He finally married his long-term parter Tess Gallagher (they met ten years earlier at a writers' conference in Dallas) in Reno, Nevada, less than two months before he eventually lost his fight with cancer. Alcohol had eventually shattered his health, his work and his family - his first marriage effectively ending in 1978. As well as being a master of the short story, he was an accomplished poet publishing several highly acclaimed volumes.Īfter the 'line of demarcation' in Carver's life - 2 June 1977, the day he stopped drinking - his stories become increasingly more redemptive and expansive. Carver writes with meticulous economy, suddenly bringing a life into focus in a similar way to the paintings of Edward Hopper. Set in trailer parks and shopping malls, they are stories of banal lives that turn on a seemingly insignificant detail.
Rejecting the more experimental fiction of the 60s and 70s, he pioneered a precisionist realism reinventing the American short story during the eighties, heading the line of so-called 'dirty realists' or 'K-mart realists'. He saw this opportunity as a turning point. Constantly struggling to support his wife and family, Carver enrolled in a writing programme under author John Gardner in 1958. He married at 19, started a series of menial jobs and his own career of 'full-time drinking as a serious pursuit', a career that would eventually kill him. As well as being a master of the short story, he was an accomplished poet publishing several highly acclaimed volumes.Ĭarver was born into a poverty-stricken family at the tail-end of the Depression. They are stories of banal lives that turn on a seemingly insignificant detail. He pioneered a precisionist realism reinventing the American short story during the eighties, heading the line of so-called "dirty realists" or "K-mart realists".
Raymond Carver (1938-1988) was an author who rejected the more experimental fiction of the 60s and 70s.
And rarely do they prevail, but the loneliness and quiet struggle the characters endure provide fertile ground for literary triumph, particularly in the hands of Carver, who was perhaps in his best form with this effort. Nothing much happens to the subjects of Carver's fiction, which is precisely why they are so harrowing: nothingness is a daunting presence to overcome. It was morning in America when Raymond Carver's Cathedral came out in 1983, but the characters in this dry collection of short stories from the forgotten corners of land of opportunity didn't receive much sunlight. Raymond Carver’s third collection of stories, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, including the canonical titular story about blindness and learning to enter the very different world of another.
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