| Author |
Message
|
Guest
|
 Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 8:53 am Post subject: Anyone a Raymond Carver fan? |
 |
|
Joined: Aug 06, 2005
Posts: -513
|
Hi all, I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this topic but I've been reading Raymond Carver short stories and would love to be able to discuss his work with anyone who enjoys reading him. I'm often left puzzled and would love some great insight and discussion.
Thanks |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Bahaichap
|
| Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2007 8:56 pm Post subject: I Heard A Program About Carver and Wrote This Piece |
|
|
Promising member
Joined: Apr 15, 2007
Posts: 23
Location: George Town Tasmania
|
ON THE LOOK OUT
Raymond Carver was an American short story writer who died at the age of fifty in 1988. He had been a compulsive smoker, drinker, alcoholic, depressive, wife basher(in his first marriage) and winner of many awards for his writing. To do your best and to work hard, Carver argued, is often simply not good enough in life. He was always on the look out for a story and would piece together painstakingly a narrative from the most unlikely constituents. Carver said that he was more interested in the characters in his stories than he was in those who were his reading audience.
I enjoyed reading about Carver, whom I had never heard of until yesterday, when his life and work were surveyed on ABC Radio National, “Radio Eye,” 2:00-3:00 pm November 22nd. Carver wrote about ordinary people and his characters were in many ways the centre of his writing life. Much of his writing was autobiographical. And, being so often a loser, his characters and his writing appeal to losers. The following poem is a celebration of Carver and his work and it is dedicated to John F. Kennedy who was assassinated forty years ago yesterday in Dallas Texas when I was just twenty-one. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 23 November 2003.
The world seems to me
to be drowning in stories
with enough narrative
to line, wall-to-wall,
floor-to-ceiling, across
the surface of the earth
and out into space
with the plots, scenarios,
the characters, events,
the space and time
of a myriad pieces of
intricate and moving
stories of mice and men.
Some tell their winning stories
in cinema, in music, in words
on paper and in books,
in a multitude of mise-en-scenes,
stage plays choreographed
for millions to be entertained,
informed, stimulated, educated--
like some immense, Gargantuan
Guide to the Perplexed.
Ron Price
23 November 2003
PS Carver moves from experience to autobiographical story and I move from experience to autobiography. And I take as much interest in my characters as Carver seems to in his. We are both on the look out for a story, a way of conveying our experience in narrative.
_________________
married for 41 years, a teacher for 35 years and a Baha´i for 48 years. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Guest
|
| Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 5:14 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Joined: Aug 06, 2005
Posts: -513
|
Thank you for that information. I have read about Raymond Carvers life on line, but the way you explain it I think helps me to understand why he writes the way he does.
I'm always looking for the story to be wrapped up and finished but most of his stories I feel are left open, and I feel like he did not mean to stop writing. I do feel though that I understand who the character in that story is and what that persons life is like. Is that what you mean by your poem especially when you say
enough narrative to line, wall-to wall, floor-to ceiling...
I loved it.
I find that when I write I do not want to spoon feed my reader and I love the complexities of people and their lives. I've been taking a writing work shop. We critique each other and I find many times the people in my group want to know so much, too much about things that just are not important to the story it is that we are critiquing.
Thanks again
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
|
