#34 The Pheasant- Raymond Carver

#34 The Pheasant (1982) Raymond Carver

I’m back to for another Carver story.  This time it’s a couple driving back from a weekend getaway, a failed attempt for the struggling pair to stay together.  Both parties decide that the relationship is over in their heads before the breakup occurs violently in a diner parking lot in front of amused onlookers.

Once her internal struggle comes to the inevitable conclusion, she’s at peace and falls asleep.  As he mulls his future, he intentionally hits a pheasant that flies too close to their speeding car.  Of course the pheasant represents their relationship and his actions probably mean he self-sabotaged that relationship.

The language contains ample mentions of renewal, change, etc.  Sentences like “The sun was out now, the clouds had broken up,” are not so subtle allusions about their relationship. As does: “it looked as if an upheaval had taken place”

Not a bad quick look at a tough moment of their lives.  I didn’t get the end at all.  I’m not sure what the onlookers added to the story or why it was important to hear their thoughts.  That made for a weird taste at the end.

Notable Passage: “He felt as if they were doing a scene and this was the fifth or sixth take. But it still wasn’t clear what was going to happen next.”

Rating: 7-6-6-6 Total =25

#26 So Much Water So Close To Home- Raymond Carver

#26- So Much Water So Close To Home- Raymond Carver

This is the last story in Carver’s collection, Fires.  It’s a story about violence, apathy, shame, and isolation.  Stuart and his three fishing buddies find the dead body of a young woman raped and murdered in the stream.  Feeling there is nothing they can do to help, they leave her there tied to the shore while they drink, fish and play out their weekend.  After calling the authorities when it is more convenient, their names get printed in the papers as having found the body and they return to their lives.

The problems for Stuart begin when his wife gets appalled at his indifference to such a horrid occurrence.  She reevaluates her life with this man.  The body becomes a metaphor for their relationship, or Stuart’s feelings towards her in general; it’s an abused dead body, floating face down, tied up just enough so it wont float away, and will stay there until it is a more convenient time to get rid of.   She imagines herself in the body of the dead woman floating face-down in the stream.

The repressed, non-communicative interactions between these two is smothering.  Something again that she realizes later when she has scary moment with an over aggressive male stranger trying to “help” her in her car.

“I want to smother…I’m a smothering cant you see”

It begins with violence. Stuart admits early in their courtship that: “someday this affair…will end in violence.”  When he is unable to answer the simple questions of their son he “[wants] to shake him until he cries.”  He gets verbally abusing when she doesn’t agree with him, physically abusing when she doesn’t want to touch him.  She herself turns to violence as a form of communication when all else fails breaking dishes or slapping him in the face.

Violence begets violence, shame begets shame, and apathy reigns when we don’t admit that either one exists. And most times nothing changes if all you do is wait for a more convenient time to take care of the dead body floating in the river.

“Nothing will change for Stuart and me.”  Sadly there is too much truth in this story.

Notable Passage: “…if I was somebody else I’d be afraid I might not like who I was”

Rating: 7-7-7-7 Total =28

#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