Short Stories – 160 pages – my copy (paperback) taken from Starbucks, Armada Way February 2010
- 3 nods
A man who dresses in his neighbour’s blouse whilst looking after the home; a husband who on finding a dead female body, proceeds to enjoy a fishing trip before informing the authorities; an aggressive and vengeful baker and parents of a coma boy: welcome to the world of Raymond Carver.
Short Cuts is a collection of various short stories from Carver, taken as the basis of Robert Altman’s film of the early nineties. Excelling at the short story form, Carver’s work is critically noted as being about nothing in particular. These are snapshots of larger stories, snippets of the longer lives of his characters.
The writer forever strives to keep things simple – lots of he said, she said – and in so doing, he allows the thoughts and the actions of his characters do the talking. Rarely is the climatic enlightenment of the story’s bigger picture – a Joyceian revelation – ever realised. Carver has plumped for something else: not an unveiling of his characters, but rather life’s sinister moments and coincidences for his readers. Altman, the default editor of this collection, puts it aptly when writing: ‘I look at all of Carver’s work as just one story, for his stories are all occurrences, all about things that just happen to people and cause their lives to take a turn.’
Despite being the driving force of this project, Altman has not chosen the strongest of Carver’s stories. For that, the concerned reader must venture to his collections, particularly What We Talk About When We Talk about Love. The highlights of Short Cuts are So Much Water So Close to Home, in which a relationship is eroded due to a husband’s careless consideration of a dead body; and the death of a boy in A Small, Good Thing. There is much humour throughout, mostly coming in the form of the characters hopeless, dark situations, as well as much pointlessness (as shown in Collectors).
Throughout all, Carver speaks for the average American. Nothing spectacular happens in his pages; but throughout all, he manages to point out human qualities, both full of joy and full of sorrow, both destructive and positive.
