Cathedral – Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver - May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988

I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat myself here – one of the most important gifts that I am receiving from this project is the introduction to some of America’s best writers. Writers who were once “just names” in the table of contents now seem like close friends. I spend time after each story doing a bit of research on the author, and I feel that this enhances and opens new doors to their stories.

Researching Carver for “Cathedral” is one of those times where I have found a new favorite. Gardner did a fine job of placing him first in this collection, and and in doing so, his selection was even approved of by Updike – “Cathedral” was chosen for inclusion in “The Best American Short Stories of the Century” by Updike.

Gardner uses his position as the editor of BASS 1982 and places Carver in the prime position for readers. One must wonder if the personal relationship between the two had any influence on the choice.

I’m not doubting or disputing that Carver was a master of the Short Story and the fact that ‘Cathedral” was so widely recognized as a wonderful story buttresses the choice...but, man Gardner...put the guy in second or third – don’t be so transparent.

Here are a few paragraphs from interviews or bios. concerning the relationship between Gardner and Carver.

Carver became interested in writing in California, where he had moved with his family - his wife's parents had a home in Paradise. Carver attended a creative-writing course, and was taught by John Gardner. Later he said that all his writing life "he had felt Gardner looking over his shoulder when he wrote, approving or disapproving of certain words, phrases and strategies." (Carver's former student Jay McInerney in The New York Times, August 6, 1989)

Carver wrote thankfully of Gardner "giving me the key to his office so I would have a place to write on weekends," or explaining "the difference between saying something like, for example, 'wing of a meadow lark' and 'meadow lark's wing,'" or "drumming at me the importance of using -- I don't know how else to say it -- common language, the language of normal discourse, the language we speak to each other in."

Carver was the son of a craftsman, and his writerly development followed the stages of a craftsman’s training. After moving his family from Yakima to Paradise, California, in 1958, he enrolled at Chico State College. There, he began an apprenticeship under the soon-to-be-famous John Gardner, the first "real writer" he had ever met. "He offered me the key to his office," Carver recalled in his preface to Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist (1983). "I see that gift now as a turning point." In addition, Gardner gave his student "close, line-by-line criticism" and taught him a set of values that was "not negotiable." Among these values were convictions that Carver held until his death. Like Gardner, whose On Moral Fiction (1978) decried the "nihilism" of postmodern formalism, Carver maintained that great literature is life-connected, life-affirming, and life-changing. "In the best fiction," he wrote "the central character, the hero or heroine, is also the ‘moved’ character, the one to whom something happens in the story that makes a difference. Something happens that changes the way that character looks at himself and hence the world." Through the 1960s and 1970s he steered wide of the metafictional "funhouse" erected by Barth, Barthelme and Company, concentrating instead on what he called "those basics of old-fashioned storytelling: plot, character, and action." Like Gardner and Chekhov, Carver declared himself a humanist. "Art is not self-expression," he insisted, "it’s communication."

When John Gardner died at forty-nine in a 1982 motorcycle accident, Carver termed the loss to literature "beyond figuring."

And finally, the story “Cathedral” and others collected in a collection bearing the same name were thought by Carver to be:

“a watershed in his career, in its shift towards a more optimistic and confidently poetic style.”

- What did I get out of this story?

Well, it really is a wonderful story. A good ‘ol fashioned story.

It reminded me of the need to welcome new experiences – new ideas – to be open to opinions of others. Not to shy away from what is unknown or what could be frightening to me. Take it all in as a learning experience.

You never know what someone could teach you. And once again, apply that newly developed knowledge into learning a bit about yourself – question where those former beliefs came from, where the attitude developed that caused to be afraid, or hesitant - to be open to what frightened you.

Introduction – John Gardner

 

John Gardner July 21, 1933 – September 14, 1982

Never have I spent so much time researching an author. The time I have spent has almost gone beyond what I seem to think is necessary, and is becoming an obsession that is interfering with the reading of the short stories.

