「我又不会咬你们！」杰瑞叫道。

褐头发的女孩回头看。杰瑞觉得她用善意的眼神在看他；但是永远没有人能确定女生的意思。
杰瑞把车驶回路上，轮胎下方飞起灰尘和碎石。

「待会见啦！」当他们加速驶过时，比尔这样喊着。

「搞定了，」杰瑞说：「你看到那个妞儿看我的眼神？」

「我不确定，」比尔说道：「也许我们该回家了。」

「我们搞定了！」杰瑞说。

他把车停到树下。公路在彼丘罗克分叉，一条通往亚基马市，另一条通往纳奇斯市、因纽克劳、奇弩克隘口、西雅图。

在公路的一百码外有一座很陡峭的黑岩丘，连着一排低矮的山丘，岩丘上布满了密密麻麻的小路和小洞穴，洞穴的墙壁上到处是印地安式的符号画。这块大岩丘的峭壁面对着公路，上面写满了：纳奇斯 67——格利的野猫——耶稣救我们——打败亚基马——立刻忏悔。

他们坐在车上，抽烟。蚊子飞进来想叮他们的手。

「现在有啤酒就好了，」杰瑞说：「我真想喝杯啤酒。」

比尔说：「我也是，」然后他看了看表。

当他们看到两个女孩出现，两个人下了车。他们把身子靠在车前面的挡泥板上。

「别忘了，」杰瑞开始往前走，「深色头发是我的，另一个给你。」

女孩们停下脚踏车，开始往一条小路上走。她们绕了一个弯消失了，然后在高一点的地方又出现。她们站在那里向下望。

「你们两个跟着我们干嘛？」褐头发的喊着。

杰瑞开始往上走。

女孩们转身，然后快步离开。

杰瑞和比尔以步行的速度继续爬。比尔抽着烟，走几步就停下来深呼吸。当小路转弯时，他回头看了一眼车子。

「快点！」杰瑞说。

「我在爬啊，」比尔说。

他们继续爬，但比尔得停下来喘气。他现在看不到车子了，也看不到公路了。从他的左边往下望，他看到一大片纳奇斯市的景色，就像一大片的锡箔纸一样。

杰瑞说：「你走右边，我直走，我们会堵住那两个贱人。」

比尔点了点头，他已经喘得说不出话。

他继续往上爬，然后小路开始下坡，通往山谷下。他往前望了一望，看到两个女孩，他看到她们蹲在一处岩石下，好像在微笑。

比尔拿出香菸，但火没办法点着。然后杰瑞出现了，在这之后一切都不重要了。

比尔只想做那档子事，甚至只是看她们脱光光也好。另一方面，如果没成功，他也觉得没关系。

他从来不知道杰瑞想要什么。但一块石头带来疑问，也带来解答。杰瑞对两个女孩用同一块石头，先是那个叫做夏侬的女孩，然后是另一个原本应该留给比尔的女孩。

小饭

好极了，终于让我读到了这篇小说。顺便推荐我好友七月人写过的一篇介绍性评论，标题我倒忘记了，记得署名就好：
（作者：七月人）
雷蒙德-卡佛的书我有两本，全都来之不易。一本是大师名作坊系列的《当我们讨论爱情》，通过好友小饭辗转从台湾带来。另一本则是花城出版社的《你在圣-弗朗西斯科做什么》，此书在上海已经很少见，我曾经托在广州的网友帮我留意，也没有找到。我手头的那本购于世界书店，本来想邮购两本的，也被告知只剩下库存的唯一一本了。由于某种阴差阳错的缘故，我还遗失了我很尊敬的一位朋友本来借给我的这本小说，考虑到一本优秀小说的某一部分就这样从我们的生活中消失了，我在很长一段时间内都愧疚不已。


