Conversations By Raymond Carver: Annotated Bibliography

ppreciative of Anne Tyler's description of him as a "spendthrift," Raymond Carver said during an interview with Kasia Boddy (in Conversations with Raymond Carver, 1990), "I think a writer ought to spend himself in whatever he's doing. If a writer starts holding back, that can be a very bad thing. I've always squandered." Selecting Ernest Hemingway , Gustave Flaubert, Leo Tolstoy, and Anton Chekhov as models for craft, passion, and integrity, Carver drew upon a "bedrock honesty," according to his friend Tobias Wolff (in DLB Yearbook: 1988 ), to deliver "the news from one world to another." Deemed a spokesperson for blue-collar despair, Carver wrote with the authenticity of experience. His obsessions (Carver disapproved of the word themes) included

Hating his job, he stuck to it just long enough to buy a car and move out. On 7 June 1957 Carver married sixteen-year-old Maryann Burk, who was to become a teacher. Six months later their daughter, Christine, was born. In August 1958 the Carver family moved to Paradise, California, and he went from one low-paying job to another, while Maryann waited tables and sold items door-to-door. Vance, their son, was born that October. Carver and his wife were fastened to a life of responsibility, paying for rent, utilities, and food and clothing for their children and fearing medical emergencies, since they could not afford health

After being transferred to the night shift, he found that he could finish his scheduled duties in two or three hours and still receive a full day's pay. He would do his work, go home, get up early, and turn to his writing. In fall 1966 he joined a poetry workshop directed by Dennis Schmitz at Sacramento State College (now a university). Though bankruptcy and his father's death marred the early months of 1967, two fortunate occurrences were to come his way. In July, Carver received his first white-collar job, editing textbooks for Science Research Associates (SRA) in Palo Alto, California, where he met Gordon Lish . That same year Martha Foley included Carver's "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" in The Best American Short Stories