Raymond Carver

This essay examines Carver's minimalist style as a response to postmodern culture. Taylor Johnston suggests that Carver's spare prose has the effect of stripping away as many consumer artifacts as possible without jettisoning referentiality entirely. In this way, Carver's stories clear the overpopulated, decorative space of both consumer culture and more canonical postmodern literatures. "Cathedral" exemplifies this operation in that it not only prunes brand names, but also allegorizes the utopian possibility of experience removed from commodification. The essay performs a close reading of this story in which blindness becomes a figure for the evacuation of consumer culture from lower-middle-class space.

Trying to write a poem while it was still dark out, he had the unmistakable feeling he was being watched. Laid down the pen and looked around. In a minute, he got up and moved through the rooms of his house. He checked the closets. Nothing, of course. Still, he wasn´t taking any chances. He turned off the lamps and sat in the dark.

Carver in the Age of Trump a valuable opportunity to consider the perspective of that demographic in detail. Carver's work reminds readers that these are often " decent men " who have been dealt bad hands " in a plentiful world " and therefore " behave badly " (Weber 37): Doreen Ober's willingness to play along with Earl's diet scheme in " They're Not Your Husband, " for example, suggests her understanding that Earl is a victim of uncontrollable circumstances. But if Carver's work can foster sympathy across the political divide in the Age of Trump, it also offers a critique of these men's behavior. Carver repeatedly shows how the same social and economic anxieties that energize Trump supporters prompt toxic assertions of masculine privilege in the men of Carver country, rather than productive coping strategies. Examining the ways in which " What Is It? " " A Serious Talk, " and other stories illustrate this dynamic, this presentation will suggest that the same ideal of self-reliant manhood that Trump aims to project provokes in Carver's men symbolic displays of power and authority that are as harmful as they are ineffectual.

This article explores several elements of Raymond Carver’s oeuvre and its various applications to ESL and remedial English literature, comprehension, and composition classes. Due to the difficulty inherent in teaching ESL students literature featuring advanced verbiage and complex grammatical structure, a modern, minimalist writer like Carver and his condensed, easy-to-read short stories is a natural choice for an instructor of literature. Advanced instruction of dialogue and meaning, themes and symbols, and even the process of editing writing in order to improve meaning and reduce “clutter” can be instructed using Raymond Carver’s Collected Stories. Moreover, this article gives instructors certain teaching methods to aid the ESL student on his journey from a superficial understanding of grammar to a deeper understanding of meaningful, literary English.
KEYWORDS: Raymond Carver, ESL, American literature, instruction

Many people, like the protagonist of Dorothy Parker's short story "Too Bad," wonder "what did married people talk about, anyway, when they were alone together?" Raymond Carver's short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is the literary rendition of the ways in which married couples talk. This essay analyses this short story taking into account sociolinguistic aspects related to men's and women's linguistic behaviour and the speech strategies each gender uses, so as to explore if these characters accurately reflect real life speech patterns or not.

Learning To Love You More (2002-2009), a creation by Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July, is a collective and contemporary online artwork piece. In this multimedia website, Fletcher and July gave assignments addressed to the public in general. The audience response was overwhelming and the website is considered a model among collaborative artworks. This paper examines the reasons for the positive reception and audience involvement in the website. The nature of the assignments, the use of creative writing and the community's online expression are taken into consideration. The website's connections to dialogical art and relational aesthetics are also examined. Finally, we assessed intermediality and the manner in which it appears in the assignments, in relationship to the public and as an inherent feature of the project.

What do we learn about the narrator's wife and the blind man in the expository summary of paragraphs 2-5? How did her relationship with Robert compare with that with her first husband, the air force officer who had been her childhood sweetheart? And how does the latter relationship compare with that between Robert and his first wife, Beulah? What seems to be the narrator's attitude toward each of these relationships? Is he sympathetic toward them? What unconscious irony is involved in his description of Beulah?

