I was beginning to see that my life was not-let’s say it was not what I wanted it to be. I needed to write something I could get some kind of a payoff from immediately, not next year, or three years from now.

There was no way I could undertake a novel, a two- or three-year stretch of work on a single project. After years of working crap jobs and raising kids and trying to write, I realized I needed to write things I could finish and be done with in a hurry.

But it was tough to stay alive and pay bills and put food on the table and at the same time to think of myself as a writer and to learn to write. The circumstances surrounding the writing are something else, something extraliterary. In it I said that finally, a writer is judged by what he writes, and that’s the way it should be. I did finally talk about some of these things in the essay “Fires,” which was published in Antaeus. The story that was “too tedious to talk about” has to do with a number of things that aren’t very pleasant to talk about. In an article you did for The New York Times Book Review you mentioned a story “too tedious to talk about here”-about why you choose to write short stories over novels. In his 1983 Art of Fiction interview in The Paris Review, Carver revealed that his short stories came about through limited time and limited patience: Despite having published eight poetry collections before his death (33 years ago to the day), he’s known for works like “Cathedral” and “Why Don’t You Dance.” But, as it turns out, Carver wrote short stories out of practicality, not pure love of the form. In that order.' Amongst many other pleasures it gives, this collection shows why.When we talk about Raymond Carver, we talk about the short story. So I suppose on my tombstone I'd be very pleased if they put 'Poet and short-story writer - and occasional essayist'. Of himself, carver wrote- 'I began as a poet. It contains four essays, including a moving memoir of his father's working life in the saw-mills of the Pacific Northwest, a tribute to his mentor, John gardner, and a title essay about the influences on his writing life fifty poems and seven stories, including three from the earlier collection Furious Seasons. įires is the best introduction to the full range and humanity of carver's writing. So I suppose on my tombstone I'd be very pleased if. Fires is the best introduction to the full range and humanity of carver's writing.

Fires by raymond carver