In looking over my last post of nearly a year ago, I am forced to admit that not much has changed in the world. We still talk about Michael Jackson. We don't talk about Farrah. "Whatever Works" wound up not doing much box office. And Twitter, Facebook and its ilk have very obviously not reached anything resembling a "plateau." So much for my predictions!
Even so, a lot has changed in my own little world. I moved, for starters. And not just anywhere. I moved back in with my parents and now wake up everyday in my childhood bed. I came back because I was burned out. After a decade or so of working in journalism, I wound up working in public relations the last few years and felt smothered in mediocrity. So, I decided to pursue a master's degree in writing. It may seem like a natural transition but creative writing is much different than newswriting. One is much freer, in some sense, because there is no assigned topic. Life is your inspiration. I was fortunate enough this last semester to participate in a course taught by the writer James McManus called Narrative Prose. Words cannot describe the sheer giddiness I felt on that first wintery Monday afternoon in his class, sitting at a table of a few other writing students, talking about nothing but writing. Over the 16 weeks of this class, we read work by Alice Munro, Denis Johnson, David Bezmozgis and Cormac McCarthy, among others. But the author who haunts me yet is Raymond Carver.
I had read Carver's work before, but was not familiar with his life. McManus, in the teaching of his class, made it a point to talk as much about the authors' personal lives as he did about their work. He told us that it is very important where you do your work and what your vices and responsibilities are because all of that serves to influence your work. After so long in noisy newsrooms, I had never given this idea much thought.
Carver haunts me because his work reads one way, before you know anything about him and in a much richer way as one begins to understand the circumstances of his life. The short, direct observations that give life to his characters allow the reader to visualize them on their own terms and the result is deeply emotional- tragic, painful and fleetingly joyful. Just like life.
At the end of the term, McManus reminded the class that a critically acclaimed Raymond Carver biography is available and that if we were at all interested in reading about the life of a writer, this would be an excellent source of information. I bought the book shortly before I left for Europe earlier this summer.
Carol Sklenicka's "Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life" is probably one of the most thoroughly researched biographies I have ever read. She doesn't just begin at the beginning- she begins before the beginning- with Carver's grandparents as teenagers in Arkansas. At first, it isn't clear why the author felt the need to expose this much family history in order to talk about Raymond Carver, but as one is propelled forward through the book, the background information does provide an extremely useful foundation for understanding Carver and his demons. Moreover, it's just interesting from a historical perspective. One of my favorite sayings as a journalist used to be, "everyone has a story." My dream job would be to simply write about people, everyday, for the rest of my life. Where they came from, why they are who they are...I find that it is impossible to hate anybody when we learn about them as they were when they were children. Was Hitler evil as a baby? Did Charles Manson eat all of his peas? What did Mother Teresa think she would be when she grew up? What were the hopes and dreams of their parents and grandparents? It's interesting to contemplate and crucial if we are ever to understand what makes someone tick.
I can't even imagine how long it must have taken Sklenicka to research this book, which is laden with footnotes and quotes and credits. She writes so seamlessly that a reader is not even aware of the writing itself. The information just seems to flow and although not completely finished with it (the book is 500 pages long, not including index), I somewhat dread the ending, even as I anticipate it, because I know that Carver dies. His drinking, as painstakingly described in "A Writer's Life," dominated his life and sabotaged his relationships and work. At the same time, Sklenicka's portrayal of Carver also allows us to really be witnesses to his internal struggle and driving desire to write. This is a real tribute, in many ways, to the human spirit. Yes, we are vulnerable but there is something so awe-inspiring about a person who pushes and perseveres through his own obstacles. At some point, Carver wanted desperately to be able to stop drinking. Perhaps he didn't have the interest previous to that point, but when he finally did, a reader almost cringes with agony to learn that he could not stop. Certainly, it is common knowledge that alcoholism is a disease and not a choice. And yet, if one is a fan of Carver's writing, it is very, very difficult to reconcile the seemingly self-aware person who writes such poetry about the human condition with a man who is too drunk to keep a job and hits his wife. But I think now that McManus was trying to explain this duality when he told us to consider our own lives in relationship to our work. Talent may be innate, but it is also a gift that must be cultivated correctly or it might never be noticed or used.
So, I find myself thinking about Carver a lot- his attachments and failures and hopes and attempts that are so like mine. I'm not an alcoholic but that doesn't mean I am not a saboteur sometimes, of my own aspirations. Somewhere, in the depths of human frailness, we just seem to have the need to give in or give up at times. Regrets and broken dreams are made of the moments when we "should have" done something but didn't. Who knows, years later, why someone didn't come back home or say they were sorry. Maybe it's too hard for most people to acknowledge their foibles. Maybe that's why wars are started. Peace begins with acknowledgment. Most of us hang on to this life because we believe in some kind of redemption. We believe, always, that if we are still breathing, there is still time...to finish school, to reconcile with a loved one, to quit drinking, to get married, to write a book...We believe it because we have to. We believe it because it is true.
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