"James Dickey wrote: 'Carver’s stories have tremendous force, the power of a connecting left hook when the fist is filled with a roll of coins. Such an impact cannot be shaken off.' The surprise is that Carver achieves this impact with indirect minimalism -- he refuses to budge beyond the construction of a conversation or the description of two strangers in a quiet room. His stories carry no obvious symbolic, philosophical, or psychoanalytic subtexts; they are as "real" as the mattress beneath an aching back. In a way, Carver merely paints the painful silence that is the backdrop for most significant human interaction. He trusts that the graveyard of memory will accurately fill in the emotional details." --artandculture.com
Maybe that's why Carver is so intriguing, and his stories so effective with adolescents--he trusts and respects his readers...
I haven't read the entire thing yet, but this
Salon article discusses a possible act of plagiarism by Carver--could lead to an interesting discussion in a classroom.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Some Poems
Some poems by Carver:
I found some poems by Carver, which seem to be really relevant to the stories we have read.
Drinking While Driving by Raymond Carver
It's August and I have not
Read a book in six months except something called The Retreat from Moscow
by Caulaincourt
Nevertheless, I am happy
Riding in a car with my brother
and drinking from a pint of Old Crow.
We do not have any place in mind to go,
we are just driving.
If I closed my eyes for a minute
I would be lost, yet
I could gladly lie down and sleep forever
beside this road
My brother nudges me.
Any minute now, something will happen.
The Current by Raymond Carver
These fish have no eyes
these silver fish that come to me in dreams,
scattering their roe and milt
in the pockets of my brain.
But there's one that comes--
heavy, scarred, silent like the rest,
that simply holds against the current,
closing its dark mouth against
the current, closing and opening
as it holds to the current.
Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year by Raymond Carver
October. Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen
I study my father's embarrassed young man's face.
Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string
of spiny yellow perch, in the other
a bottle of Carlsbad Beer.
In jeans and denim shirt, he leans
against the front fender of a 1934 Ford.
He would like to pose bluff and hearty for his posterity,
Wear his old hat cocked over his ear.
All his life my father wanted to be bold.
But the eyes give him away, and the hands
that limply offer the string of dead perch
and the bottle of beer. Father, I love you,
yet how can I say thank you, I who can't hold my liquor either,
and don't even know the places to fish?
I found some poems by Carver, which seem to be really relevant to the stories we have read.
Drinking While Driving by Raymond Carver
It's August and I have not
Read a book in six months except something called The Retreat from Moscow
by Caulaincourt
Nevertheless, I am happy
Riding in a car with my brother
and drinking from a pint of Old Crow.
We do not have any place in mind to go,
we are just driving.
If I closed my eyes for a minute
I would be lost, yet
I could gladly lie down and sleep forever
beside this road
My brother nudges me.
Any minute now, something will happen.
The Current by Raymond Carver
These fish have no eyes
these silver fish that come to me in dreams,
scattering their roe and milt
in the pockets of my brain.
But there's one that comes--
heavy, scarred, silent like the rest,
that simply holds against the current,
closing its dark mouth against
the current, closing and opening
as it holds to the current.
Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year by Raymond Carver
October. Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen
I study my father's embarrassed young man's face.
Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string
of spiny yellow perch, in the other
a bottle of Carlsbad Beer.
In jeans and denim shirt, he leans
against the front fender of a 1934 Ford.
He would like to pose bluff and hearty for his posterity,
Wear his old hat cocked over his ear.
All his life my father wanted to be bold.
But the eyes give him away, and the hands
that limply offer the string of dead perch
and the bottle of beer. Father, I love you,
yet how can I say thank you, I who can't hold my liquor either,
and don't even know the places to fish?
Monday, March 24, 2008
Tell it like it is
I've been thinking a lot about Raymond Carver and this blog and I think we are sort of missing out on a good experience here. I think we are (myself included) kind of stuck in this "we have homework" mentality and not putting all that we have in this blog. Our reflections are due on Thursday, which means that we have wasted a lot of time. Our reader responses have been really good, but now we have got to focus our attentions on teaching Carver. So I think we should take the next couple of days and really put everything that we can into the blog. I added a picture and I am going to poke around a little more tonight - see what I can find.
