| RAYMOND
CARVER is an American short story writer. A writer of American short
stories. His reputation is greater in the USA than here – America feeds
on images of itself. Raymond Carver is a product of America. He learnt
to write and perfect tightly structured stories concerning people,
American people. Usually rural American people who have problems. Not
grand problems but just ordinary problems and they drink, watch TV and
worry.
Read any of his stories and
you'll appreciate the constraint of style, the terse dialogue and the
way you're left with a feeling of gloomy enigma. His stories finish but
they never end. Deliberately, their resonance lingers on.
Read a whole book and you'll
realise that this effect is painstakingly reconstructed in all his
stories. In some ways, all his stories are the same story (save for
'What's in Alaska' which is the funniest dope story ever written).
Pan recently gathered
together his three books; 'Will You Please Be Quiet, Please', 'What We
Talk About When We Talk About Love' and 'Cathedral' into one volume –
'The Stories Of Raymond Carver'.
They flew him into London to
do interviews and he stayed at the oddly shaped Belgravia Sheraton. I
met him here. He was fifteen minutes late. He apologised. This is what
we talked about when we talked about Raymond Carver.
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