Almost without exception, critics endorse the idea that Raymond Carver's Cathedral marks a turn toward affirmation in the context of his career. That the stories themselves strongly suggest otherwise shows the degree to which Carver studies is enthralled by a redemptive career story propagated in part by Carver himself. That narrative and its popularity derive from the poverty of the career imaginary, which favors a developmental logic unlikely to do justice to the complex relations between texts. Reading Cathedral against the grain of the critical consensus shows how Cathedral revisits the bleak perspective of his earlier work and enables Carver to serve as an example of the need to enhance our understanding of modern literary careers.

The place of the editor in literary production is an ambiguous and often invisible one, requiring close attention to publishing history and (often inaccessible) archival resources to bring it into focus. In The Art of Editing, Tim Groenland shows that the critical tendency to overlook the activities of editors and to focus on the solitary author figure neglects important elements of how literary works are acquired, developed and disseminated.

Focusing on selected works of fiction by Raymond Carver and David Foster Wallace, authors who represent stylistic touchstones for US fiction of recent decades, Groenland presents two case studies of editorial collaboration. Carver's early stories were integral to the emergence of the Minimalist movement in the 1980s, while Wallace's novels marked a generational shift towards a more expansive, maximal mode of narrative. The role of their respective editors, however, is often overlooked. Gordon Lish's part in shaping the form of Carver's early stories remains under-explored; analyses of Wallace's fiction, meanwhile, tend to minimise Michael Pietsch's role from the creation of Infinite Jest during the mid-1990s until the present day.

Drawing on extensive archival research as well as interviews with editors and collaborators, Groenland illuminates the complex and often conflicting forms of agency involved in the genesis of these influential works. The energies and tensions of the editing process emerge as essential factors in the creation of fictions more commonly understood within the paradigm of solitary authorship. The mediating role of the editor is, Groenland argues, inseparable from the development, form, and reception of these works.

