The Whole New Yorker Raymond Carver Thing

'jesus' son' is one of my all time favourite books. i think if you like carver you'll love this. carver's revisions are really interesting, and i admire the fact that he wasn't afraid to rework and reprint stories he wasn't happy with.

you should definitely be excited! plz come back and post here after you've read it, and tell me what you think. my favourite story from that collection is 'the emergency room'. so laugh-out-loud funny.

also: if you like carver, and then you read johnson and like it, DEFINITELY track down a copy of maggie dubris' 'weep not my wanton'.

It may be a while 'til I get to it.

But it's so short! You could read Jesus' Son in an afternoon.

okay guys, you got me. i'll read it once done with Blood Meridian and report back.

shit yeah, it's definitely a super fast read.

I took a writing class with Denis Johnson last semester. He's great. He signed my copy of Jesus Son.

I gave my mom Cathedral for christmas, and I don't think she likes it. :\

hoos i am so freakin' jealous

The birthday boy told his mother what had happened. They sat together on the sofa. She held his hands in her lap. This is what she was doing when the boy pulled his hands away and lay down on his back.

In THE PENGUIN BOOK OF THE MODERN AMERICAN SHORT STORY (2021), I read Raymond Carver's story 'Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes' (1973).

Though I've read Carver closely before, I don't think I'd ever read this story. It describes one Mr Hamilton who is called to a neighbouring house where his son Roger is accused of stealing or destroying a bicycle. Other boys are involved. It's not certain who did what to the bicycle. The drama here is mainly something about family, connection and obligation - so, should Hamilton stand up for his son in this stranger's house, because he's his father? He does feel that he has to when another boy's father, one Mr Berman, turns up and is harsh towards Roger. Now the dynamic, for Hamilton, goes from being an honest broker, a witness to a process, to being involved, unable to avoid taking sides. In fact, having told Berman that he's out of line, he ends up fighting him and banging his head on the lawn. Berman survives. Hamilton and Roger walk away home.

In a final scene, Hamilton puts the boy in his bed. The boy expresses a surge of admiration for his father's strength, his ability to fight. He expresses a wish that he could now know his father as a child; that they could be contemporaries. Here, I think, is a strangeness that Carver is able to access, an unexpected thought or feeling.

I quite admired this story. More than the other stories in the book so far (not many), it at once conveys a mundane, everyday world of small interactions, and something mysterious; some way in which people don't fully understand themselves. The action, fighting, slow release of tension after it, also creates a strong narrative dynamic. Writing about it, I can almost still feel the build-up of tension in the father as he walks away from the embarrassing, unintended fight.

I saw him read in late winter or early spring of 1986, at either Reed or Portland State. He was in full ascent at this time and the room was full. Very fucked up time in my life from which I'm lucky to have emerged at all, which goes a way to explain why I don't remember which school it was at -- I had heard about it, probably from my poetry teacher at PCC, and somehow remembered to go. The hall was packed; I remember having the impression that although his demeanor was mild, he was really enjoying all the acclaim, although this could very easily have been projection on my part. He read a story which I think was "Are You a Doctor?"- the opening was a long bit involving a wrong number in the middle of the night. There was a line in it that brought the house down -- "Why'd you answer?" I think it was.

I think it's one of the new stories included in Where I'm Calling From iirc.