I’m not sure what it is about Gardner that has attracted me to him. I’ve listened to interviews conducted with Don Swaim, I’ve read countless interviews, read portions of books by him and about him off of Google Books, sifted through the journal of Joyce Carol Oates to read her thoughts of him, sought out photos of him, read archived newspaper articles about him...I just need to stop and get what I have about him down here and get along with reading the shorts.

The closest thing that I can narrow down as to the reason for the attraction, is the fact that he wrote a very controversial book, heaped praise on one of my favorite writers, drank to excess, smoked and then died in a motorcycle accident. His death occurred shortly after he finished pulling together his selections for this volume. He selected stories published in magazines from 1981 – selection process must have been done early in ’81 and the anthology must have come out in mid to late ’82 – just before his death in September.

I’d like to point out the contents of this volume. He made the decision not to order them in the book alphabetically by the last name of the author. I’d be interested to know what his placement reasons were...or if, during my reading, I can discover a pattern.
Also, it should be noted and I’ll quote him below, that he only selected one story from The New Yorker. –

That’s my man!

He did select two stories from his own literary publication MSS – I can’t help but feel that this was a bit selfish.

Below, are portions from the introduction that I feel will give a better insight to the selections he made as well as show why I am so excited to read the stories.

From the introduction:
...but I can’t believe anyone with nay sense would deny that these are extremely good stories, or that the richness and variety of the whole makes this an unusually readable, abundantly satisfying collection.
In short this collection is a result of choices, but I would not like to be forced to defend those choices in front of a serious Board of Inquisition.
But of the hundred and twenty stories she passed on to me, I like only ten enough to consider for this collection, and in the end I included only six- some of those partly because my wife, another experienced reader of (in my opinion) unimpeachable taste, argued me around to them.

Gardner goes into further detail at this point in the introduction as to how he, Shannon and his wife Liz chose the stories for this book. He mentions that he started reading for these selections about a week before his deadline. He cites being frantically busy. Gardner had Shannon send him “her truckload of magazines”. He and his wife read themselves blind. 

The only New Yorker story Liz would divorce me for not including is Mary Robinson’s “Coach,” which is one reason (though not the only one) that it’s here. On the whole my taste has never been partial to New Yorker stories. The New Yorker publishes more fiction than anybody else, some of it excellent, but in general I find the magazine all knife-flash, no blood. I like even less imitation New Yorker stories- increasingly common in the so-called little magazines. 

-Wonderful I was so happy to read the above paragraph.
The selection of these stories was not solely mine, in other words, though I’m finally responsible and proud to be so.
The three-way collaboration did not force my choices, like a dully compromising committee vote; instead, like tarot cards, it enabled me to see things I might otherwise have missed. In the end, I give you my word; I’m stubborn as a mule. 

...-I favor, on the one hand (as I’ve suggested), metaphysical stories, maybe gentled by humor, or at the very least heavy, thoughtful pieces...and I favor on the other hand, brilliant lighter stories, comic or quasi comic, seriously conceived, surprisingly imaginative, stories hinting at depths of meaning below the facile surface-...Fiction more smooth and sophisticated than I would care to write myself, or indeed, know how to write, is also represented...
If one were really to choose the “best” short stories of a given year, one might conceivably end up with a half dozen stories by one author.

At present the heavyweight is Joyce Carol Oates. Though her work is even more uneven than was Faulkner’s, she’s notoriously prolific, and of the numerous stories she published in 1981 at least three or four are as powerful, original, and moving as “Theft,” the story I’ve chosen. In selecting only one, I implicitly acknowledge that this anthology is representative, not absolute.
Nineteen eighty-one saw the publication of interesting stories by John Updike, Donald Barthelme, Ann Beattie, William Gass, Bary Targan, and at least one superb story by Frederick Barthelme; but none of these stories seems to me to hold up beside the work of relative newcomers represented here, or even to some of the work of other newcomers I’ve read and liked,...
-Looks like he is still seeking the forgiveness of the writers he shanked in “On Moral Fiction”.
...the 1981 stories of the famous writers I’ve mentioned all seem to me a bit too casual, too safe.
A new seriousness seems to have settled over North American short fiction. I don’t know for sure what the reasons are. I suspect our culture, or at least a segment of it may finally be tiring of the self-consciously trivial artistic practice Americans favored in the age when we wanted to seem as wearily elegant and intelligent as post –World War I Europeans-...

