Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life

This biography was written twenty years after this renowned "Chekhov of middle America" (as some have called him) died at age fifty. And, I waited a couple, three years, after buying the hardback to get around to reading about one of my favorite writers. To be any kind of an honest reflection of

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this man's troubled life, I knew that it would be extremely bleak at times, and I couldn't bring myself to get into it before. Now I've finished it and I'm the richer for it. I also now know more of how a person's art can take over an artist's life. I also know that his life was the "stuff" of his art—the "oil" of his "canvas"—so to speak. At times, Carver was unwilling, or unable, to see how making public the people closest to him, could embarrass and hurt these people. Yet, so much about Carver's work was a brutal honesty. Things weren't pretty, neat and tidy, or, most of the time, very easy, for the characters portrayed in his short stories and poems.
His personal life was everything his work was, and it was hard on him. His drinking, and that of those around him, was legendary. Hard-drinking and writing are almost expected of writers in our culture. Bizarre behavior and wild stories of writers abound. Sklenicka did bring up a cogent observation, many of these extreme stories of wild goings-on are relayed to the general public by those who were there to witness them, AND in most cases, these were famous fiction-writing friends, or young, striving-to-be-noticed writing students. Are these the type of people we should expect to give us the cold, honest truth, without any embellishments? Yet, in fact, his drinking did almost kill him several times. While at times his drinking was boorish, others times he was hilariously and very entertaining. And then, there was another habit, the constant smoking, that directly lead to his death.
I won't bore you with a summary of his whole life, but it was a long, painful process that took a toll on everyone around him. His first marriage to Maryann was a bond that lasted his entire life, yet she sacrificed so much to make the development of his writing craft possible. Carver's life wasn't all suffering, there were some very, good times with his many friends, and there were some years of good money and fame. Because he grew up with little, and struggled for many years trying to establish himself as a writer, once money came his way, he had a good time and was proud of it. He liked his money and what it could do, and was fairly generous with his money once it came his way.
Maybe the part of the Carver story that interests most readers, is the editing process, and how influential that was in his success. The name of his long-time editor and friend, Gordon Lish, will always be linked to Carver and his writing. Carver's most famous collection of short stories—and the one that signaled his arrival as a name writer in this country—What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, was reduced by almost half, as in almost 50%, by Lish's editing. Once Carver became aware of the severity of the editing, he asked Lish that the volume be held up at the presses. That did not happen. I have a British volume titled Beginners, that contains the unedited stories, but it wasn't published until 2009. There is a richness and a variety to the stories in Beginners that breathe a little deeper than the shorter versions in What We Talk About. Would he still have made such a splash with the longer, less minimal versions, no one can know for sure, but the stories in Beginners are impressive to this reader.
The medical problems leading to Carver's death, and the money scrambles after he passed, make up the end of the book, but the story of this writer's life, and death, are fascinating to anyone who's read Carver, or is interested in writers. He lived a full life in his fifty years, and most he definitely lived it totally dedicated to the written word...his was a writer's life.

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Very satisfying literary biography. Not such a satisfying literary life.