Restoration Drama

I'm afraid that Tess Gallagher, unwittingly and with all good intentions, has done Raymond Carver's reputation as a significant American writer permanent harm. It will not be possible for future readers and students of Carver's fiction to approach it without the question of its authenticity lingering somewhere in the background--in some cases, as in academic courses featuring Carver on the syllabus, without the question being addressed directly. "Is this one of those stories his editor rewrote for him?" will almost certainly be asked by those encountering his work for the first time and by critics assessing his place in late 20th century American literature. He might utimately be remembered more as a case study in the fraught relationship between some writers and their editors than as a great American short story writer (which I think he is, even after learning the extent to which Carver's signature understated style and de-dramatized plots were imposed on him by Gordon Lish.)

However much Gallagher believes that Carvers's initial, more expansive (and frankly more ordinary) drafts are the "true, original” versions of his stories, they are not the stories that those of who read his books as they were published encountered and that made his name as a post-postmodern writer of consequence. They are not what we think of when we think of a "Raymond Carver story," and whether Carver sacrificed his "artistic integrity" by giving in to Lish or willingly took advice that actually improved his stories is by this time mostly irrelevant. Carver never repudiated the Lish-edited stories, and republished them without changing them, so this is not really a situation analagous to that of the filmmaker who later re-releases a "director's cut" to restore what had initially been eliminated by commercially driven producers. In effect, a third party is making editorial decisions the author did not and cannot now agree to, and a different writer is being presented to us in place of the one we thought we knew.

Traver Kauffman (the Rake), who prefers the un-Lished stories, suggests that "re-publishing is fine insofar as the people behind it realize that what they're putting out is going to be mostly of scholarly interest and probably will not serve to change any minds." I'm not at all sure this is true. If enough people do prefer the "restored" stories, they will remain in print and available as "alternative" versions, and some scholars will do doubt use the restored versions when teaching Carver, or at least present them along with the "original" versions as an exercise in comparative analysis. Far from changing minds about Carver, the existence of the "true, original" stories will work to influence future readers in making up their minds about this writer in the first place. At some point examining the original drafts for their "scholarly interest" is fine, but having two different versions--in effect, two different texts--competing for approbation as the "real" work of Raymond Carver is not merely an academic matter. It may finally substitute the editorial controversy for the actual consideration of Carver's fiction as literary art.

The Rake further suggests that it would be useful for other contemporary writers to publish earlier drafts of their work, allowing the reader to pursue the pressing question "How Was It Done?". For those interested enough in a particular writer to want to read discarded drafts and other marginalia, it is probably true that such an offering would simply satisfy a curiosity and wouldn't really affect their estimation of the writer's published work. I myself have never been much interested in the "how" question. I'm more concerned with the "what": What kind of work is this? What's going on? If reading alternative versions of a work of fiction helps me to better answer these questions, I am willing to examine them. If what I find there somehow enhances my subsequent reading experiences, it will have been a worthwhile exercise. If it merely illustrates "the actual human effort behind the pages, the grinding, nuts and bolts stuff," as the Rake further puts it, it doesn't seem worth the time, since I'm pretty sure I already know that writing involves much grinding.

That two separate texts of some of Carver's stories are in circulation, however, isn't really equivalent to the scholarly edition offering glimpses into the writing process. At best, it requires that we consider each of them separately, that we in some ways take them as two different stories. We can prefer one of them over the other, but the very act of reading them in this way makes it impossible to identify either one of them as the "real" Carver story. Future anthologists will have to decide which text best represents Carver as a writer nevertheless, and the decision will unavoidably be subjective, if not completely arbitrary.

As an erstwhile scholar of postmodernism, I am perfectly comfortable with indeterminacy and dislocation. I understand that texts can be elusive, unstable, self-contradictory. But a literal instability between different versions of the "same" text is a bit too pomo even for me. My introduction to Carver came through the Lish-edited stories that to me signalled a break from the formal experiments and self-reflexivity of postmodern American fiction but did not merely return to old-fashioned storytelling. The severely pared-back minimalism of these stories seemed to accept the postmodern critique of representation if not its alternative strategies. Character and plot are stripped to the bone, the former presented to us entirely through mundane actions, with no attempt at "psychological realism" (thus we never really get to "know" Carver's characters, we just watch them wandering through their lives), the latter flattening out Freytag's triangle to an unemphatic succession of events. It's these stories that offered a Raymond Carver engaged in his own kind of experimentation (how bare and uninflected can realism become while still maintaing our interest?), which as far as I can tell is mostly absent in the more elaborated but conventional Lish-less originals. Even if Gordon Lish did essentially co-author the published stories, that's still the Raymond Carver I'd rather have.