“人群往他那里倾过去，非常努力地聆听。他说话总是呢呢喃喃。身为庞德的良师益友，艾略特把庞德描述成“拼命想告诉聋子房子已经着火的人。”雷蒙德-卡佛则恰好相反。要等有满屋子的烟，火焰快速地烧过地毯，卡佛才会问：“这里可能有点热。是吧？”而你会坐在椅子上，往前弯得要都痛了，说：“你说什么，雷？”这个人从不坚持，也很少主张什么，很难想象他是个老师。”
虽然“很难想象他是个老师”，但是卡佛的确在雪城大学教授过“短篇小说的形式和理论”这门课程，上述这段话的作者杰伊-麦金纳尼是当时他的学生。麦金纳尼这样描述卡佛：“他总是低声呢喃，仿佛只是一种肢体的抽搐，就像指节咔啦作响，或用脚打拍子”阅读雷蒙德-卡佛的小说，读者首先感到的是一种无处不在的压抑感，它弥漫在空气中，充满每一个角落。它来源于作者对于语言的深深敬畏，似乎任何一个多余的词句都是不可饶恕的罪行。人们可以清楚地看到在它背后，是从海明威以降的美国小说传统，但是卡佛更进一步，在他的笔下，任何无关紧要的抒情，插科打诨，事无巨细的反复说明都被他坚决的摒弃了。
最好的例子来自卡佛著名的小说《告诉女人我们要出门》：比尔和杰瑞是从小一起长大的好朋友，成年后各自找了工作并结了婚。在一次两家人的聚会中，比尔和杰瑞两个人离开妻子和孩子们出去野外兜风，途中遇到了两个骑自行车的年轻姑娘。他们开车跟在后面，谈论着，并试图和女孩儿们说话，两个姑娘则对他们抱以微笑，并互相交换了姓名。卡佛完全使用白描的手法来进行叙述，通篇除了对话只有最简单的背景介绍和动作描写。
最后杰瑞和比尔跟着两个女孩儿来到了一处岩石下，按照常规，这正应当是故事最为紧要之处，但是卡佛只用了两行：“他从来不知道杰瑞想要什么，但一块石头带来疑问，也带来解答。杰瑞用同一块石头对付两个女孩，先是那个叫作夏农的，然后是另一个原本应该留给比尔的女孩。”小说于是嘎然而止。
《告诉女人我们要出门》翻译成中文将近4000字，但是就是这两行，和前面所有的叙述加起来相比，在小说中占同样的比重。一个平庸的作家也许会津津乐道于整个暴力场面的描述，以为给读者带来官能上的刺激将是他们的成功之道。但是卡佛明白，一个真正优秀的小说作者绝不等同一个煽情专家，伟大的小说家不但需要恣意汪洋的想象力，而且还需要能够让这种想象力紧紧缠绕在自己笔下的超凡的控制力。而后者从某种意义上来说，比前者还要困难的多。《告诉女人我们要出门》的结尾的巧妙之处在于，唯有这种短促，充满了爆发力的句子，才能够最恰如其分地表现出事情的急转直下，而相对于按部就班的叙述，它一瞬间击中读者所带来的错愕和惊奇，也必然是与描写的冗长程度成反比的。

写到这里我不免要提一下另一名小说作者，日本的村上春树，这位雷蒙德-卡佛的学徒和受益者，他和他的这位伟大的先驱在中国的境遇可谓有着天壤之别。相比较而言，雷蒙德-卡佛不会为生活披上虚假的诗意外衣，他更为冷酷，坚定，拥有敏锐的洞察力，对花言巧语不屑一顾，因此也注定得不到青春期少女们的喜爱。

卡佛在从事教师这一职业之前，当过锯木工人，送货员，教科书编辑，还在医院和加油站干过。他笔下所写的通常是一些小人物，他们身份卑微，敏感而又孤独。卡佛笔下的人物拥有当代人的共同病征：脆弱，缺乏合适的表达情感的词汇和方式。这样一群人的生活可以说是乏善可陈的，然而卡佛致力于发现隐藏在日常生活下的互相交汇，分岔的潜流和暗涌。我和张悦然某次谈到了生活环境对于小说的影响以及平凡生活如何作为小说的摹本。而雷蒙德-卡佛则告诉我们：现实中的任何一次小小的错位，每一个微妙的细节变化，都足以改变人们的生活，并且成为小说最好的窥视孔。卡佛向我们揭示生活本身如何成为凡夫俗子们最可怕的敌人，每个人都试图努力保持身边的一切都不超越日常的轨道，最后总是功亏一篑。

……我读高中时，曾读过他（杰克-伦敦）的一篇短篇小说，题目是《取火》。那里面的小伙子在育空冻僵了。想想看——如果他不能生起火来，他就得冻死。有了火，他就可以烤干袜子，烤干所有的东西，还能暖和他自己。
他生着了火，但突然间又出了问题。一团雪块正好掉在火上。火灭了，那时，天渐渐暗下去了，黑夜来临了。

