Raymond Carver (1938-1988) is one of the most significant voices in Short Story in 20th century. He is also a poet. Short Cuts contain nine stories and one poem. Drifting between the jobs as hospital porter, a textbook editor, a dictionary sales man, a petrol station attendant and a delivery man, Raymond Carver took writing as a career for living. These vast experiences contributed a lot to his stories.
Short Cuts include some of Carver’s best and most “Carveresque stories.” “Neighbors” describes the kinky behavior of a couple supposedly taking care of an apartment while friends are away. In “So Much Water So Close to Home,” four men discover a murdered woman’s nude body in the river but do not report it until they have finished their three-day fishing trip. “A Small, Good Thing” concerns a boy fatally injured by a hit-and-run driver on the morning of his birthday.
“Lemonade” is a fairly typical Carver poem without rhyme, meter, or poetic rhetoric. It describes a father’s grief over the death of his son and is written in the author’s characteristic low-key, conversational manner, helplessly commiserating while conspicuously shunning the kinds of speculations and epiphanies contained in such elegies as John Milton’s “Lycidas” (1637), Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Adonais” (1821), and Alfred Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” (1850).
Based on this collection Robert Altman has made a beautiful film named as Short Cuts, which acquired a cult status
No comments:
Post a Comment