Ragionar per ficta Il minimalismo tragico di Raymond Carver Scrittore celebre soprattutto per la narrativa, Raymond Carver non mancò mai di sottolineare l'importanza della sua opera poetica, testimoniata da un'assiduità anche più tenace e duratura di quella che dedicò alla prosa. Attraverso il 'mestiere di scrivere', e non tanto invece per via di una accademica assunzione teorica, egli pervenne nel corso degli anni ad una profonda riflessione sul fare poetico, sulla natura particolare della scrittura come arte, che credo sia importante intendere non solo per una adeguata comprensione della sua opera, ma anche per articolare meglio il giudizio critico sulla tradizione poetica contemporanea e infine, più semplicemente, per capire meglio di che cosa parliamo, quando parliamo di poesia. Vige tuttora infatti un giudizio critico, che assai male ha provato ad esercitarsi con la categoria del cosiddetto 'minimalismo', come ha dimostrato la stessa Tess Gallager, la donna che dopo il naufragio del primo matrimonio e dell'alcolismo lo accompagnò nella sua 'seconda' vita. In ogni sede, che siano prefazioni o saggi o articoli in riviste o quotidiani, la scrittrice combatte con sempre maggior veemenza contro quelle «molte voci poetiche degli ultimi anni» che, in nome del minimalismo attribuito al loro presunto maestro, «si sono spinte lontano, anche troppo, sulla strada della sincerità», e che «si ritengono audaci e coraggiose per aver divelto la porta del confessionale». Insomma, Carver non pare proprio l'ultimo, eroico alfiere della romantica sincerità del poeta, l'ultimo lirico narratore dell'outing. Anzi, le dichiarazioni di poetica e l'officina di scrittore indicano in ogni modo la sua appartenenza ad una ben diversa tradizione, che non sia quella di un tardo, tardissimo e inconsapevole residuo ottocentesco – di un minimalismo, cioè, da intendersi quale ultima deriva dei molti neo-neo realismi postmoderni. Di che cosa parliamo, quando parliamo di poesia? Che genere di linguaggio è? Quale specifico aspetto della ragione implica nel suo realizzarsi? Carver, non credo vi sia dubbio, ci aiuta a comprendere che il ragionare specifico della poesia è nel suo essere una sorta di gesto verbale, un gesto che giunge ad immaginare e a creare anche l'impossibile per potersi comunicare. È insomma un ragionar per finta, ossia per ficta, per mondi creati, un ragionare che perviene alla creazione di una lingua, di un ritmo, dei versi, delle immagini, dei paesaggi, delle situazioni fatte ad arte, artificiali, proprio perché fatte per chi si ama, fatte per te, lettore, perché tu conosca e sia un poco più felice. Si è trattato, tuttavia, di una consapevolezza che si è fatta strada attraverso un particolare rapporto con gli altri poeti, uno specifico senso della storia, la necessità di un'etica della scrittura rigorosa, la consapevolezza che la realtà consiste di una dimensione attiva e di una contemplativa, che vuol dire storica e possibile, come dicono da sempre i modi dell'indicativo e del congiuntivo, e come ricorda, da ultimo, anche il nobel Seamus Heaney: che l'indicativo della storia è scritto e sovrascritto al buon modo ottativo del desiderio. Una finzione letteraria, quindi, che non 'esprime' ma 'comunica' creando, tiene conto cioè non solo dell'accuratezza dovuta al significato conosciuto ma, anche e inscindibilmente, della misura adeguata di colui alla quale il significato da comunicare è destinato. Tiene conto, insomma, del fatto che la conoscenza è sempre ri-conoscenza: del significato come dono ricevuto e insieme, per non tradire la sua natura, del significato come dono offerto. Ma andiamo con ordine. Per ora, vorrei solo provare ad avvicinarmi con ampia approssimazione a ciò che Carver stesso volle scrivere in modo esplicito. Intanto, anziché inseguire la tarda chimera postmoderna degli abusati 'ismi' (per lui è stato subito pronto, appunto, il 'minimalismo'), e dichiarare il superamento di poeti antichi e moderni in virtù della originale 'sperimentazione', sembra piuttosto che egli abbia intrapreso un percorso inverso, per allacciare legami con autori che riconobbe maestri, quasi a mendicare una tradizione. In molte delle prefazioni alle raccolte, pubblicate in Italia dalla Minimum Fax, Tess Gallagher parla in effetti di una sorta di «assimilazione» che Carver intraprese nei confronti di poeti come Williams, Ginsberg e Lowell, Dickinson e Bogan, sino a Rilke, Celan, Lorca, Milosz, Yeats e l'Achmatova (ma, sia detto per inciso, tra le sue conoscenze va ascritta per certo anche quella di Pavese, letto in traduzione, e a lui consentaneo perché insieme poeta e narratore). Carver così ritagliò anche per sé la classica metafora di colui che, viaggiando, si orienta con le stelle. Orientarsi con le stelle (Steering by the stars) è infatti, prima che il titolo italiano della raccolta completa delle poesie, quello di una breve prefazione alla raccolta di testi degli studenti del corso di scrittura

Dirty Realism is a literary movement which arose in the USA during the 70’s and 80’s. It aims at showing some of the worst aspects of Western society during the postmodern era. Dirty Realism reaches readers mainly through the novel and short story. Its characters are not heroes, they are regular people who struggle with current life, its problems and challenges. It is not clear where Dirty Realism comes from, but it seems to be closer to American Naturalism. Dirty Realism has as one of its goals to critique the postmodern society, nevertheless, it does not offer any political critique. Charles Bukowski is one of the writers whose work we will analyze. He tells his own life in the novels, he wrote and talked about his current problems by using an alter ego. Raymond Carver is the other writer we will approach. He wrote short stories, we can find in there characters who deal with their current problems but they do not know how to fix them. Both writers want to criticise the society where they lived. However, they do not offer any solution. Carver and Bukowski belonged to the same movement, but also present some differences as we should be able to prove at the end of this project.

Polyester is his favorite, second to snakeskin and he has taken to pairing them, so you judge for yourself what kind of impression we make at the Officer's Club. We go there Fridays, which is, consequently, the only night he's up for making love, because he gets drunk and I'm tipsy too, but not as drunk as he gets.