他在《我打电话的地方》里复述的这个故事恰恰可以作为卡佛式小说的最佳写照，他有时透露出一丝温情，让笔下的人物似乎能够看到解决问题的希望，然后又毫不留情地把他们扔回到自己那糟糕处境的更深处。这让我想起paka向我讲的一个故事：法斯宾德为他的电影拍摄了两个结尾，其一是主人公开枪自杀。其二是她的亲戚朋友最终原谅并且接纳了她，使主人公重又回到正常生活之中。当别人问起导演本人更喜欢哪个结尾时，法斯宾德回答说他更喜欢后一个，因为那“更残忍”。

阅读雷蒙德-卡佛对我来说是一个缓慢而又艰辛的过程，你所能看到的只是生活中的一些片断，你自以为可以像摄像机镜头那样冷静地观察他们，然而貌似平静的场景下却似乎存在着一个巨大的漩涡，把一切都卷进它的内部。你正要打算看个究竟，卡佛，这个寡言少语的作家却突然伸出一只手抓住你，告诉你整幕生活剧已经收场。每当我想象卡佛在写作时的样子，眼前便浮现出这样一幅画面：他穿着随便，不修边幅，在一盏台灯的帮助下，在稿纸上把反复修改他的小说，他嘴里念念有词，凝视前方的虚无，又眯起因为饮酒或者缺乏睡眠而布满血丝的双眼，不断划去一些句子。

这位性格坚毅和风格显著的当代小说大师在他50岁的时候因为癌症而与世长辞，然而也许在另一个万物凋零的季节里，任何一个再次那起他小说的人都会默默地念起他的名字：雷蒙德。

batz

你在圣弗朗西斯科做什么
应该翻译成你在圣弗朗西斯科做{过}什么
这个小说的故事并没有发生在圣弗朗西斯科，而是通过一个人写他的新邻居：他在等信。
后来莫名其妙地消失了。
通过这个后续的故事，我们可以判断出，他的这个新邻居一定在3Francisco做过什么
这个故事其实是从海明威的杀人者中化出来的
与其看他，倒不如找找正根

阿若

http://titan.iwu.edu/%7Ejplath/carver.html

Two Interviews with Raymond Carver

Translated by William L. Stull

Raymond Carver\'s death at fifty in 1988 cut short the career of the most influential American short story writer since Ernest Hemingway. But it did not put an end to Carver\'s writing--or his influence.

In the years since Carver\'s death a steady stream of posthumous works has appeared, thanks in large part to the efforts of his widow, the writer Tess Gallagher. These range from Carver\'s last-written book of poems, A New Path to the Waterfall (1989), to some of his earliest literary efforts: No Heroics Please: Uncollected Writings (1991) and Carnations: A Play in One Act (1992). The biographical volumes Carver Country (1990), . . .When We Talk About Raymond Carver (1991), and Remembering Ray (1993) have kept his memory alive, as have the television documentaries Dreams Are What You Wake Up From (1989) and To Write and Keep Kind (1992). And of course there\'s Short Cuts (1993), Robert Altman\'s irreverent Hollywood take on Carver\'s world.

As Raymond Carver surely knew, when the man dies the writer gets the final word, insofar as any word is ever final. (Think of Carver\'s much-loved poem "Gravy," a valediction published in The New Yorker three weeks after his death.) Despite the passing of the man, then, conversation with the writer continues. During Carver\'s life his principal means of dialogue with readers was the interview, a medium to which he readily submitted despite his native shyness. In compiling Conversations with Raymond Carver (1990) the editors located some 50 Carver interviews (in languages ranging from Dutch to Japanese) and included 25 in the finished book. There, Carver the writer once again has the last word. "I\'ve got a book to finish," he assures the closing interlocutor. "I\'m a lucky man."

