. Rev. edn.
New Updike , John . The Afterlife and Other Stories . New
York : Twayne , 1984 .
York , Knopf , 1994 .
Greiner , Donald J. The Other John Updike: Poems/
— — — . Assorted Prose . New York : Knopf , 1965 .
Short Stories/Prose/Play . Athens : Ohio University
— — — . Bech at Bay: A Quasi - Novel . New York :
Press , 1981 .
Knopf , 1998 .
Hamilton , Alice , and Kenneth Hamilton . The Ele-
— — — . Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism .
ments of John Updike . Grand Rapids, MI : William
New York : Knopf , 1983 .
B. Eerdmans , 1970 .
— — — . Licks of Love: Short Stories and a Sequel .
Hunt , George . John Updike and the Three Great
New York : Knopf , 2000 .
Secret Things: Sex, Religion, and Art . Grand
— — — . “ Made in Heaven . ” New American
Rapids, MI : William B. Eerdmans , 1980 .
Short Stories: The Writers Select Their Own Favor-
Lodge , David . “ Bye - Bye Bech . ” New York Review
ites . Ed. Gloria Norris . New York : Plume , 1986 .
of Books (November 19, 1998): 8 – 10.
9 – 26 .
Luscher , Robert M. John Updike: A Study of the Short
— — — . Museums and Women and Other Stories . New
Fiction . New York : Twayne , 1993 .
York : Knopf , 1973 .
Macnaughton , William R. , ed. Critical Essays on
— — — . Olinger Stories: A Selection . New York :
John Updike . Boston : G. K. Hall , 1982 .
Vintage , 1964 .
Modern Fiction Studies 20 (1974) and 37 (1991).
— — — . Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories . New
[Special issues on Updike].
York : Knopf , 1962 .
Newman , Judie . John Updike . New York : St.
— — — . Problems and Other Stories . New York :
Martin ’ s Press , 1988 .
Knopf , 1979 .
Perkins , Wendy , ed. A & P . New York : Harcourt
— — — . Too Far to Go . New York : Fawcett , 1979 .
Brace , 1998 .
Updike , John , and Katrina Kenison , eds. Best
Plath , James , ed. Conversations with John Updike .
American Short Stories of the Century . Boston :
Jackson : University Press of Mississippi , 1994 .
Houghton Miffl in , 1999 .
Pritchard , William . Updike: America ’ s Man of Letters .
Yerkes , James . The Centurian . < http://userpages.
South Royalton, VT : Steerforth Press , 2000 .
prexar.com/joyerkes/ > .
Reilly , Charlie . “ A Conversation with John
Yerkes , James , ed. John Updike and Religion: The
Updike . ” In Plath , ed., Conversations with John
Sense of the Sacred and the Motions of Grace . Grand
Updike , 124 – 50 .
Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans , 1999 .
23
Raymond Carver in
the Twenty - First Century
Sandra Lee Kleppe
The Copernican revolution in Carver studies has begun.
– William L. Stull
Past and Present Perspectives on Carver ’ s Career
Twenty years after the death of Raymond Carver (1938 – 88), interest in his life and
works seems more vibrant than ever. The versatility of the growing critical inquiries
into his literary and cultural signifi cance, the inclusion of his texts in interdisciplinary
teaching fi elds, his translation into many languages, coupled with the resilience of
the works themselves, are remarkable testimonies to his lasting contributions to the
American short story genre. 1 The Copernican revolution cited in the epigraph by the
Carver bibliographer William L. Stull concerns the revelations about the authorship
of key Carver texts, most importantly those in his iconic “ minimalist ” collection What
We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981). From our perspective in the twenty -
fi rst century, that collection is no longer the center of Carver Country, even as
it remains the center of the controversy about who, exactly, penned the stories in
the book.
This fi rst part of the chapter provides an overview of what is available in Carver
studies and comments on the current state of the “ revolution. ” As revolutions are
by nature chaotic, it can be diffi cult for the scholar, teacher, student, or general
reader to grasp the large and small movements in the fi eld of inquiry. Fortunately,
the two decades that have passed since the death of Carver give the twenty - fi rst -
century reader some advantages of distance and it will hopefully be possible to
provide some balanced assessments of Carver ’ s career as a whole, as well as of an
individual story. The second part turns to one story, “ Cathedral, ” chosen because it
is so frequently anthologized and thereby also frequently taught and read. In that
section, the task will be to offer perspectives on how “ Cathedral ” resonates with
Raymond
Carver
367
Carver ’
s other stories as well as with those of other major writers, with special
emphasis on intertextuality.
