Where I’m Calling From: Stories by Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver published several collections of short stories in the 1980s. This collection, published in 1988, just three months before his death of cancer and selected by Carver, includes stories from his previous collections, , and seven new stories.

I worked in a bookstore in Hermosa Beach from 1985 to 1987. At the end of every evening it was the responsibility of one of the pair of clerks to walk around the store with the stack of tickets of what we had sold during the day and count how many copies of the purchased books remained on the shelves. The buyer would look at the count the next morning and make up the store’s re-stocking order. To count the books remaining you had to know which section a book would be shelved in based just on the title written on the slip. Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh always tripped up new clerks. It sounds like oceanography but it’s actually an inspirational book we kept with the gift books. Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love was also a snare. The clerk would come back saying we were sold out and then we’d have to ask, did you look in fiction or psychology?

We sold a lot of Raymond Carver. I never read any, although I knew his work was widely praised. I found this copy in the free book bin at the coffee shop near the church. It’s quite long: 37 stories, 526 pages. I like that these are the stories selected by Carver as his best. I also like that in several cases he restored original manuscripts of stories that had been previously published with extreme cuts by his heavy-handed editor, Gordon Lish. Lish’s aggressive editing is well-known and controversial. But I also appreciate that in several cases Carver chose to present Lish’s edited version, indicating the collaboration wasn’t entirely destructive, and you might consider these the definitive versions.

The stories are presented in chronological order. The earliest copyright is from 1963, up through the year of his death, 1988. There is some discernible development. The stories get gradually longer for one thing. And in the final seven there is a remarkable difference as though he were working out a new way forward. But most of the stories are very similar, which makes it rather tedious to read thirty-seven of them in a row. On the other hand, they were the perfect length to read on my train and bus rides to work and back.

A Carver story is small, domestic, rural. The characters are white, working-class, heterosexual couples, sometimes with kids, sometimes not. Most of the time, one or the other of the couple has been married before. Everyone drinks. (Carver himself was a heavy drinker until he gave it up in 1977). He reminds me of Bukowski in many ways. Many of the men fish or hunt. The settings are kitchen tables and living rooms. The drama is usually around needing money, or relationships coming apart. Nearly every story is constructed with one central issue and then a second, strange element thrown in: a woman leaving her husband encounters a couple of stray horses in the front yard; a couple is invited to a dinner party at another couple’s home and they discover their friends have a pet peacock they let into the house. The stories vary between third or first-person and occasionally the narrator is one of the women characters, but the voice is mostly indistinguishable whether it’s Carter’s or one of his characters’: plain and terse. There are some exceptions but in those cases the altered language feels forced.

I liked the stories well enough to read all of them, but didn’t admire them, with one stand-out that I found quite moving, that’s the story “A Small, Good Thing.” Carver is ranked as one of the best, or the best, short story writer of the 20th Century. A long time ago I read Cheever’s collected short stories, I prefer those. (Cheever and Carter knew each other and drank together). More recently, I read Hemingway’s stories, which are the ones I would give the prize to. Of course, the stories in Joyce’s Dubliners are amazing.

Here are the thirty-seven stories in this collection with a one sentence summary for each:

Nobody Said Anything. A teen plays hooky from school and goes fishing. His parents argue.

Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes. A father and son bond when the dad defends his son who is accused with his friends of vandalizing and losing a bicycle they borrowed from another boy.

The Student’s Wife. A couple lies awake at night. He wants to sleep. She wants to talk.

They’re Not Your Husband. A husband at a diner overhears a couple of strangers criticizing the looks of the waitress, who is the man’s wife, causing him to push her to improve her appearance.

What Do You Do in San Francisco? A mailman is curious about a couple he delivers mail to who just moved up from San Francisco.

Fat. A waitress tells a story about the large meal she served to a very fat customer.

What’s in Alaska? Two couples smoke a lot of pot together, get high, and talk.

Neighbors. A couple takes care of a neighbor’s apartment and their cat while the neighbors are away.

Put Yourself in My Shoes. A couple who for a time lived in a house of another couple while they were away in Europe, decide to make an impromptu visit. The homeowners welcome them but lingering resentments arise.

Collectors. A vacuum cleaner salesman arrives at a man’s house and cleans his carpet.

Why, Honey? A letter from a mother, in response to a reporter who is inquiring about her son, tells a story of a troubled childhood and her continued anxiety about him even though she hasn’t seen him in years.

Are These Actual Miles? In order to liquidate assets in advance of a bankruptcy, a man asks his wife to help sell his car which she does but in the process invokes his jealousy and her disgust.

