Thoughts and Impressions

Carver’s writing style is unlike any authors I have read in the past. He is minimalistic yet is able to paint such vivid pictures of characters’ inner worlds. While reading the book, I was often left confused and hanging after the last word but there was so much to fill in with imagination and assumptions even after the text ended. I had to reread the first story a few times to form an interpretation of the story but by the end of the book, I could identify common motifs and symbolisms more quickly.

My favorite short story was “Gazebo” because I thought the use of the motel as a metaphor for the relationship was very clever. I considered the woman’s threat of jumping out the window as a symbolism for leaving the relationship. The fact that the man and the maid had sex in another, specific room is likened to keeping an affair compartmentalized and hidden. The couple manages the motel but as their conflicts intensifies, business falls into disarray showing the state of their marriage in physical form. The idyllic gazebo is a foil to their crumbling motel. I also enjoyed “Popular Mechanics” for the anonymity of the characters and universality of the scene. I think this story is timeless and if taken out of the book (which provides more context on the time period in other short stories) could have been a recent work.

“Viewfinder” was the most confusing story to me. I could not piece together why the man mentioned the children chalking the sidewalk nor how the photographer came to the conclusion that the man’s family had left him. I suppose many details of their exchange are deliberately left out to highlight the connection between him and photographer. But even as the plot progressed, I was thoroughly thrown off when he proceeded to take photographs around the house and find pebbles on the chimney net to cast.

Another story that was very enigmatic to me was “The Calm”. Although Carver uses frame narrative, in several of the short stories, the vignette about the unsuccessful deer hunting trip made no sense to me. The ending was even more unexpected. I think there was some hidden meaning about the man’s relationship as represented by the barber giving him a haircut but I am not sure what the deer had to do with it.

Overall the tone of the book was depressing and presented a pretty pessimistic view of love, marriage and relationships. Perhaps Carver was drawing on personal experiences that left him so skeptical. The only story was a positive twist was “Everything Stuck to Him”. Aside from that one, alcoholism, violence, infidelity and poor communication plagued the characters of Carver’s stories. The motif of alcohol could serve to discredit the things that the characters say (because they could be drunk or hazy in thought) but also makes them more honest and revealing. People seem to be in rural, desert or working-class communities (he mentions pastimes like fishing and hunting and jobs like motel managers) and life is pictured as dreary and dangerous. Most, if not all, of the stories are narrated from the male perspective and the women and children are frequently victimized or presented at a weaker position. This could be an accurate reflection of the time period the stories are set in.