Raymond Carver They Re Not Your Husband Pdf
Carver's a master of his craft. Every time I read some of his work I'm shocked at the authenticity with which he depicts his characters. Mostly insecure, unsuccessful, cigarette ash covered and beer-soaked middle-aged men, they feel like your creepy uncle. Everybody knows somebody like Carver's characters.So many of them have this putrid, embarrassing artery of insecurity running through every fiber of their being and polluting everything they do. You can trace it from their actions back down to Carver's a master of his craft.
Every time I read some of his work I'm shocked at the authenticity with which he depicts his characters. Mostly insecure, unsuccessful, cigarette ash covered and beer-soaked middle-aged men, they feel like your creepy uncle. Everybody knows somebody like Carver's characters.So many of them have this putrid, embarrassing artery of insecurity running through every fiber of their being and polluting everything they do. You can trace it from their actions back down to their core like branches to the trunk of a tree. Their insecurity damages everything around them. In this story Earl's insecurity tears his wife down—seemingly a hard-working, earnest woman, at least from what we're shown. It's painful for us to witness, and even harsher when considering how real it feels, despite being fiction.
It begs us to question Earl, himself: Is this a man who's down on his luck, as it would seem? Or is this perhaps a man whose own shallow, passive aggressive actions have led to his unemployment? Maybe it's so affecting because we can all see traces of ourselves, at our worst, in Carver's characters. Like looking into a filthy mirror.Carver makes sure to get out of the way and let his characters do the talking with simplistic, direct prose and dialogue. And his stories are more affecting for it. I love this stuff. Carver was born into a poverty-stricken family at the tail-end of the Depression.
He married at 19, started a series of menial jobs and his own career of 'full-time drinking as a serious pursuit', a career that would eventually kill him. Constantly struggling to support his wife and family, Carver enrolled in a writing programme under author John Gardner in 1958. He saw this opportunity as a Carver was born into a poverty-stricken family at the tail-end of the Depression. He married at 19, started a series of menial jobs and his own career of 'full-time drinking as a serious pursuit', a career that would eventually kill him. Constantly struggling to support his wife and family, Carver enrolled in a writing programme under author John Gardner in 1958.
He saw this opportunity as a turning point.Rejecting the more experimental fiction of the 60s and 70s, he pioneered a precisionist realism reinventing the American short story during the eighties, heading the line of so-called 'dirty realists' or 'K-mart realists'. Set in trailer parks and shopping malls, they are stories of banal lives that turn on a seemingly insignificant detail. Carver writes with meticulous economy, suddenly bringing a life into focus in a similar way to the paintings of Edward Hopper. As well as being a master of the short story, he was an accomplished poet publishing several highly acclaimed volumes.After the 'line of demarcation' in Carver's life - 2 June 1977, the day he stopped drinking - his stories become increasingly more redemptive and expansive. Alcohol had eventually shattered his health, his work and his family - his first marriage effectively ending in 1978. He finally married his long-term parter Tess Gallagher (they met ten years earlier at a writers' conference in Dallas) in Reno, Nevada, less than two months before he eventually lost his fight with cancer.
This short but insightful story is of an ordinary couple living in an unknown town during what seems like a tough time, in many aspects, during a very bleak period during a their marriage. Earl and Doreen Ober, seem to be going through life miserable but content, just trying to keep a roof over their heads and their ignorant and silent children. The story, and the lives of Earl and Doreen, seem to take a turn when one night at the coffee shop, Earls own personal insecurities are tested when he over hears two callous strangers insulting Doreen's appearance, weight and the thick black veins along her leg as she reaches for some ice-cream at the bottom of the freezer. Instead of defending his own wife against the two pigs at the table Earl runs away; shy and humiliated over flaws he never seemed to realize until now.
This cowardliness on Earls part to stand up for Doreen suggests a lack of passion or even love within the marriage and hardly any devotion for his wife. Soon after the incident Earl forces Doreen to see the flaws, making her stand in front of a mirror, humiliating herself and pulling at the changes that come with aging and stress.
For the benefit of no one Doreen is made to skip meals all together as to loose weight. Doreen begins to shed pounds.
Three and a half one week. Five another. Then nine and a half. She feels exhausted, constantly tired and away from the family, always sleeping, leaving all the work to Earl who is happy to assist his weak and helpless wife, instead of finding a job to help support family and home. Earls priorities are truly twisted, as is his invasive regime for his wife to shed the pounds. The title 'they're not your husband' is recited within the story when Doreen shares with Earl how her colleagues are commenting about her abnormal weight loss and her unhealthy appearance. Earl assures Doreen that it's none of their business and that 'they're are not your husband', therefore she should not listen to their concerns.
However Earl does not see that he has already has let other peoples concerns affect his life. Carvers's unique writing gives awareness to the reader about the ways ordinary people may alter their lives for the worse and how they can be extremely blind when on their shallow journey to acceptance. Earls soon begins to become obsessed over what people think of his wife. He refers to Doreen as 'it' and spends his time searching for approval of his wife appearance, rather than on more important things like his children or a loving relationship. Even spending valuable money on weighing scales to help with Doreen's weight-loss, rather than on the families well-being and financial problem. The story also gives an valuable insight into the lives of the modern day minority and how they listen to others opinions, and alter their lives just to be accepted.
Raymond Carver They're Not Your Husband Pdf Online
Carvers writing transports the reader into the dismal but strangely intriguing live of his charters, and brings up strange issues never considered but relevant into the lives of his characters. In the end Earl goes back into the coffee shop seeking the approval of his wife from random strangers; eavesdropping on their conversation, listening for his wife's looks to come up. Eventually after no luck Earl asks a man next to him what he thinks of the waitresses appearance. He is soon busted for his sleaziness, a waitress asks Doreen who he is. Reluctant and Embarrassed she admits it's her own husband. Raymond carver's extraordinary writing allows us to follow the ordinary lives of middle aged nobody's in a harsh but truthfully accurate light.