Comments

[Maryann Burk Carver]

In my memoir, WHAT IT USED TO BE LIKE; A Portrait Of My Marriage To Raymond Carver, I fully credit Gordon Lish for the enormous amount of good he did for Ray, as did Ray greatly appreciate Gordon's friendship and editorial efforts on his behalf during the time they spent together. I'm sure Ray always appreciated Gordon enormously, even as he went on to other editors and produced Cathedral and Where I'm Calling From, for example, and Gordon continued to wondrously edit works by other writers.
I describe in detail in my book the origin of Ray's and Gordon's relationship in Palo Alto, when they worked in different publishing houses across the street from each other. Gordon was Ray's good friend, and Gordon's leaving Palo Alto exactly when he did, and becoming Fiction Editor at Esquire, was most propitious for Ray and his writing career. No question about that. Moreover, Ray was not only grateful to Gordon during that time, but he was also very, very proud of him.
I've always given Gordon full credit for all of that. I also know what an amazing teacher Gordon is, and has been, for at least three generations of students/writers.
I remember when Ray had Gordon come to Iowa to the Workshop as a guest teacher when Ray was teaching there in 1973-1974. John Irving was also there as a teacher, and Gordon, during his teaching stint that day, compared and contrasted Ray and John Irving when neither of them had the followings they later had.
I'm glad to see Gordon receive renewed attention for all of his abilities and contributions now, as always. After all, Gordon, with his exquisite wife, Barbara, took Ray and me to the Russian Tea Room in 1970, and Gordon seemed thrilled to treat us, and show us a good time in New York, his city. I had a wonderful time, dressing up in my finest, and going for an elegant lunch that Gordon carefully and lovingly ordered. I recount that anecdote now in order to say that the Lishes and Carvers go back forty years, praise be....
Maryann Carver

[Steven Augustine]

"...a writer (Raymond), who WILL BE in the pantheon as long as there is a pantheon..."

With all due respect, Ms. Burk Carver, there are as many pantheons as there are people who use the word "pantheon", and Mr. Carver will be in some of these, and in some of these he will not.

[Chris]

Dear Maryann Burk Carver:

You asked if anyone reads Gordon Lish, and although I assume you did not really expect to get a response based on the overly rhetorical tone of your question, well, guess what? I read Gordon Lish. Every chance I get.
Zim Zum.
Mourner at the Door.
Peru.
My Romance.
Gordon Lish writes some of most idiosyncratic and flat-out hysterical fiction I have ever read. His influence can be seen and heard in any number of young(er)(ish) writers of contemporary American fiction, such as Amy Hempel, Sam Lipsyte, and Will Eno, just for starters. He is a highly respected teacher who demands only one thing of his students: that they write with honesty and conviction.
Attacking Gordon Lish seems to me a a kind of pre-emptive strike. Raymond Carver's stories, as originally published, sound, to me at least, nothing like Gordon Lish's stories. I think it's fair to say that Gordon Lish took Carver's stories and reduced them down to their essence, which is how they were consumed, with great delight, by many.
Would Raymond Carver had been, as you say, in the pantheon, were it not for Gordon Lish? To this hypothetical scenario I say, of course. But the fact remains that Raymond Carver is in the pantheon because of Gordon Lish's help. As someone who may or may not benefit from Raymond Carver's legacy, I think the least you could do is show a little gratitude.

Best
Chris

[brewdog]

I think we can take a moment here, to note the time & date, when SA's glassy-eyed, cool-hatted exotic-childhooded concept-writer is trumped by the Camusian pantheon.

Dan, please write a story?

[Maryann Burk Carver]