Controversy and Beyond
Carver started publishing his fi rst stories and poems in little magazines in the 1960s,
but his breakthrough as a writer did not come until 1976 with the publication of
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? which contains both the award - winning title story
and many of his most memorable and commented - on early stories such as “ Fat, ”
“ Neighbors, ” and “ Put Yourself in My Shoes. ” The extent to which Carver ’ s friend
and editor Gordon Lish was involved in the preparation of these stories for the volume
is as yet unclear, but we know for certain that the striking shift to the pared - down
stories in the notorious “ minimalist ” collection What We Talk About When We Talk
About Love (1981) was the result of Lish ’ s heavy - handed editing; in some cases more
than half of Carver ’ s story manuscripts were cut, and Lish made signifi cant alterations
to both individual stories and the structure of the collection, also changing titles to
fi t the stark mood of the whole.
Though the scandal was kept quiet by Carver during his lifetime, he immediately
began loosening himself from Lish ’ s grip while What We Talk About was still in
press. Indeed, he had published some of the same stories independently of Lish in
Furious Seasons with Capra Press in 1977 , and would in the 1980s go on to rewrite
or restore some of the stories that had been cut and also produce brand new ones
such as “ Cathedral, ” “ Elephant, ” and “ Errand ” (as well as three volumes of poetry).
Carver ’ s “ new ” hallmark expansive style is evident in the story collections Cathedral
(1983) and Where I ’ m Calling From (1988) , the latter completed just before his death.
The Lish controversy was not unveiled to the general public until a decade later, in
the now famous article by D. T. Max, which appeared in 1998 in the New York Times
Magazine . Almost another decade would pass before more of the details of the What
We Talk About scandal were revealed in a double Christmas Eve/New Year ’ s Eve issue
of the New Yo
rker in 2007 , which published Carver ’ s unaltered manuscript version
of the title story, called “ Beginners, ” as well as extensive excerpts from the corre-
spondence between Lish and Carver during the editing process. We know now that
Carver pleaded with Lish not to publish the volume with such extensive changes,
that he felt both his artistic integrity and shaky health were on the line. Ultimately,
however, Carver agreed (for complicated reasons), to go forth with Lish ’ s version of
the book.
General readers do not have access to all the materials needed to reach a reliable
assessment of Carver ’ s career developments, as the sources for these materials, Stull
notes, are “ in libraries and archival collections, as well as in the little magazines,
chapbooks and small - press books in which Carver published his writings throughout
his lifetime ” (Stull and Carroll 15). Furthermore, Stull adds, to “ examine this evi-
dence systematically and reach empirically and rationally supported conclusions
requires long - term research ” (ibid.). Luckily, Stull and others have taken on this task,
368
Sandra Lee Kleppe
producing several posthumous volumes of Carver texts that attest to the rich amount
of material available, including new fi ction, poetry, essays, plays, and excerpts,
showing the extent of Carver ’ s writing career and restoring the full text of some of
the trimmed stories.
2 Stull has also assisted in the publication of the Library of
America ’ s Raymond Carver: Collected Stories (2009) , a seminal book which now allows
scholars and students to have access to the full range of Carver ’ s story production in
one volume.
For a systematic critical analysis of specifi c changes Lish made to What We Talk
About and their signifi cance compared to Carver ’ s manuscripts, readers can consult a
comprehensive article by Carver scholar Enrico Monti, available online at the Raymond
Carver Review. 3 Monti provides us with a detailed comparison of the type Stull calls
for, analyzing not only the cuts Lish made to the stories, but also the insertion of new
titles, syntactical changes, lexical changes, and new endings. What emerges from
Monti ’ s study is that Lish
deliberately set out to dehumanize the stories and decontextualize them by expelling
geographical coordinates, reducing scenarios to their basics, and omitting names and
the few references to renowned people. (69)
In other words, the deadpan “ minimalist ” style of the collection is more Lish ’ s than
Carver ’ s, although, as Monti also points out, Lish ’ s editorial strategy appears as a “ mix
of sheer perception of Carver ’ s talent and crafty understanding of what groundbreak-
ing, innovative fi ction should be at that time ” (70).
In sum, the Lish controversy for
Carver
studies is ongoing as Carver scholars
have begun and will continue to document the implications of the editorial rela-
tionship for the works themselves. Yet the fact remains that What We Talk About
When We Talk About Love, for many readers, still represents one of America ’ s most
iconic short story collections, one which we now can conclude must have been the
collaborative effort of a gifted writer and an iron
-
willed editor at a particular
moment in American letters when the postmodern fascination with verbose experi-
mentation would become ripe for a paradigm shift with the shock of the minimal,
almost skeletal, and often lyrically powerful language of
What We Talk About .
