#2 Distance (1961)- Raymond Carver

This is my first Raymond Carver short story.  I started to read his collection Fires before getting to his short stories.  It also contains some essays and poems.  I wish I hadn’t read those first.  I developed an opinion of Carver’s writing based on his essays… on writing.  I will try to keep those opinions at bay, and try to accept his short story writing at face value as a reader, not by using his critical eye on his own stories. 

Distance is a slice-of-life style of short story.  A father telling his daughter a tale from their young family’s lives together.  It’s a story about family, time, and perspective.  He refers to himself and his wife as “the boy, and the girl” while everyone else is given a name.  The plot follows the father’s dilemma of deciding between keeping a hunting trip with a friend or helping his wife take care of his sick child.  The characters are cleanly articulated in their archetypes, for better or worse.

The story of his marriage is paralleled with a story of geese coupling for life, or being “stuck “together for life.  The idea comes back at the end.   After he decides to stay home with his family, he drops a plate of food and it “sticks” to his pants. In fact in a later printing of the story he renamed the story Everything Stuck on Him.

Notable passage: “That’s it he says. End of story. I admit its not much of one.”  He said it, not me. 

Rating: 6-6-6-5, Total=23