Research Guide to American Literature

over his shoulder when he wrote, approving or disapproving of certain words,
phrases, and strategies” (McInerney). Carver transferred to Humboldt State
College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in English in 1963; while there, he
published his first story, “The Pastoral,” in the Western Humanities Review in the
spring of 1962. In the same year, his first poem, “The Brass Ring,” was published
in Targets. With the help of a modest scholarship ($500), he attended the Iowa
Writers’ Workshop, where later, in 1973, he returned as a visiting lecturer and
taught with John Cheever. Later, Carver admitted that mostly the two writers
drank heavily.
Carver’s drinking, which began long before his return to Iowa, accompanied
other problems. In 1967 he was working as a textbook editor when his father died
after several hospitalizations. In debt, he was forced to declare bankruptcy. (He
filed again in 1974.) In the same year, some brightness in the form of recogni-
tion and validation of his work appeared; his story “Will You Please Be Quiet,
Please?” was included in The Best American Short Stories 1967. Many of Carver’s
characters who struggle with alcoholism were self-inspired. Carver experienced
the same tremors that Tiny, in “Where I’m Calling From,” has when he tries to
stop drinking, and “Gazebo” reflects the same kind of poor decisions made by
Carver while drinking.
Carver’s first collection, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (1977), was nomi-
nated for a National Book Award, solidifying his reputation as an exemplary
writer. Soon after its publication, he quit drinking with the help of Alcoholics
Anonymous, separated from his wife, and began a relationship with the poet
Tess Gallagher, whom he married in 1988. Carver’s next collection, What We Talk
about When We Talk about Love, was published in 1981. Edited by Gordon Lish (a
highly regarded writing coach with whom Carver had become acquainted earlier
when trying to publish a short story in Esquire), the collection drew critical atten-
tion for what was deemed Carver’s “minimalist” approach to writing, a description
Carver later protested and tried to correct. By this time Carver was a professor of
English at Syracuse University. When the American Academy and Institute of
Arts and Letters awarded him its first Mildred and Harold Strauss Livings Fel-
lowship in 1983, Carver left teaching to become a full-time writer.
In 1982 John Gardner selected “Cathedral” for The Best American Short Sto-
ries series. Carver cites the writing of this story as a pivotal moment in his career.
He soon switched editors after a falling-out with Lish and published Cathedral
(1984), a collection of stories with a more expansive style than found in his pre-
vious writing. In 1986 Carver served as guest editor of The Best American Short
Stories. The following year, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Carver died on
2 August 1988. Later that year, Gallagher published his posthumous collection
of selected works, Where I’m Calling From (1988), regarded by many critics as his
capstone work. With these stories, Carver made a deliberate effort to move away
from the “minimalist” narrative and diction of the stories published while working
with Lish. Like Carver’s earlier stories, they realistically depict loneliness, pain,
and despair without authorial commentary, but the suffering of his characters is
lessened by a movement toward healing and sometimes redemption as characters
look for and find connection to others.

Raymond Carver 17