Carver-esque Steinbeck

While perusing my first edition of Steinbeck’s 1961 travelogue, Travels with Charley, for a televison documentary I’m reviewing for Pop Matters this week, I unearthed a passage (one of many) that evokes the fiction stylings of Raymond Carver years before Carver was ever published. Steinbeck writes of a visit to a small Indiana town: The guardian [...]

The Carver Influence

In my profile of novelist Willy Vlautin for Pop Matters, Bleeding on the Page in the Middle of a Nervous Breakdown (2008), I suggest that Willy’s strong and lean prose harbors echoes of Raymond Carver. That wasn’t mere hyperbole; Willy has studied the works of the late poet and short story writer and readily admits the influence. [...]

What Ray Carver Couldn’t Do (An Ultramarine Redux)

All Ray wanted to do that day was keep an eye on those birds outside his window. He had unplugged the phone so his loved ones couldn’t reach him and put the arm on him. “I’ve told them the well has run dry,” Ray pleaded, pen to paper. But they wouldn’t hear of it. They [...]

Milusos

The Young Fire Eaters of Mexico City By Raymond Carver They fill their mouths with alcohol and blow it over a lighted candle. at traffic signs. Anyplace, really, where cars line up and the drivers are angry and frustrated and looking for distraction — there you’ll find the young fire eaters. Doing what they do [...]