Anyone up for it?
I'll start things off by quoting from the NCTE book, something that I found particularly interesting.. Rubenstein writes:
In an often quoted line from his poem "Epilogue," Robert Lowell remarked, "Yet why not say what happened?" Critics frequently connect this line to the maxim of minimalism: Tell it like it is. To say what happened, what really happened, is essential to minimalist fiction and certainly to Carver's work. Though his fiction blends "a little autobiography and a lot of imagination" (Simpson and Buzbee 41), it strives to paint a realistic picture of a corner of our contemporary world. But the question is, through whose eyes is that picture seen? And how does truth depend on perspective? (75)
I am the type of person who likes to have things packaged neatly for me. I don't like clutter in my life, but strangely enough I do like clutter in my reading. What I mean by that is I truly enjoy having books and stories end like Carver's do. It gives me the feelings that I have contributed to the story, not just been passive reader. I've actually had to think about what I've read and the possible endings for that story. However, I anticipate that our students will dislike this initially. I've noticed that our students expect the author or the teacher to tell them what something is about.
So the questions that I am going to pose are: How can we teach our students to enjoy the clutter in their reading? How can we encourage speculation, natural prediction, and active imagination while reading stories like those Carver writes? How can we ease the uncomfortable tension that may arise from unhappy endings? What about no endings at all?
Finally - I found the trailer for Short Cuts, which is the film inspired by the writings of Raymond Carver. I'll include it below. Take a look at the cast, info, and awarm nominations by clicking here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108122/. It was nominated for an Oscar and has a great cast. None of the Blockbusters in the area carry the title, but I think you can get it on Netflix. It was $30 on Amazon, just in case anyone is interested.
Anyone up for it?
I'll start things off by quoting from the NCTE book, something that I found particularly interesting.. Rubenstein writes:
In an often quoted line from his poem "Epilogue," Robert Lowell remarked, "Yet why not say what happened?" Critics frequently connect this line to the maxim of minimalism: Tell it like it is. To say what happened, what really happened, is essential to minimalist fiction and certainly to Carver's work. Though his fiction blends "a little autobiography and a lot of imagination" (Simpson and Buzbee 41), it strives to paint a realistic picture of a corner of our contemporary world. But the question is, through whose eyes is that picture seen? And how does truth depend on perspective? (75)
I am the type of person who likes to have things packaged neatly for me. I don't like clutter in my life, but strangely enough I do like clutter in my reading. What I mean by that is I truly enjoy having books and stories end like Carver's do. It gives me the feelings that I have contributed to the story, not just been passive reader. I've actually had to think about what I've read and the possible endings for that story. However, I anticipate that our students will dislike this initially. I've noticed that our students expect the author or the teacher to tell them what something is about.
So the questions that I am going to pose are: How can we teach our students to enjoy the clutter in their reading? How can we encourage speculation, natural prediction, and active imagination while reading stories like those Carver writes? How can we ease the uncomfortable tension that may arise from unhappy endings? What about no endings at all?
Finally - I found the trailer for Short Cuts, which is the film inspired by the writings of Raymond Carver. I'll include it below. Take a look at the cast, info, and awarm nominations by clicking here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108122/. It was nominated for an Oscar and has a great cast. None of the Blockbusters in the area carry the title, but I think you can get it on Netflix. It was $30 on Amazon, just in case anyone is interested.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Vitamins
In the spirit of St. Patty's Day I thought I would do my post in green. Isn't that multimodal of me?
Anyways.. sorry I haven't posted too much - but I have been reading! I have read a couple more stories, but there's one that I wanted to write about now. It is called "Vitamins" and it was... interesting. It was about this woman who was a struggling vitamin saleswoman and her cheating husband. Alcohol played a big role in this story.. in fact, I don't think there was a page that didn't describe some kind of drink or drunken encounter. The husband gets jealous when his wife's female employee hits on her, even though he is trying to seduce another woman (who is also working for his wife).