I’d also like to draw attention to some observations by Joyce Carol Oates. These are from her journal. 

May 26, 1977
Gave an impromptu dinner party for John Gardner, who breezed into town unannounced. He was sweet, outrageous, charming in a strange way subdued, possibly a little tired; drank mainly wine all evening and consequently wasn’t as difficult to deal with as the last time we met; seemed genuinely affectionate to Ray and me. His marriage is ended. He is living with a young woman, a girl really, twenty-one or twenty-two, in Cambridge NY, in what he describes as a hunter’s cabin, He appears to be in need of money, which is ironic, since he has had several best sellers and has sold paperback rights for large sums...It was good to see him. I like him very much; far better than I recall. (Our last meeting was some sort of disaster. He was stupefied with drink.) His hands were filthy, amazingly dirty!...He spoke of also of carrying a gun everywhere with him. charming brilliant man, a delight to know. I’m really pleased with the success he’s had in recent years. He deserves it.

March1, 1978
...Skimmed through John Gardner’s Moral Fiction. Cranky, careless, inaccurate, mean spirited. I wonder – why did he do it? Why attack his (former?) friends Bob Coover and John Barth like that? So cruelly pointless. So self-serving. He’s jealous of the, and of Barthelme, and Updike; why not admit it? I am one of the few people he singles out for praise (however faint, however dim) yet I still feel the sting of the book, its silly complacent didactic self-righteousness. He’s been physically ill, of course – yet I almost wonder whether he hasn’t been somewhat emotionally ill as well.

----And finally, some more insight to Gardner from a couple of reviewers.
“Gardner's own curriculum vitae was quite impressive. Author of 15 books and recipient of abundant critical acclaim, he had even sought to define art. In a collection of essays, On Moral Fiction, he wrote: “... true art is moral; it seeks to improve life, not debase it. It seeks to hold off, at least for a while, the twilight of the gods and us.... We recognize true art by its careful, thoroughly honest search for an analysis of values. It is not didactic because, instead of teaching by authority and force it explores, open-mindedly, to learn what it should teach ... moral art tests values and rouses trustworthy feelings about the better and the worse in human action.”

Rodman, Selden. "Gardner's Last Novel." The New Leader 65.18 (4 Oct. 1982): 18. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jean C. Stine and Bridget Broderick. Vol. 28. Detroit

Gardner's confidence that he's an originator of ideas has gotten him into trouble. He was accused of “borrowing passages” from scholars in his The Life and Times of Chaucer; he admitted to “paraphrasing.” On the defensive, he writes in this novel's acknowledgments that he has “borrowed ideas and good lines” from Martin Luther, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Norman O. Brown, Martin Heidegger, and— if that's not enough to cover himself—from “acquaintances, friends, and loved ones.” He's also effectively hidden them.

Harris, Robert R. "What's So Moral about John Gardner's Fiction?" Saturday Review 9.6 (June 1982): 70-71. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jean C. Stine and Bridget Broderick. Vol. 28

John Gardner's On Moral Fiction has been criticized supposedly because it is moral criticism similar to that of Irving Babbitt, which we seemingly have gone beyond. In addition to the furor caused by Gardner's thesis, that “art is essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and death, against entropy,” the writers under Gardner's attack may have caused On Moral Fiction to be attacked in turn—Bellow, Porter , Coover , Gaddis, Pynchon , Updike , and Barth , to name only a few, as readers wish to rescue their favorites from Gardner's Judgment, Wrath, and Doom. But aside from the wish to defend one's favorites, Gardner's thesis causes intellectual difficulties of many sorts, a liberal wish not to censor anything and limit the free play of ideas and the problem of whose morality is right.