Gazebo. A couple who manage a motel in exchange for free rent deal with the aftermath of the man having had an affair with one of the cleaning ladies.

One More Thing. A woman kicks out her boyfriend after she finds him arguing with her teenage daughter.

Little Things. A man and a woman splitting up wrestle over who will get the baby.

Why Don’t You Dance? A man empties his house of furniture and sets it all up again in the front yard where a young couple try things out thinking it’s a yard sale, and the man eventually joins them.

A Serious Talk. An ex-husband pays an uncomfortable visit to his wife and kids the day after Christmas.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Two couples, the husband of one of them is a cardiologist. drink gin and chat about the meaning of love.

Distance. A man tells his grown daughter a story about when she was a baby and he had made plans to go hunting with a family friend, but the baby fussed all night and the wife didn’t want him to leave.

The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off. A man convinces his friend who has a pond on his property that he should stock the pond with bass with ruinous consequences.

So Much Water So Close to Home. A woman is disturbed by her husband’s decision not to immediately return from a camping trip with some friends when they discover the body of a dead girl near their campsite.

The Calm. A man getting a haircut at a barbershop overhears two other customers arguing about what one of the men should have done when he wounded a deer on a hunting trip and lost track of it.

Vitamins. A man goes on a date with one of the women who works for his wife selling vitamins door to door. He takes his date to a bar where they are harassed by a man who just got back from fighting in Viet Nam.

Careful. A man, after splitting from his wife, drinks and is visited by his wife in the apartment where he now lives.

Where I’m Calling From. An alcoholic at a drying-out residence listens to the story of another man about how he met his wife when she was working as a chimney-sweep.

Chef’s House. In an isolated house, a couple have a great summer together that seems to be healing their troubled relationship until the owner of the house tells them that they have to move out so his daughter can move in.

Fever. A man struggles to care for his two young children after his wife leaves him until he discovers a older woman who is an excellent sitter. After suffering through a bought of the flu, the woman gives notice so she and her husband can move to live near their children.

Feathers. A couple are invited to a friend’s home for dinner. The friend’s have a new baby. After that dinner the couple change their minds about not wanting a child and everything changes for them.

Cathedral. A woman arranges for a visit from an old friend, a blind man she used to work for. The husband is initially uncomfortable, but the men eventually bond when they draw a cathedral together on a piece of grocery bag paper in response to a TV documentary.

A Small, Good Thing. A masterful, moving story. A woman orders a birthday cake for her son’s eighth birthday. Walking to school the day of the party, the child is hit by a car, and after a anxious few days at the hospital, he dies. During the parents’ vigil at the hospital, when they take trips home for baths and a change of clothes, they receive harassing phone calls that mention their son. After he has died, they receive another phone call and realize that it’s the baker complaining that they owe him for the birthday cake they never came to pick up. Angry, the couple drives to the bakery, where they find the baker at work even though it’s late. He lets them in. He learns what happened and apologizes. The trio make peace together over fresh rolls and dark bread.

I was impressed at the pacing of the watch at the hospital. Carver gives the story just the right amount of time for us to stay involved and sympathetic with the parents’ worry, when there’s not much actual activity for them to do or Carver to narrate. The death of a child is inherently moving and the additions of the accident occurring on the child’s birthday and the rude, but understandable, behavior of the baker, heighten the emotion. The final scene of grace at the bakery resolves the sorrow beautifully.

This almost doesn’t seem like a Carver story. No one drinks. The couple are not having any difficulty in their relationship. And it’s a real story, not just a scene, with a real plot and a resolution.

Boxes. A man has a complicated relationship with his mother, who recently moved to be near him and his girlfriend, but, never satisfied, has now decided to move away again, causing the man to realize that when she goes he will likely never see her again.

Whoever Was Using This Bed. A couple, awakened by a wrong number phone call, stay up all night talking in bed about their future.

Intimacy. A man stops in at the home of his former wife and she gives him a lengthy rant about how he mistreated her.

Menudo. A married man has had an affair with a woman who lives across the street and now the situation has come to a head with the woman’s husband giving her an ultimatum, she pressuring him to make a commitment, and his wife upset but not knowing who he had the affair with.

Elephant. A man who already gives financial support to his ex-wife, his mother, his daughter, and his son, is asked for a loan by his brother.

Blackbird Pie. An obtuse man, involved with his own work, is informed by his wife that she is leaving him when she slips a letter under his study door one night.

Errand. A story of the last days of Chekov as he dies in a hotel room of tuberculosis, and his widow sends a hotel clerk out to fetch a mortician.