Eventually the husband succeeds and he and this woman go to a "spade place" for a couple drinks where they meet this black man who has just returned from Vietnam and has an ear as a trophy, which he shows to everyone. Because of this man the woman has second thoughts about what she is doing and decides to quit her job and move to Portland, because "there must be something in Portland. Portland's on everybody's mind these days. Portland's a drawing card. Portland this, Portland that. Portland's as good a place as any. It's all the same" (262). The last lines of the story are: "I knocked some stuff out of the medicine chest. Things rolled into the sink. 'Where's the aspirin?' I said. I knocked down some more things. I didn't care. Things kept falling" (263).
I think this goes along with the feelings of despair that the wife in "So Much Water" often felt. She talked about nothing mattering anymore. I get this vibe in a couple of the stories that I have read. I think that this is definitely something that could lead to a thoughtful discussion: what makes people give up? What makes people stop caring?
Anyways.. sorry I haven't posted too much - but I have been reading! I have read a couple more stories, but there's one that I wanted to write about now. It is called "Vitamins" and it was... interesting. It was about this woman who was a struggling vitamin saleswoman and her cheating husband. Alcohol played a big role in this story.. in fact, I don't think there was a page that didn't describe some kind of drink or drunken encounter. The husband gets jealous when his wife's female employee hits on her, even though he is trying to seduce another woman (who is also working for his wife).
Eventually the husband succeeds and he and this woman go to a "spade place" for a couple drinks where they meet this black man who has just returned from Vietnam and has an ear as a trophy, which he shows to everyone. Because of this man the woman has second thoughts about what she is doing and decides to quit her job and move to Portland, because "there must be something in Portland. Portland's on everybody's mind these days. Portland's a drawing card. Portland this, Portland that. Portland's as good a place as any. It's all the same" (262). The last lines of the story are: "I knocked some stuff out of the medicine chest. Things rolled into the sink. 'Where's the aspirin?' I said. I knocked down some more things. I didn't care. Things kept falling" (263).
I think this goes along with the feelings of despair that the wife in "So Much Water" often felt. She talked about nothing mattering anymore. I get this vibe in a couple of the stories that I have read. I think that this is definitely something that could lead to a thoughtful discussion: what makes people give up? What makes people stop caring?
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
alicia:
can you make it so that we all have access to edit the layout? i want to put a picture of the book and of carver on the blog but i think you probably are the only one with access...
connecting other texts
I like the Josh brought up Jack London. I saw the movie "Gone Baby Gone" last week, and after reading "So Much Water So Close To Home," I started brainstorming how to pair other works with each story in this collection.
I don't know if you've seen the movie, so I don't want to ruin the ending. The essence of the conclusion, though, revolves around a moral/ethical decision so important to a couple that when they realize they don't see the issue in the same way, they realize they must separate. The couple in SMWSCTH is battling the same issue. It'd be interesting to see where a discussion in the classroom would go if the story was assigned the night before and then the end of this movie was shown at the beginning of class.
Which would, of course, most likely lead to a grand discussion dealing with themes of gender and relationships--two things that repeatedly came up when we discussed the work of Carver as a group.
So I'm curious if anyone has any ideas for texts to pair with other stories that they've read in the collection...? And Alicia--I'm not sure what story/ies and/or themes we're going to work with for our paired teaching lesson, but I'm thinking anything including gender and/or relationships will work.
Also, I submit this picture to counter Josh's for the cutest pet on the blog award:
I don't know if you've seen the movie, so I don't want to ruin the ending. The essence of the conclusion, though, revolves around a moral/ethical decision so important to a couple that when they realize they don't see the issue in the same way, they realize they must separate. The couple in SMWSCTH is battling the same issue. It'd be interesting to see where a discussion in the classroom would go if the story was assigned the night before and then the end of this movie was shown at the beginning of class.
Which would, of course, most likely lead to a grand discussion dealing with themes of gender and relationships--two things that repeatedly came up when we discussed the work of Carver as a group.
So I'm curious if anyone has any ideas for texts to pair with other stories that they've read in the collection...? And Alicia--I'm not sure what story/ies and/or themes we're going to work with for our paired teaching lesson, but I'm thinking anything including gender and/or relationships will work.
Also, I submit this picture to counter Josh's for the cutest pet on the blog award:
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