Fires. Essays, Poems, Stories by Carver Raymond

Author:Carver, Raymond [Carver, Raymond]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1984-08-25T07:00:00+00:00

The two essays were written in 1981, and I was asked to write them. In one case, an editor at the New York Times Book Review wanted me to write on "any aspect of writing" and the little piece "On Writing" was the result. The other came about through an invitation to contribute something to a book on "influences" called In Praise of What Persists which was being put together by Steve Berg of American Poetry Review, and Ted Solotaroff at Harper and Row. My contribution was "Fires"—and it was Noel Young's idea that we call this book after that title.

The earliest story, "The Cabin," was written in 1966, was collected in Furious Seasons, and was revised this summer for publication here. Indiana Review will publish the story in their Fall 1982 number. A much more recent story is "The Pheasant," which will be published this month in a limited edition series by Metacom Press and will appear later this fall in New England Review.

I like to mess around with my stories. I'd rather tinker with a story after writing it, and then tinker some more, changing this, changing that, than have to write the story in the first place. That initial writing just seems to me the hard place I have to get to in order to go on and have fun with the story. Rewriting for me is not a chore—it's something I like to do. I think by nature I'm more deliberate and careful than I am spontaneous, and maybe that explains something. Maybe not. Maybe there's no connection except the one I'm making. But I do know that revising the work once it's done is something that comes naturally to me and is something I take pleasure in doing. Maybe I revise because it gradually takes me into the heart of what the story is about I have to keep trying to see if I can find that out. It's a process more than a fixed position.

There was a time when I used to think it was a character defect

that made me have to struggle along like this. I don't think this way any longer. Frank O'Connor has said that he was always revising his stories (this after sometimes taking the story through twenty or thirty rewrites in the first place) and that someday he'd like to publish a revised book of his revisions. To a limited extent, I've had that opportunity here. Two of the stories, "Distance" and "So Much Water So Close to Home" (from the original eight stories that made up Furious Seasons), were first published in book form in FS and were then included in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, When Capra approached me about reprinting, between two covers, Furious Seasons and At Night the Salmon Move— both books were then out of print—the idea of this book began to take hold. But I was in something of a quandary about these two particular stories Capra wanted to include.

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