Gardner has subsequently, in interviews and essays, qualified his views. Over two years ago, he said that true art is invariably affirmative, soft pedaling censorship, by saying that great fiction provides readers vicarious experience, helping “us know what we believe” and reenforcing “those qualities which are noblest in us” and leading us “to feel uneasy about our failings and limitations.” In the recently published, “Learning From Disney and Dickens,” Gardner retreats still further, saying, “I've come to see that fiction simply dramatizes.” Gardner furthers this position in On Becoming a Novelist by asking the following question, “Does the twenty—or twenty-five year old writer really have brilliant insights that the intelligent reading public (doctors, lawyers, professors, skilled machinists, businessmen) has never thought of? If the young novelist's answer is an emphatic yes, he would do the world a favor by entering the ministry or the Communist party.” Still later in the same book, Gardner says, “One cannot argue that the writer's purpose should be the creation of moral fiction, or any other kind; one cannot even argue that his purpose should be to create something beautiful or pleasing or even honest or universally interesting” (86).

Barrow, Craig. "On a Moral Fiction Writer's Last Novel: Gardner's Mickelsson's Ghosts." Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction 26.2 (Winter 1985): 49-56. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism Select
Gardner died in a motorcycle accident on September 14, 1982. One can only wonder if it was death that could have been prevented. Was he driving drunk? Was he driving recklessly? Did he as one blogger suggests – commit suicide?

I can’t help but feel his presence as I read these stories. The weight he carried, and still carries for me, is enormous.
I’m really looking forward to reading these selections. I can’t wait to see what they bring forth in me.

The Best American Short Stories 1982

The Best American Short Stories 1982 ed. John Gardner & Shannon Ravenel

Introduction - John Gardner

Cathedral - Raymond Carver

Dancing Ducks and Talking Anus - James Ferry

The Courtship of Widow Sobcek - Joanna Higgins

Good Rockin’ Tonight - William Hauptman

Shelter the Pilgrim - Fred Licht

Coach - Mary Robison

Exchange Value - Charles Johnson

K. 590 - Nicholson Baker

The Dolphin Story - Joyce Renwick

The Continental Heart - Lissa McLaughlin

The Cafe de Paris - Roberta Gupta

The Power of Language Is Such That Even a Single Word Taken Truly to Heart Can Change Everything - Alvin Greenberg

The Gift Horse’s Mouth - R. E. Smith

Harmony of the World - Charles Baxter

Coming Over - Edith Milton

The Girl Who Was No Kin to the Marshalls - Anne Hobson Freeman

Prize Tomatoes - Anne F. Rosner

Proud Monster—Sketches - Ian MacMillan

Lamb Says - Roseanne Coggeshall

Theft - Joyce Carol Oates

The Best American Short Stories 1982

I can’t at this time remember which shipment this book was bundled with but I have a feeling it was with a Better World Books order. It is a former library book, and as with previous books from BWB, it is in wonderful condition.

The book is from the Sun Prairie Public Library in Sun Prairie Wisconsin.

The circulation history on the overdue card only dates back to June of 1990 – I’m sure it saw higher circulation closer to its release date. It was also affixed with a computer barcode for circulation when the library updated their system so any history after 1996 is a mystery.

Little funny thing I noticed – It was stamped “non-fiction”.

Accident I’m sure.

Concerning Sun Prarie Library, they seem to be a very cool system.

First thing I noticed was their operating hours. Long weekday hours and they are even open on Sundays!

They have a great online presence and as I finish typing this I’ll start to follow them on twitter and become a fan on their Facebook page. They even have close to 70 pictures on a Flickr account.

Because of their Flickr page, I was able to take a little tour of the former home of my book (great check-out area with a great looking Blue Cow!).

They are very active on both their social networking accounts and post updates and schedules regularly.