One of the most persistent myths about philosophies that “proceed from the ordinary” is that any kind of philosophy that emphasizes the ordinary does so in order to find true and original sense, not contaminated by “philosophy.” This is pretty much as a far as one may come from the real significance of philosophical attention to the everyday. Indeed, if one looks at, for example, Austin and Wittgenstein, they both share the view that the everyday and the senses of our ordinary lives in language, are ever so difficult to bring into view, and it is precisely the failure to acknowledge these kinds of difficulties that often lead philosophers into philosophical problems and metaphysical speculation.
In this paper, I aim to investigate this pent-up dimension of the significance of philosophical attention to the everyday. The philosopher who most clearly have stressed that “the everyday” is something immensely difficult to get into view, is Stanley Cavell, and he has also linked the concept of the ordinary to the Freudian concept of the uncanny. The concept of the uncanny has a particular ring to it in German. Since the word “Heimlich” means “familiar” and “secret,” it suggests a fairly thick layer of connotations of the no-(longer-)secret, the disclosed, where everything is open to view, as it were. In short “Unheimlich” contains the claim that there is something uncanny about that which is open to view because it is open to view.
The second half of this paper, is a reflection upon the short stories of Raymond Carver’s. I turn to these in order to elucidate the uncanniness of the ordinary – an uncanniness that often is a part of (but certainly not the only cause of) the philosophical desire to generalize, destabilize and regiment language. I also aim to show that there is a sense in which Carver’s short stories make it possible for us to see this fact about our lives in language clearly, in a way that ordinary forms of philosophical discourse hides from view. Thereby, Carver’s short stories – being a specific form of literature – can help us see more clearly the sources of our philosophical confusions. In this respect, Carver’s short stories function, not as an exemplification of a philosophical thesis, but as (more or less) philosophical investigations their own right.

La autora utiliza lenguaje cotidiano, con palabras y expresiones coloquiales que la identifican con el lector. La economía en las descripciones evita romper el suspenso. El relato se basa en episodios y escenarios históricos que la autora toca superficialmente, evitando distractores. En la misma línea, las escenas de sexo son sutiles.
    Los textos están desprovistos de adornos estilísticos y figuras literarias. Las frases son cortas. La lectura tiene la agilidad de un cuento. Todas estas características permiten al lector registrar detalles que más adelante puedan ser importantes para seguir el argumento sin perder el hilo.

    En el relato no hay super héroes. Los protagonistas son los propios lectores. Personajes cotidianos inmersos en dramas también cotidianos, por fuertes que parezcan.

The author uses everyday language, with colloquial words and expressions that identify her with the reader. The economy in the descriptions avoids breaking the suspense. The story is based on historical episodes and scenarios that the author touches superficially, avoiding distractions. Along the same lines, the sex scenes are subtle.
    The texts are devoid of stylistic embellishments and literary figures. The sentences are short. Reading has the agility of a story. All of these features allow the reader to record details that may later be important to follow the plot without losing the plot.

Raymond Carver published his short stories collection Cathedral in 1983. The stories of Cathedral are different from Carver’s earlier minimalistic works. The improvement of author’s livelihood urged him to regulate the writing of his short stories. His characters—the common people—gradually escape from despair and depression and are displayed in a more hopeful light. Moreover, his style of writing tends to be richer. Carver’s new style not only made great achievements in its realism, it also portrays the social life of its characters and is sensitive to the era in which they live. These are the unique innovations that characterize Raymond Carver’s later works.