Translated below are two interviews with Raymond Carver that have not previously appeared in English. The first, with the French literary journalist Claude Grimal, took place during a visit to Paris in the spring of 1987. (For details of the trip, see Tess Gallagher\'s "European Journal" in the Autumn 1988 Antaeus.). The second, conducted by Silvia Del Pozzo for the Milanese weekly Panorama, dates from the spring of 1986. In each case, the occasion of the interview was the publication of one or more of Carver\'s books in foreign language translation, a process that has intensified since his death. Indeed, the only complete edition of his worksÑin seven boxed volumesÑis printed not in English but in Japanese. In the interviews below Carver talks about his life and writings, taking care to sidestep labels and abstractions. He defends the short story form in the land of Maupassant, and in the country of Boccaccio he plays literary godfather to a new generation of young American writers. A striking keynote in both interviews is Carver\'s invocation of Hemingway\'s modernist battle cry, "rose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over." Proud to claim his American heritage even as he pays homage to the European masters, Raymond Carver speaks, as ever, for himself.   William L. Stull



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Stories Don\'t Come Out of Thin Air

Claude Grimal


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Having published French editions of Cathedral (1985) andWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1986), Editions Mazarine is now publishing Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, a third collection of short stories by Raymond Carver. This was Carver\'s first major work. It was published in the United States in 1976 and nominated for a National Book Award in 1977.

The book contains twenty-one stories, each running about ten pages. In the first one, "Fat," a waitress tells two relatively uninterested friends, Rudy and Rita, that she had a fat man for a customer, the fattest man she had ever seen. "That\'s a funny story, Rita says, but I can see she doesn\'t know what to make of it." The reader feels a little bit like Rita. The characters drink tea, go to bed. The story ends with an unexpectedly optimisitic (?) phrase from the narrator: "My life is going to change. I feel it."

In the second story, "The Idea," a couple observes a neighbor who goes out in his garden at night to watch his own wife undress in the bedroom. Later the same evening the narrator--the voyeuristic woman who with her spouse has observed the voyeuristic husband across the way--sprays insecticide on armies of ants that have appeared under the sink in her kitchen. All the while she fumes, "That trash. . . . The idea!"

In "ut Yourself in My Shoes," the Myerses pay a visit to a couple whose house they had rented, furnished, for a seinester. The couple, on the pretext that Mr. Myers is a writer, tell him and his wife strange stories, then accuse them of having ransacked their belongings, of having messed up or lost some of them. Through it all Myers bubbles over with laughter. When the Myerses take their leave, Paula Myers exclaims, "They were scary." Her husband watches the road in silence: "He was at the very end of a story."

Carver\'s characters, drawn from middle America, are threatened in their work, their love lives, their equilibrium, their identity. They are always caught at a moment of truth: revelation, "dis-ease," anguish, fascination. These feelings remain incomprehensible, so inexplicable that it is safe to say Carver\'s subtle and precise art is an art of effects, never of causes. Carver\'s sentences, straightforward and direct, fly to the mark, in stories that the author says "ought to leave the reader with a great sense of mystery, but never a feeling of frustration." Raymond Carver read several of his short stories at the Village Voice Bookstore (6, rue Princess) in April 1987. The bookstore will host him again in June for a reading of his poetry.

Claude Grimal: Why did you choose to write short stories rather than, say, novels?

Raymond Carver: Life circumstances. I was very young. I got married at eighteen. My wife was seventeen; she was pregnant. I had no money at all and we had to work all the time and bring up our two children. It was also necessary that I go to college to learn how to write, and it was simply impossible to start something that would have taken me two or three years. So I set myself to writing poems and short stories. I could sit down at a table, start and finish in one sitting.

CG: Do you consider yourself as good a poet as a short story writer? And what relationship do you see between your poetry and your prose?

RC: My stories are better known, but, myself, I love my poetry. Relationship? My stories and my poems are both short. (Laughs.) I write them the same way, and I\'d say the effects are similar. There\'s a compression of language, of emotion, that isn\'t to be found in the novel. The short story and the poem, I\'ve often said, are closer to each other than the short story and the novel.

CG: You approach the problem of image the same way?

RC: Oh, image. You know, I don\'t feel, as someone said to me, that I center my poems or my stories on an image. The image emerges from the story, not the other way around. I don\'t think in terms of image when write.

CG: In what poetic tradition do you place yourself?

RC: Let\'s see . . . I don\'t care for Wallace Stevens. I like William Carlos Williams. I like Robert Frost, and lots of contemporaries: Galway Kinnell, W.S. Merwin, Ted Hughes, C.K. Williams, Robert Hass, lots of contemporary poets. There\'s a real renaissance in the United States right now in poetry. And in prose too, especially among short story writers.

CG: For example?

