#762 Night School- Raymond Carver

#762 Night School- Raymond Carver

A tipsy man sits at a bar by himself, separated from his wife and living back with his parents. You can imagine the mood around such a man at a neighborhood bar. Two woman, out for a bit of fun try to rope him into their evening, hoping he has a car. He doesn’t. As they try and hatch a plan to go bother a professor of theirs from night school they get a bit drunker and head out into the night. 

Nobody in this story gets what they want, nor do they listen to anybody else’s words. It is a lonely sad world, not even a few drinks can make it better. Maybe reading a few stories is the only things that can get you to bed at night.

Rating: 7-6-6-5 Total= 24

#734 What’s in Alaska- Raymond Carver

#734 What’s in Alaska- Raymond Carver

This is a story about diversion. A couple going through life, a little bored and worn out. A man comes home from work, buys shoes and comes home to his wife who sneers at the shoes and gives him a drink. Maybe it’s the shoes and the beer, but at this point of the story I had Sinatra’s Love and Marriage running through my head (as the theme song from Married with Children, of course).

They go visit another couple down the street that just bought a hookah water pipe. The rest of the story is a whole stoner scene, full of laughs, munchies, misinterpreted conversations, fun with pets. Everyone is hyper-sensitive and yet extremely unaware. Funny, although not up to par with great stoner stories. Stylistically It is dialogue heavy. If there is any subtext beyond adults needing a diversion from their humdrum lives, I missed it and don’t feel the need to go back and find one. We never find out exactly what’s in Alaska.

Rating: 7-6-6-5 Total= 24

#706 Sixty Acres- Raymond Carver

#706 Sixty Acres- Raymond Carver

This is a little slice of Americana type of story, taking place somewhere in a frontier setting on reservation and allocated to Native Americans. Lee Waite sits on his sixty acre plot and gets a familiar phone call from a neighbor. Somebody has been illegally shooting on his land probably poaching ducks. He doesn’t much care about it, and is more annoyed at the bother of the phone call than the trespassers, but he drags himself outside and goes to check it out.

He catches two kids with killed ducks, his ducks. Recently other neighbors have shot and killed poachers on their and, and it seems to be their prerogative. Lee doesn’t want to shoot anybody, and lets the kids go after he takes the ducks. He ponders his past and the future of his land. It’s a slow and sleepy kind of pace around here. As long as everyone knows their place, there should be no more problems.

Rating: 7-6-7-7 Total= 27

#671 Nobody Said Anything- Raymond Carver

#671 Nobody Said Anything- Raymond Carver

This is a story about adolescence. A young teenager, or almost that old, wakes up to his parents fighting; they do that a lot these days. He tries to get his younger brother to wake up and make them feel guilty about fighting but he is asleep. The fighting subsides and the day is about to start but he doesn’t want to go to school. He is at that age where boyhood is ending and everything starts to change, what can he do to stop it. Why not go fishing?

The attachment to fishing is what reminds him of boyhood. As he starts to fantasize about girls, not sure exactly what that’s all about, and he understands that his parents are probably on their way to a separation, all he wants is one more day by the water, with no more than a canteen full of water and a fish tale for the ages.

Rating: 7-6-7-7 Total= 27

#643 Are You a Doctor?- Raymond Carver

#643 Are You a Doctor?- Raymond Carver

This is a strange encounter. The phone rings and Arnold is expecting a call from his wife, who is out of town. Instead it appears to be a wrong number. Instead of hanging up, he engages with the woman on the other end of the line. He wants to know how she got this his number, and mysteriously she reveals that it was left on a slip of paper by her babysitter.

The woman seems to be lonely and implores Arnold to come visit her for a conversation. Perhaps lonely he goes to see her. The encounter at her house is just as odd as the phone call, and he goes home in time to get his nightly call from his wife. Was this all just a weird occurrence, or was this a manifestation of Arnold’s mind, his desires and psyche? 

Rating: 7-6-6-7 Total= 26

#580 The Idea- Raymond Carver

#580 The Idea- Raymond Carver

This is a little cathartic look into the lives of a couple in a settled, normal, happy but boring marriage. Their big daily excitement is watching their neighbors in an odd game. The wife is in their bedroom and the husband is outside peeking through the window as if he is a stalker. Then he goes inside. This goes on for months and it drives them batty.  

The power of their curiosity is only outdone by the indignance of their outrage, their judgment, and probably their envy. The woman also spies ants in her kitchen that she promptly sprays with poison. Her life is watching other things go about their lives with more purpose than she has.

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

#552 Neighbors- Raymond Carver

#552 Neighbors- Raymond Carver

Can you really trust your neighbors? Bill and Arlene Miller live across from the Stones. The Stones seem to live a much more exciting life than they do. They’re always going on vacations or taking work trips. When they do, they ask the millers to watch their apartment and feed their cat.

They do watch the apartment and feed the cat, but they also drink their booze, steal pills from the medicine cabinet, try on their clothes, and rifle through drawers looking for dirty pictures. This peek intro somebody else’s life excites them, and puts a bit of an adventurous spark into their otherwise dull lives. Living vicariously through somebody else’ existence may be fun, but be careful you don’t find yourselves locked out.

Rating: 7-7-7-6 Total= 27

#524 Fat- Raymond Carver

#524 Fat- Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver was the second author I read for this project more than 500 stories ago, but I only read a few from his Fires collection. You can't have a project about short stories and skimp on the Raymond Carver so here is some more. I picked up his book, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (In the name of redundancy, I’m hoping that the person in the title is named: Please. Ha!)

This is a cartoonish scene about a waitress serving an extremely obese gentleman. He is polite, and proper and quiet, but he is morbidly fat and his fingers are three times too large. When he orders and finishes the endless supply of bread he speaks in the plural “we.” As is “We normally don’t eat like this.”

Later in bed with the chef from the restaurant she imagines herself as fat and partner a tiny thing. Bizarre. The story ends with her saying that her life is about to change. I guess we’re supposed to think that she is pregnant and the fat man was a metaphor for someone eating for two. Or maybe he symbolizes gluttony and complacency and her believing that her life will change is a tragic miscalculation. Or maybe this is u just a funny story about a fat man in a restaurant and  gaggle of judgmental servers.

If there was symbolism here I missed, I’m wondering what the fat fingers represented.

Rating: 7-7-8-7 Total= 29