It really looks like The BASS 1982 had a comfortable home, and once again, I thank the forward thinking librarian that decided weed out this book and allow BWB to sell it to me.

The Best American Short Stories 1981 - Completed

OK – here are some quick figures on The BASS 1981.

I started reading – or at least posted my first report on the book on Jan. 21, 2010. I am making my last post on Feb. 24, 2010. That works out to:

1 month 3 days

or

4 weeks 6 days

or

34 days

or

24 weekdays

or

802 hours

There were 20 stories and this works out to 1.7 stories per day.

The authors were split right down the center by gender.

As addressed in the Intro to this collection, the most represented literary magazine was the New Yorker, and this collection had the New York literary scene all over it.

My favorite was: The winter father by Andre Dubus

My least favorite was: The Idea of Switzerland by Walter Abish

Overall, I really enjoyed this collection. I suppose I can attribute the speed (slow for most) of my reading/research and thoughts to the excellent collection contained between the covers.

Calisher did a fine job in assembling 20 great stories and her confidence in the strength of the short story form was right on target.

On to 1982

Change – Larry Woiwode

Larry Woiwode - October 30, 1941

The final story of this volume - and just by the luck of having a “W” beginning his last name, Calisher is able to leave us with a pleasant taste in our mouth as we finish this book.

Ordering the stories in these collections alphabetically by the authors last name is surely the most democratic way of presenting the stories but if I do feel it important for the volume editor to point out his/her favorite by placing them in the front of the book because I do not think that most readers of these collections read the book all the way through.

My assumption is that these books find their way onto bedside tables where they get buried under other “to read” books and I’m sure they are placed on the tanks of plenty of toilets where the stories are read during certain “duties”. It’s a shame that this was the last story of the book – it’s a real gem and I hope that more people seek it out.

Woiwode offers a strong story in “Change”. It should be no surprise given his talent and the popularity of his other writings. Today, he is a lesser known author and doesn’t seem to have survived (in the literature world) the early 80s.

One interesting little twist that I feel I must point out and that I am sure I will touch upon in a post concerning The BASS 1982.

Woiwode is the last author in this book. Again - last just because of his last name.

The next volume in The BASS, is of course 1982.

The volume editor for 1982 is John Gardner.

John Gardner died on September 14, 1982.

In addition to being the guest editor that year, he was the director of the Creative Writing Program at SUNY Binghamton.

Now the twist. - Who became the next director of that program after Gardner’s death?

Larry Woiwode.

Interesting.

Now, I’ll write about what passed through my head as I read and finished this wonderful story.

My thoughts are pretty far from the message that I think Woiwode was attempting to deliver – and I received it – but I’m not writing a story review.

I find myself reflecting once again on my father and his life, as his life and mind now seems to be closing in on itself like a dying star.

Just as the family next door to the main character in this short, my father grew up in a rough and tumble family.

Oldest of 4 kids – 2 younger brothers and a sister. They lived in what was considered the poorest part of Des Moines in a “Sears” house. I was told that his father ordered this house from Sears, and constructed on a chunk of land. A quick internet search yields up that yes, there were “Sears” houses...but I am certain that the houses in the catalog look nothing like what I remember seeing in the early 1990s.

My father ran in the alleys with a blonde Mohawk haircut – shoeless – cutoff shorts and most likely shirtless.

He got into fights, picked on kids and got into trouble – as one would expect a kid to do.

He would return home and sleep in the same bed with his brothers and the entire family would crowd around the table for meals where survival of the fittest came into play.

Several years ago, change came to my father’s old house just as change came to the family in the story.

The old white ‘Sears” house was demolished.

The destruction of the house had an impact on my father – I’m sure of it because he mentioned it quite often in the early days before he was officially diagnosed. It was one of those stories that he would tell over and over – and you’d just let him tell it because you figured that he was just getting old and “forget” that he told it several months prior.

Well – I suppose there was something more there – hidden deep inside.