RC: There\'s lots of very good work going on right now in America. It\'s a good time for writers. Short stories are selling well. There\'s an enormous amount of young talent. I edited an anthology, The Best American Short Stories 1986, and discovered writers I\'d never heard of, all of them very good. Among the contemporaries I admire there\'s Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, who\'s a first-rate writer, Jayne Anne Phillips for some of her stories, Ann Beattie, Barry Hannah, Grace Paley, Harold Brodkey, certain stories by John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates. The Englishman Ian McEwan. There\'s also a very young writer some of whose stories I like, Amy Hempel. And Richard Yates, who lived in France in the fifties.

CG: Are you thinking about writing a novel?

RC: Well, nowadays I can write what I want, not just stories, so maybe I\'ll do it. I\'m under contract for another short story collection. Most of them are written, and it will come out in January. After that, I\'ll see. After my first collection, everyone wanted me to write a novel. There were lots of pressures. I even accepted an advance to write a novel . . . and instead I wrote short stories. Oh, I don\'t know, I\'m thinking about a longer story in any case . . . which might turn into a novel. But I don\'t feel any compulsion to write a novel. I\'ll write what I want to write. I like the freedom I have have now. I\'ve written poetry and essays, autobiographical essays too, on John Gardner, who was my teacher, on my father, on my problems with alcohol that I overcame in 1977. At the moment the publisher is very pleased; my stories are selling well. Things are great.

CG: What do you make of the fact that in France your later short story collections were translated before your first one?

RC: Well, the advantage is that the stories in Cathedral are more developed and that this new book will attract readers who wouldn\'t have been drawn to What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. In the end, I don\'t know . . . Yes, I think the publisher made a good decision.

CG: So you think that between your first book and your latest you\'ve changed your way of writing?

RC: Yes, very much. My style is fuller, more generous. In my second book, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, the stories were very clipped, very short, very compressed, without much emotion. In my latest book, Cathedral, the stories have more range. They\'re fuller, stronger, more developed, and more hopeful.

CG: Is this something you did intentionally?

RC: No, not intentionally. I don\'t have any program, but the circumstances of my life have changed. I\'ve stopped drinking, and maybe I\'m more hopeful now that I\'m older. I don\'t know, but I think it\'s important that a writer change, that there be a natural development, and not a decision. So when I finish a book, I don\'t write anything for six months, except a little poetry or an essay.

CG: When you write your stories, do you write with the idea of a set, a whole that will be a collection? Or do you consider them independently of one another?

RC: I think of them as a set. I write them and little by little the idea of a whole takes shape.

CG: How do you choose the titles of your collections?

RC: It\'s generally the title of the best story. But it\'s also the most exciting title. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is an irresistible title.

CG: Which stories are your favorites?

RC: "Cathedral." "A Small, Good Thing." There are lots of stories I don\'t like anymore, but I won\'t tell you which ones. I\'d like to publish a "selected stories," but certainly not a complete collection of my stories.

CG: "A Small, Good Thing" is the result of rewriting an earlier story, "The Bath," that\'s inWe Talk About When We Talk About Love.

RC: Yes. "The Bath" appeared in a magazine. It won I no longer know what prize, but the story bothered me. It didn\'t seem finished to me. There were still things to say, and while I was writing Cathedral (I never wrote a book more quickly than that one, let it be said in passing; it didn\'t take me more than eighteen months), things happened for me. The story "Cathedral" seemed to me completely different from everything I\'d written before. I was in a period of generosity. I looked at "The Bath" and I found the story was like an unfinished painting. So I went back and rewrote it. It\'s much better now. Someone\'s even made a film of it, a fellow from Hollywood. The Australians, too, they\'ve made a film of "Feathers." I\'ve seen the first film and it looked good, as did the second one. They put in the peacock, the set of teeth. It\'s very funny.

CG: Could you talk about the endings of your stories? The ending of "Cathedral," for instance?

RC: Well, the character there is full of prejudices against blind people. He changes; he grows. I\'d never written a story like that. It\'s the first story I wrote after finishing What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and I\'d let six months go by. Then, when I wrote that story, I felt it was truly different. I felt a real impetus in writing it, and that doesn\'t happen with every story. But I felt I\'d tapped into something. I felt it was very exciting. The sighted man changes. He puts himself in the blind man\'s place. The story affirms something. It\'s a positive story and I like it a lot for that reason. People say it\'s a metaphor for some other thing, for art, for making . . . But no, I thought about the physical contact of the blind man\'s hand on his hand. It\'s all imaginary. Nothing like that ever happened to me. Well, there was an extraordinary discovery. The same thing happened in "A Small, Good Thing." The parents are with the baker. I wouldn\'t want to say this story lifts up the soul, but even so, it ends on a positive note. The couple is able to accept the death of their child. That\'s positive. There\'s a communion of sorts. The two stories end on a positive note, and I like that very much. I\'ll be very happy if these two stories last.