PLATO, RAYMOND CARVER, AND GORDON LISH,WITH AN
ADDENDUM FROM CAMUS
Plato said that first there has to be the idea of a chair before there could be an actual chair.
Ray had to imagine and then write a story, before there could be an actual story: A story conceived and written by Raymond Carver, no one else, that then an editor could edit. It seems simple and obvious enough.
What is this ridiculous Carver-Lish nonsense? If it were valid, there would have to be Carver-McGrath stories and Carver-Fisketjon stories, joint enterprises of Ray's and other editors he had, who want no part of the authorship for Ray's stories. They are content to be what they were: Ray's editors, and they are some of the best editors in the business.
It's simple: Ray's stories were prototypes that belonged entirely to him. Without his original draft of a story, sine qua non.
Definitions like post post-modern, by the way, were certainly not on Ray's mind when he was "making his chair," when he was writing his story. He would have been surprised, and then bored, with the thought of that, after he had laughed. Ultimately, as I say, such a technical analysis would have put him to sleep.
What was great about Ray, in my opinion, was his unique, captivating personality, which he infused into his stories, thereby making them inimitable.
I used to tease Ray about how he had "exposed" himself in a given story, and we'd both laugh heartily at the double entendre. But, in fact, that is exactly what he did, and, in my opinion, it speaks to why people enjoy his stories so much. If that were not the case, we'd all be thrilled to read Gordon Lish's short stories that he has written. (Do you know anyone who does, or has?)
I did see a remaindered copy of a collection of short stories by Gordon Lish at my local bookstore. I opened it to an original story of Gordon's, that was a parody of Ray's story, "Put Yourself In My Shoes." Except as Gordon juggled a Mr. X and Mr. Y, the story didn't work, didn't come off.
It was very clear to me when I saw Lish's failed story, who was the writer, the personality, in the dynamic duo of Carver and Lish, and who was the esteemed editor.
My reverie turns now to a scene on television I unwittingly happened upon some time back. I see a table of women on C-Span's Book World. One of the women has just won The National Book Award, while the other women writers, sitting around the table, are runners-up. What they have in common, besides these kudos, is that Gordon Lish is the editor for all of them.
Best,
Maryann Burk Carver,
wife of Raymond Carver for twenty-five years, a writer (Raymond), who WILL BE in the pantheon as long as there is a pantheon, and for this question--if there is one--we'd need to move past Plato and consult Camus...

[omck]

Didn't Carver himself rewrote and published alternative and (strongly) modified versions of some of his stories at the end of his life ("The Bath" vs. "A Small, Good Thing", etc.)?

[Steven Augustine]

"Why should the connection to the author matter more than the work itself? Isn't the question, with two versions now, not, which is the real Carver, but, which is the better?"

Begging the question: who wrote the "better"? And if the answer to the question "which version is better" isn't obvious in this case, then, when? Gallagher is either making a brave ethical statement in risking Carver's reputation this way, or revealing the faultline in taste, all over again, that separated Carver and Lish in the first place, with Lish on the side of "better".

Using the New Yorker piece (about the story that Carver wanted to call "Beginners"), again, as an example: who can argue, creditably, that the whole passages (pages and pages) that Lish edited from that story (especially the maudlin bit about the happy old couple) deserve to remain? These aren't just minor matters of grammar or word choice; they represent a certain kind of third-rate writing, oh-so-familiar from workshops.

If Carver, on evidence of the work revealed, remains in some sort of pantheon, it'll be for purely extra-literary reasons (in which case, open the pantheon gates for all of those creative writing students with glass eyes, exotic childhoods, or cool hats).

[Jacob Russell]

Why should the connection to the author matter more than the work itself? Isn't the question, with two versions now, not, which is the real Carver, but, which is the better?

This certainly does introduce other questions... about authorial voice, individual creative effort... the "auteur" problem of film making translated to literature.

[Steven Augustine]

I think the real writer of those original eye-catchers should be thought of as a character named "Carver Lish" from now on; there's no real way around it. The only thing I liked, or noticed, about some of those stories was the apparent restraint; the beautiful tensions the withholding generated. The recent feature in the New Yorker in which Lish's cuts were shown not only to be extensive but *obvious* (i.e., not merely an apples/oranges matter) was an eye-opener.

You're right: Gallagher has cut the chord that Carver was hanging from, in the belief that she was setting him free.

[Robert Nagle]

It should be fun 20 years from now when scholars are combing literary/fictional blogs to see how they evolved over time. At least we will have easy/easier access to what initial versions of stories looked like.

With writing (as opposed to moviemaking), later versions are significantly more compressed than earlier versions. In film, I suspect there is more deleting of scenes rather than compression. So it's conceivable that a video re-edit could include portions which were missing previously.

Short stories by nature are sparse forms. It's hard to imagine that rewriting would make as much of a difference as it would for a more expansive form like the novel.

[Dan Green]

An "author-persona" perhaps, but that's not the same thing as the biographical author, and requires no knowledge about the biographical author at all.

[Christian]

Which goes to show that for some readers, the reading experience includes knowledge about the author that goes well beyond the confines of the work at hand, whereas others prefer to deliberately shut out (at least to a degree) additional knowledge about an author they might bring to bear on their readings. In both approaches, however, the author-persona (the real author as perceived by the reader) becomes part of the reading experience; if nothing else, the author-persona serves as the peg that holds different reading experiences (namely of texts written by that same author) together.