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Raymond Carver Quotes

Browse 9 quotes about Raymond Carver.

Raymond Carver Quotes

“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.”

WritingParadiseBiographyChekhovCarverRaymond CarverJohn GardnerChico State
Author:William L. Stull
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“It was then I remembered back to those days and how telephones used to jump when they rang. And the people who would come in those early-morning hours to pound on the door in alarm. Never mind the alarm felt inside. I remembered that, and gravy dinners. Knives lying around, waiting for trouble. Going to bed and hoping I wouldn’t wake up. I love you, Bro, you said. And then a sob passed between us. I took hold of the receiver as if it were my buddy’s arm. And I wished for us both I could put my arms around you, old friend. I love you too, Bro. I said that, and then we hung up.”

BrotherhoodBrothersRaymond Carver
Book:Where Water Comes Together with Other Water: Poems
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