CG: Is the autobiographical element important in your stories?

RC: It is for the writers I like most: Maupassant, Chekhov. Stories have to come from somewhere. In any case, those that I like do. There have to be lines of reference coming from the real world.

CG: That\'s true for you when you write, but do you think your biography can help the reader?

RC: No, not at all. It\'s only that I use certain autobiographical elements, somethingÑan image, a sentence I heard, something I saw, that I did, and then I try to transform that into something else. Yes, there\'s a little autobiography and, I hope, a lot of imagination. But there\'s always a little element that throws off a spark, for Philip Roth or Tolstoy, for Maupassant, for the writers I like. Stories don\'t come out of thin air. There\'s a spark. And that\'s the kind of story that most interests me. For example, for "Fat," my wife, my first wife, worked as a waitress and she came home one night and told me she had had an enormous man for a customer who spoke of himself in the first person plural: "We would like some more bread . . . We are going to have the dessert Special." That struck me; I found that extraordinary. And that was the spark that gave rise to the story. I wrote that story years later, but I never forgot what my wife had told me. Much later, then, I sat down to work and asked myself what would be the best way to tell this story. It was a conscious decision. I decided to write from the viewpoint of the waitress, not my wife, but the waitress.

CG: And the end of the story, where the woman says her life is going to change, how do you explain that?

RC: I don\'t explain it. There too I wanted to put in something positive, maybe.

CG: It\'s a story in the present tense.

RC: Yes. That was the tense that seemed most appropriate to me. The four or five stories I published last year in The New Yorker are in the present tense. I don\'t know why. It\'s a decision I make without knowing why. Part of the decision makes itself, but I wouldn\'t want to lead you to believe it\'s something mysterious. That\'s the way it is.

CG: Do you try to write in the American idiom?

RC: Sure. It\'s sometimes said that I have a good ear for dialogue, and so forth. I certainly don\'t think people talk the way I write. It\'s like Hemingway. It\'s also said that he had a good ear, but he invented it all. People don\'t talk that way at all. It\'s a question of rhythm.

CG: What importance do you attach to dialogue in your stories?

RC: It\'s important. It ought to advance the plot or illuminate character, and so on. I don\'t like people to talk for no reason, but I really like dialogue between people who aren\'t listening to each other.

CG: Could you talk about your themes?

RC: A writer ought to speak about things that are important to him. As you know, I\'ve taught in universities, in fact for some fifteen years. I had time there for other work, and I never wrote a single story about university life because it\'s an experience that left no mark on my emotional life. I tend to go back to the time and the people I knew well when I was younger and who made a very strong impression on me . . . Some of my recent stories deal with executives. (For example, that one in The New Yorker, "Whoever Was Using This Bed," where the people discuss things the ¥charaters in my earlier stories would never discuss.) He\'s a businessman, and so on. But most of the people in my stories are poor and bewildered, that\'s true. The economy, that\'s important . . . I don\'t feel I\'m a political writer and yet I\'ve been attacked by right-wing critics in the U.S.A. who blame me for not painting a more smiling picture of America, for not being optimistic enough, for writing stories about the people who don\'t succeed. But these lives are as valid as those of the go-getters. Yes, I take unemployment, money problems, and marital problems as givens in life. People worry about their rent, their children, their home life. That\'s basic. That\'s how 80-90 percent, or God knows how many people live. I write stories about a submerged population, people who don\'t always have someone to speak for them. I\'m sort of a witness, and, besides, that\'s the life I myself lived for a long time. I don\'t see myself as a spokesman but as a witness to these lives. I\'m a writer.

CG: How do you write your stories and how do you bring them to a close?