There is no doubt that the literary gift was Carver ’ s, but the direction which it
took in that particular collection was the result of Lish ’ s infl uence. To put it in the
words of James Campbell , writing for the British Saturday Guardian , “ Gordon Lish
might have been the midwife, as all good editors are, but he is not the father. ”
Both Monti and Cambell ultimately assess the Lish – Carver controversy in compari-
son with some of the twentieth century
’
s most notorious editor
–
writer relation-
ships, including the infl uence of Ezra Pound on the creation of T. S. Eliot ’ s The
Wasteland , or the scandals involved in restoring classics such as the “ scroll ” version
of Jack Kerouac
’
s
On the Road.
What we can see from our point of view in the
twenty -
fi rst century is that Carver is clearly being ranked among the masters of
American literature.
Raymond
Carver
369
Critical Inquiry, Then and Now
Parallel to the growing interest in the editorial genesis of Carver ’ s fi ction and in his
posthumously published works is the emergence of much - needed biographical studies
that will help us better understand Carver ’ s life and works in tandem. Philippe Romon
published a literary biography in French in
2003
, and the long
-
awaited English
biography by Carol Sklenicka appeared in late 2009. Carver ’ s fi rst wife, Maryann Burk
Carver, published in 2006 her memoir What It Used to Be Like , which can be seen as
a supplement to the earlier, still relevant, biographical sketches found in Raymond
Carver: An Oral Biography
(by Sam Halpert,
1995
),
Remembering Ray: A Composite
Biography (by Carroll and Stull, 1993 ) and Carver Country: The World of Raymond Carver
(by Adelman and Gallagher, 1990 ), a rich photographic essay full of biographical
tidbits.
During Carver ’ s lifetime, he resented the fl ood of articles and reviews calling him
a minimalist, a label which has fi nally begun to unstick. There exists, however, a very
solid fi rst generation of critical monographs that are still recommended reading,
including Randolph Runyon ’ s Reading Raymond Carver (1992) , Adam Meyer ’ s Raymond
Carver (1995) , and Kirk Nesset ’ s The Stories of Raymond Carver: A Critical Study (1995) .
For the reader interested in more current book - length studies of Carver ’ s works, Greg
Lainsbury ’ s The Carver Chronotope: Inside the Life
-
World of Raymond Carver
’
s Fiction
(2004) and Arthur Bethea ’ s Technique and Sensibility in the Fiction and Poetry of Raymond
Carver (2001) are good examples of excellent scholarship. In 2006 , a special issue of
Journal of the Short Story in English dedicated to Carver included articles on the post-
humous stories, on domestic violence, and on the poetics of space in his stories. A
recent anthology of critical essays, New Paths to Raymond Carver (edited by Kleppe
and Miltner, 2008 ), treats topics such as the role of Alcoholics Anonymous in the
structuring of stories, McCarthyism, and the pervasive presence of television and TV
culture in Carver ’ s works.
What is perhaps most exciting about Carver studies in the twenty - fi rst century
is the versatility of his works, which are taught widely in interdisciplinary fi elds as
well as in many countries, and the sheer
variety of perspectives being applied to
reading Carver in new contexts. Feminism and gender studies approaches, occasion-
ally discussed in twentieth
-
century appraisals of Carver,
4
are beginning to gain
momentum as interest in the role of women, the formation of masculinity in the
Cold War era, and transgender and queer issues increases. 5 Consider, for example,
that Carver allowed women to occupy the privileged position as fi rst - person narra-
tor in several stories – including “ Fat, ” “ The Idea, ” “ The Student ’ s Wife, ” and “ So
Much Water, So Close to Home
”
–
a narrative feat of gender
-
crossing he found
challenging: “ The fi rst time I ever attempted to write a story from the point of
view of a woman, I was nervous about it. It was a real challenge to me ” (Gentry
and Stull 230). The cross - dressing episode in “ Neighbors, ” when Bill tries on the
identity and clothes of his female neighbor, is also impossible to overlook:
“
He
rummaged through the top drawers until he found a pair of panties and a brassiere.
370
Sandra Lee Kleppe
He stepped into the panties and fastened the brassiere, then looked through the
closet for an outfi t ” (Carver “ Neighbors ” 14). Male bonding is a central issue in
such stories as “ Cathedral, ” “ The Calm, ” and “ Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarets ” from
three different story collections. 6 Indeed, there seems no Carver story where gender
issues are not at stake.
In religious studies, as well as in the medical humanities and related emerging
fi elds such as disability studies and fat studies, Carver ’ s life experiences and the texts
that came out of them draw much attention. There are a dozen or so individual critical
articles treating the religious and spiritual aspects of Carver ’ s late works. 7 Carver is
widely taught in pre - med schools, where he is on the syllabus of courses that cover
topics such as cancer, alcoholism, and patient – doctor relationships. 8 He is listed on
courses in disability studies that cover texts from Sophocles
’
Oedipus to Carver ’ s
“ Cathedral, ” 9 and his story “ Fat ” is included in Donna Jarrell ’ s and Ira Sukrungruang ’ s
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 80