Je souhaiterais tout d'abord remercier Monsieur le Professeur Daniel Roulland du soutien indéfectible qu'il m'a apporté, de ses conseils, toujours avisés, de l'attention scrupuleuse qu'il a portée à mon travail en toute circonstance, et de ses encouragements en les temps les plus difficiles. Je le remercie pour son écoute et sa disponibilité. Il représente pour moi un modèle que je tenterai de suivre tout au long de ma carrière, que ce soit pour ses qualités aussi bien professionnelles qu'humaines. J'aimerais aussi remercier Bertrand Richet et Didier Bottineau, qui ont répondu à mes courriels avec une grande ouverture d'esprit et une extrême sympathie, sans oublier André Rousseau avec qui j'ai pu échanger lors du colloque intitulé « L'interlocution comme paramètre » organisé à Amiens en janvier 2011. Je souhaiterais aussi saluer le travail remarquable de mes enseignants d'anglais du secondaire, sans qui je ne serais peut-être pas là aujourd'hui. Ils ont fait naître en moi une véritable passion pour l'anglais et m'ont transmis le goût pour ce métier formidable. Ensuite j'ai une pensée particulière pour mes collègues et amis des Universités de Nantes et Rennes 2. Enfin, je ne saurais suffisamment saluer mon entourage, famille et amis, à qui je dédicace cet ouvrage : ils m'ont soutenue au quotidien, ce qui a facilité la réalisation de ce projet jusqu'à son terme. Levillain,Pauline. Marqueurs et polyphonie en anglais contemporain : étude de cas -2013

Un lettore che incontri per la prima volta il nome di Raymond Carver potrà forse indugiare sul segno di abrasione al quale il sostantivo inglese sembra rimandare: carver come incisore, intagliatore, scultore. Approfittando dunque della fortunata affinità semantica tra sfera letterale e sfera letteraria che pare sottendere il nome e la scrittura dell'autore statunitense, sarà possibile suggerire, allo stesso lettore, quanto il mestiere di Raymond Carver sia proprio arte del segno sulla materia, volontà di imprimersi sulla superficie terrestre del reale in un gesto di scarnificazione radicato nella "sorda corposità della vita pratica americana" 1 e nell'autenticità di tale esperienza. 2 Prendere avvio da alcune fissurazioni ricavate dalla scrittura carveriana nel suo incidere sui paradigmi mitici, letterari e antropologici nordamericani significa seguire un doppio percorso di affiliazione e spoliazione nei confronti di quella stessa tradizione culturale. 3 Percorrendo "il nuovo sentiero per la cascata" dischiuso dall'opera di Carver sarà allora possibile individuare una specularità tra la forte matrice hemingwaiana da cui sembrano emanare i topoi connessi all'outdoor, e la problematica e consapevole mediazione di quegli stessi codici. 4 Queste pagine guarderanno a scorci emblematici delle geografie d'America quali l'outdoor, la presenza indiana e la pesca, con l'intento di rilevare lo specifico riproporsi di una cartografia, naturale e metaforica, disegnata da alcuni racconti di Hemingway cui Carver pare aderire lungo una via "ad asciugare". 5 Un discorso scandito, dunque, dal dialettico alternarsi dei due poli entro i quali si trova a oscillare la narrativa carveriana: il "pieno" di un'operazione di recupero del retaggio mitico e letterario americano e il "vuoto" della necessaria scalfittura di quel referente.

Repeat any word, over and again, for longer than half a minute or so in order to experience the psychological phenomenon of "semantic satiation." In laymen's terms, the portion of the brain responsible for parsing sounds into words becomes oversaturated, numbed to its work, and offers less and less meaning with every passing moment. That the complexities of language can exhibit such fragility, too, is a harsh reality to which entire eras of violence and regret can be attributed. Words, sometimes, are simply not enough; ironic, then, that this theme is a central one in the works of Raymond Carver and Flannery O'Connor. With the use of Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" and O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find", this essay will illustrate --for the most poignant, lingering questions of both works --that violence can satisfy a need for meaning in ways that civil language falls short.

Forma breve, non minore, questo è il punto di partenza di una tesi che si propone di indagare le problematiche del racconto all’interno del mercato editoriale contemporaneo.
Dopo la presentazione di una serie di questioni d’ordine storico e formale sulle oscillazioni del termine novella e racconto, si è tentato di ricostruire e valutare i pregiudizi che penalizzano la pubblicazione dei racconti, rispetto alla forma più rassicurante del romanzo di consumo.
Con l’ausilio delle recenti posizioni della critica, si presenta l’attuale scenario delle iniziative nate attorno alla produzione e ricezione dei racconti, rivendicando l’autonomia e la necessità di una forma che, proprio in virtù del suo sguardo parziale, si presta forse meglio di altre a indagare il “mistero dell’esistenza”.