RC: For the ending, a writer has to have sense of drama. You don\'t miraculously arrive at the ending. You find it in revising the story. And me, I revise fifteen, twenty times. I keep the different versions . . . didn\'t do it in the past but I do it now because of the book collectors. I like the physical labor of writing. I don\'t have a word processor, but I have a typist who gives me back clean corrected texts . . . then I revise them and revise them. Tolstoy rewrote War and Peace seven times and he kept revising right up to the last minute before printing. I\'ve seen photographs of the proofs! I like this concern for work well done.

CG: Then you surely don\'t like Kerouac, who claimed to have written On the Road in a single stretch at the typewriter, on a huge roll of paper?

RC: Yes, though I like On the Road a lot. But not the rest of his work. It\'s unreadable. It\'s aged very badly.

CG: And maybe Kerouac was lying.

RC: Yes, writers are big liars. (Laughs.)

CG: Yourself lncluded?

RC: (Laughs.) My God no, not me. I\'m the sole exception.

CG: What writers interest you?

RC: When I was teaching, I chose writers I liked and who were useful to me as a young writer. Flaubert, his Tales and his letters, Maupassant (about whom I\'ve written a poem, "Ask Him"), Chekhov, Flannery O\'Connor, a novel by William Gass and his critical essays, Eudora Welty . . . .

CG: And Hemingway, with whom you\'re so often compared?

RC: I\'ve read a lot of him. When I was 19 or 20 years old I read a lot, and Hemingway was part of what I read. Hemingway interested me more than, for instance, Faulkner, whom I was reading at the same time. I\'m sure I learned from Hemingway, no doubt about it, and especially from his early work. I like his work. If I\'m compared with him, I feel honored. For me, Hemingway\'s sentences are poetry. There\'s a rhythm, a cadence. I can reread his early stories and I find them as extraordinary as ever. They fire me up as much as ever. It\'s marvelous writing. He said prose is architecture and the Baroque age is over. That suits me. Flaubert said close to the same thing, that words are like stones with which one builds a wall. I believe that completely. I don\'t like careless writers whose words have no moorings, are too slippery.

CG: But you, you talk a lot about secrets and you never say what they are. There\'s a certain frustration for the reader because of the abruptness, let\'s say the disconnection at the endings of your stories. You frustrate your readers.

RC: I don\'t even know if I know how I write stories. I write. I don\'t have a program. There are people who are capable of saying a story has to progress, reach a high point, and so on. Myself, I don\'t know. I write the best kind of story I can write . . . The story ought to reveal something, but not everything. There should be a certain mystery in the story. No, I don\'t want the reader to be frustrated, but it\'s true I create an expectation and don\'t fulfill it.

CG: Do you think there\'s voyeurism in your stories? There are often people who spy on other people, who are fascinated by the life of their neighbors, and so on.

RC: That\'s true. But it can be said that all fiction is like that. To write is to say things one wouldn\'t normally say to people. (Laughs.) In "Neighbors" there\'s voyeurism, and in "The Idea," too, with the older couple, the sexual charge. Yes indeed. And in "Neighbors," after seeing the neighbors\' apartment the couple is sexually excited.

CG: The sex in your stories seems humdrum or aroused by observing the private life of others. For example, in "Feathers," in "Neighbors" . . . .

RC: But there isn\'t a lot of it, of sex in my stories. The stories are pretty cool, and so is the sex. It\'s cool, not hot. It\'s true that the sex in my stories, when it\'s there, takes place offstage or mechanically . . . But I don\'t know.

CG: In "The Idea" you put two things together that don\'t seem to go together: the couple who spy on their next-door neighbors and the ants under the sink. You put things together that don\'t appear to have any connection.

RC: Yes. But the connection seems not only possible but inevitable. I don\'t know how to explain it. Once again, I don\'t have a program when I write these stories. I began the story without knowing I was going to put in the ants. When I begin I don\'t know where I\'m going. But I have illustrious predecessors in this regard. When Hemingway was asked one day if he knew how he was going to end a story when he was starting it, he said, "No, I have no idea." Flannery O\'Connor also said that, that writing is discovery. She didn\'t know what was going to happen from one sentence to another. But as I said, you don\'t miraculously arrive at the ending. You have to have a sense of drama. And you discover the ending in the writing, or rather in the rewriting, since I firmly believe in rewriting. In rewriting, the themeÑor rather, since the word theme makes me a little uncomfortable, let\'s say the sense of the storyÑin rewriting, the sense of the story, then, changes a little each time.

CG: Are you at all current on what\'s being written in France?

