Where I'm Calling From

Where I'm Calling From
By Raymond Carver
1988
526 pgs.
Published by Vintage
#12 on the NY Times "Best American Works of the Last 25 Years"

Where I'm Calling From is a collection that Carver came up with himself, a selection of 37 pieces ranging across his entire body of work.  Whether it was intended to be a eulogy or not is under some dispute, as 1988 was also the year that Carver took his leave due to lung cancer.  (Many of his characters are smokers, and considering the love with which Carver describes the act itself, one is led to the easy, and correct, assumption.)  Like Chekhov, Carver's stories are short pieces, dealing with active people. He's a minimalist, famously tutored to use five words instead of twenty-five, and it can lend a deceptive shade of simplicity to his work. As many of the books in the NY Times list show, most American writers of intelligence have used as many words as possible, and editors have shuddered; and the books were left unread. (Yes, we're looking at you, DeLillo.) The temptation to read Carver quickly and ignore him is treacherous, and it does not serve the reader. Carver's obsession with middle class lives of "quiet desperation" is one that hasn't been picked up, or at least not for any real purpose, since his untimely demise. In a day and age where the suburbs of America are ignored or reviled in shows like Weeds and movies like American Beauty, Carver's work can now stand as a blistering critique of this over-intellectualized condemnation by high-minded urban contempt. If Raymond were here today, it's hard to imagine he would continue to contribute to magazines like Harpers and the New Yorker, as neither seem to have any interest in the mid-West unless they are calling for the heads of Republican soccer moms.  Although some of the collection contains Carver's horrific descriptions of the loss of a child, descriptions which contain such force of emotion they, at times, seem out of place, most of the stories within these pages are testament to the courage and strength of individual Americans against the weight of change and loss. Although the cars have evolved, and many of the late-night diners closed, Where I'm Calling From reads like a Norman Rockwell painting--a timeless exploration of relationships both near and far. We may now longer smoke so freely, or love so fearlessly, but the anguish of heartache are still what form the base of our existence.

-Tucker Stone, 2006

Comments

[sherry]

"But, what's also worth noticing is that near the end of the eighteenth century, people started reading differently or they started doing different things with the books they read: many people have told this story differently, but one compelling story is how literary criticism emerged when readers began treating the bible as not a unique text--as one source of written truth--but as one text among many that could be subjected to evaluation and analysis. The bible was partly displaced as the only book in homes to one book surrounded by other literary texts (novels, poetry, pseudo-histories, etc). Increased literacy also accompanied this trend and continued through the nineteenth century. What's interesting too though is that with secularization of reading, readers were freed to *do* things with their texts: reading and writing was not strictly sanctified and it didn't require that someone dictate strictly how it was done (from a source of spiritual or political authority). Reading also became a critical activity: one that asked readers critically to examine fictional worlds and freed them to recreate them and relive the enchantment through rereading and rewriting--not just mimicry but interpretive recreation."

-from a comment on "Monday Musings: Modern Myths" from 3QuarksDaily.com, go to http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2006/05/monday_musing_m.html

Whilst I am sitting here getting dumber and dumber as the days get shorter, it behooves me to steer you to the above 3quarksdaily website, as you seem to have an inexhaustible hunger for good reading and intelligent criticism. It is almost exhausting for me to even get through a paragraph these days. You however, might lap it up like a dog to tasty toilet water. Let me know what you think...