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Common Themes In Raymond Carver's Life And Work

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Raymond Carver was a short story writer credited with reinvigorating the writing style of the short story. Raymond Carver was excellent at depicting the gritty reality that is the working poor class, largely because it was no stranger to him. Struggling with dis-ease within relationships, a life-threatening bout of alcoholism, and less-than-ideal working positions, writing was a major outlet. Writing allowed him to look at very similar situations as his from afar, almost as if it was through a movie screen. To Carver, his fiction stories held the same themes that his life did. They may have been fiction, but they described a major reality that almost anyone can relate to. Raymond Carver was born on May 25th, 1938 to Clevie Raymond Carver and …show more content…

Carver graduated from Humboldt State College four years later and began doing work at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (RAABE). His wages were not much better than what they were in his previous odd jobs, but he was now getting paid to write instead of cleaning toilets which helped further his career. In 1967, he accepted a job editing textbooks for Science Research Associates. Because of the career change, he moved his family to Palo Alto, California. In the same year, his father passed away. Carver’s first major publication consisted of a collection of his poems under the title Near Klamath (1968) ("Carver, Raymond (1939 - 1988)."), rather than the short stories that most know him for. It was around this time that Carver began to drink heavily. Three years later, he was fired from his editing job with the Science Research Associates citing the reason as having an inappropriate writing style. This same year, he had another collection of poetry published under the title Winter Insomnia (1970) ("Carver, Raymond (1939 - 1988)."). This is when his writing career started to take off. This is also when his alcohol addiction stepped up, heavily drinking for years. His first major publication of his short stories bore the title Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (1976) and was published by McGraw-Hill. Although it only sold 5,000 copies over the first year, it received a National Book Award nomination (RABBE). This was a

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