RC: Hmm, no . . . not since the "new novel." (That\'s good, isn\'t it?). But it looks like short stories aren\'t popular in France. I was told that last year there were barely ten books of stories published. What\'s going on? With an ancestor like Maupassant!

Interview translated from "L\'Histoire ne descend pas des nuages," Europe [Paris] 733 (May 1990): 72-79. Headnote translated from a shorter previously published version of the interview: "Raymond Carver qui écrit des histoires sur \'les gens qui ne réussissent pas\'" La puinzaine littéraire [Paris] 485 (1-15 May 1987): 8.



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I\'m Sort of Their Father

Silvia Del Pozzo


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Many consider the "minimalist" Raymond Carver the father of today\'s young writers. Here\'s why. When Arnoldo Mondadori-published Cathedral, a collection of short stories by Raymond Carver, in Italy in 1984, critical attention was limited to a narrow elite. Nonetheless, many young writers of the 1980s regard this shy writer, the poet of a provincial, semi-industrial, banal, and depressed America, as a precursor and master. Carver is master of a genre, the short story, and of a style: that maximally pared-down writing that critics have labeled "minimalism." Panorama asked Carver to comment on the new stars of American fiction.

Silvia Del Pozzo: Are Leavitt, Ellis, and McInerney really part of a literary movement?

Raymond Carver: Movement isn\'t the right way to put it. They\'re all distinct personalities; they don\'t belong to any literary circle or group. But something binds them together, for example, the rediscovery of the short story form and the pleasure of writing well. It\'s the publishers, rather, who have been reading them as a real phenomenon. Until a decade ago, publishers would risk bringing out a collection of stories only when the author had already proved himself as a novelist. But these kids aren\'t Updikes; they\'ve burst from obscurity like "literary phenomenons" precisely with story collections. That\'s what\'s new: publishers have discovered the short story has a market and, what\'s more, a lucrative one.

SDP: Some critics and some younger writers regard you as the "father" of the new wave. Do you agree?

RC: I\'m only the father of my own children. But think my experience and success have encouraged lots of young writers to follow my path.

SDP: Still, many people see traces of "minimalism" in the style of the younger writers.

RC: Critics often use the term "minimalist" when discussing my prose. But it\'s a label that bothers me: it suggests the idea of a narrow vision of life, low ambitions, and limited cultural horizons. And, frankly, I don\'t believe that\'s my case. Sure, my writing is lean and tends to avoid any excess. There\'s a saying of Hemingway\'s that I could take for my motto: "rose is architecture. And this isn\'t the Baroque age."

SDP: But don\'t you hear some echo of your style in the prose of these young writers?

RC: If we\'re only talking about an echo, I agree. These young people have read a lot. They\'ve assimilated both the classics and the contemporaries. They don\'t reflect any particular style. Among my works, they\'ve perhaps taken most into account What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. It was published in 1981: short short stories, almost flashes, built exclusively on dialogue. But since then I too have changed, and I\'ve written Cathedral.

SDP: How would you describe the young writers\' style?

RC: Their prose is vigorous, highly realistic, and at the same time fresh, poetic.

SDP: Can they truly be considered spokesmen for Americans in their 20s?

RC: They\'re spokesmen only for themselves. Perhaps, considered as a group, it can be said they recreate the world of young America today. But in America young people\'s realities are widely diverse and hard to lump together. Let\'s say instead they\'re spokesmen for an educated minority.

SDP: But what ideals do they express?

RC: If we\'re referring to sociopolitical ideals, I\'d say these writers are absolutely indifferent to any kind of engagement, pressure, or political struggle. Instead, they write about themselves, their psychological problems, their relations with their peers. They have no political message to convey, not even a negative one.

SDP: Are they just promising or something more?

RC: In my opinion these kids have already lived up to their promise. Their technical level is very high. Sure enough, some of them will be able to go very far.

Translated from "Sono quasi il loro papa," Panorama [Milan] 23 March 1986: 95.


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William L. Stull is professor of rhetoric at the University of Hartford, where for many years he was director of the writing program. He has edited four books by or about Raymond Carver: Conversations with Raymond Carver , with Marshall Gentry (1990); No Heroics, Please: Uncollected Writings (1991); Carnations: A Play in One Act (1992); and, with his wife, Maureen P. Carroll, Remembering Ray: A Composite Biography of Raymond Carver (1993).