Looking around my apartment for something to read on Wednesday, I found a copy of “The End of the Affair” by Graham Greene. This after a brief review of some Raymond Carver from “Where I’m Calling From”. My mother included “The End of the Affair” in a miscellaneous delivery some time ago and I do not recall setting it on the shelf. In fact I had no recollection of having it whatever until stumbling across it. I was looking for something because I’d become frustrated with Carver.
Carver was my first favorite ‘serious’ writer. I got turned onto his stories, very indirectly, by the soundtrack to the Robert Altman film Short Cuts. I must have seen a poster for the film, which seemed interesting, and this led me to pick up the soundtrack at the Library sometime thereafter. The album only stays in my mind for a particularly passionate performance of “I’m gonna go fishin’”. Itself a theme written by Duke Ellington for Anatomy of a Murder. Somehow, all of this got me into the fiction section of the library where I found one of the Carver fiction collections. There is no denying that the man had a knack for book titles. A New Path to the Waterfall. Where Water Comes Together with Other Water. Always the titles are a complete universe to themselves. And this was part of the seduction. His natural gift for minute elegance. I don’t recall which collection I read first, but I moved through them quickly and had read all of his prose within a few months. Various among them became staple gifts to girlfriends over the following years. Some quality that he captured formed a real and powerful connection with my teenage self. Reading the first half of “Nobody Said Anything” reminded me of what it was with great precision. Like no other author I had yet encountered, Carver provided a diverse mix of complicated people. People who were not ashamed to share their less pleasant thoughts and actions. The secrets that they kept found harmonic symmetries in my troubled mind. Here was a collection of discreet individuals who encountered life’s persistent chain of minor tragedies and channeled passage to some other water. I liked that they were not remarkable people. They provided a framework for understanding the lives of people I encountered on a daily basis. Taken as a whole, his work remains for me a testament to the sympathy we should feel towards all of those around us. Their capsulized isolation is key to this perspective. Each narrator exists for as long as we share their world, and when the story stops we’re returned to our own lives and they continue theirs in privacy. Rarely were the described events transformative, but they were always significant. Each a small rendition of some larger pattern contributing to the shape their lives had taken. Or would take.
This provides some background on why, when I finally saw Short Cuts, I found it so entirely revolting. Altman’s big idea was to take these stories and weave them together into a pastiche of false synchronicity. To attempt to graft significance onto these characters by binding them together. But their independence was essential to their value. Binding them all together creates a false image of significance that may provide narrative comfort, but is thin and useless. Carver characters are so internal anyway that I don’t think it would be possible to really do them much justice on screen. You can mime their actions, but you lose their observation. Lyle Lovett was the only one among the ensemble of Hollywood sophisticates to even get close.
And so Carver has held a prominent place in my mind ever since. One that was, until earlier this week, rather entirely untested. I don’t remember the previous time I’d read anything other than an occasional poem, particularly one about domestic life that I’m unable to track down at the moment. I decided to pull him out because I’d mentioned him in my writing class earlier in the week, and as I was mentioned some aspect of his characterization I felt that I had no idea what I was talking about. And in that moment I realized how little of him actually remained. His name had, over the years, become a placeholder in my mind. Filling the address I’d access when needing to compile a list of favorite authors in conversation. And so he took his place, soon to be joined by Borges as co-favorite author. Carver dealing directly with the human and the emotional. Borges constructing intricate Kunstkammern to illustrate the power of ideas. I liked that both worked exclusively in short fiction and poetry, and the two together formed an elegant pair.
I noticed, in my brief return, that Carver employs the passive tense with fervor. I’d become sensitive to this following a note in writing class about a similar enthusiasm in my first assignment. So, at least I’ve got good company in my poor tense selection. I don’t exactly know why I couldn’t make it through that story. It is fairly short, but I guess it did not fill me with the same emotional connection I remembered. I don’t suppose it really could. Or, for that matter ever should. Best, perhaps, to leave the past to itself and find some new Waterfall. And maybe this is why I reached for the Greene so quickly. There I found quite a different writer. Some years earlier, I’d struggled to make it halfway through one of his other books, and I’m finding the same response to this one. It is fairly short though, so I feel that I should slog through. And the thing is that I like it. That is what I find so frustrating. I’m involved in spite of everything about it. I must admit to an occasional affinity with Bendrix’s state of mind. What frustrates is Greene’s (via Bendrix) persistent commentary on all that transpires. Neither Sarah nor Henry can get a word in without a paragraph of commentary. This has the double frustration of making each scene endless and robbing the reader of an opportunity to make independent conclusions. Additionally, his perspective is so monotonous, that I simply find myself tuning him out. This is frustrating because Greene is such an exceptionally talented writer, and it is demonstrated on every single page. And not just in craft, but also characterization and storytelling. So, another hundred pages to go. We will see.
I wanted to end this with that particular Carver poem that stuck out in my mind, but I still can’t find it, so I’ll go with another one instead.
it gets run over by a van.
you find it at the side of the road
and bury it.
you feel bad about it.
you feel bad personally,
but you feel bad for your daughter
because it was her pet,
and she loved it so.
she used to croon to it
and let it sleep in her bed.
you write a poem about it.
you call it a poem for your daughter,
about the dog getting run over by a van
and how you looked after it,
took it out into the woods
and buried it deep, deep,
and that poem turns out so good
you’re almost glad the little dog
was run over, or else you’d never
have written that good poem.
then you sit down to write
a poem about writing a poem
about the death of that dog,
but while you’re writing you
hear a woman scream
your name, your first name,
both syllables,
and your heart stops.
after a minute, you continue writing.
she screams again.
you wonder how long this can go on.
Postscript:
The sum of all of this is that I’m feeling it is time to move into some new (to me, not necessarily recent) material. There is a lot that I have not read, and I’d like to get through more books this year than I did last. If you have any particularly glowing suggestions, please feel free to leave them as a comment on the Buzz post. I’ll only take your first suggestion though, so don’t go crazy.
