Probably the only highbrow magazine I subscribe to is Granta, the pushing-the-envelope literary quarterly. For renewing my subscription they sent me a free 2010 calendar, one of those two days per week things. I seldom look at it and in fact only looked at it now while going through a stack of stuff collecting dust on top of my computer desk.
Each two page spread has one note featuring a writer who has appeared in Granta and to whom something happened one year. This week's feature is an old favorite, Raymond Carver. Here is the text:
"On 2 June 1977, the short-story writer Raymond Carver (1938-1988) gave up drinking. He had just begun to gain recognition for his writing when he began drinking more and more heavily. Finally, his doctor told him he had only six months to live, unless he stopped. So that's what he did. He said after, 'If you want the truth, I'm prouder of that, that I quit drinking, than I am of anything in my life.' He died of lung cancer eleven years later, but he described those last years of his life as, 'Gravy, pure gravy.' Raymond Carver appeared in eight issues of the magazine, beginning with Granta 8: Dirty Realism."
I'm not sure "dirty realism" describes his overall body of work. Closer IMO to deceptively simple writing. A sampling of his story titles gives a hint --
Fat
They're Not Your Husband
Nobody Said Anything
Put Yourself in My Shoes
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
Tell the Women We're Going
So Much Water So Close To Home
The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off
Where I'm Calling From
And on and on and on. And the titles are the least of it. He influenced an entire generation of American short story writers, getting closer to two generations now. He also inspired a brilliant movie directed by Robert Altman, "Short Cuts," loosely based on half a dozen Carver stories. IMO it was one of the best movies of the 1990s.
Links for those interested:
http://www.amazon.com/Raymond-Carver-Collected-Stories-Library/dp/1598530461/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275520995&sr=8-1http://www.amazon.com/Short-Cuts-Collection-Andie-MacDowell/dp/B001CW7ZT4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1275520923&sr=8-1http://www.amazon.com/Raymond-Carver-Writers-Carol-Sklenicka/dp/074326245X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275521054&sr=1-1
