Sexual Politics and Silence

"This Word Love": Sexual Politics and Silence in Early Raymond Carver
Author(s): Kirk Nesset

Reviewed work(s):
Source: American Literature, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Jun., 1991), pp. 292-313
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2927167 .
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"ThisWordLove": SexualPoliticsand Silence

in EarlyRaymond
Carver
KIRK NESSET
University
ofCalifornia,Santa Barbara
thingsaboutCarver'sfirstvolume
of the morestriking
~ of storiesis thatas a collection
it is hardlyuniform
in subjector voice.Instead,it embodieswhatWilliamStullhas called
Carver's"formative
as anothercriticputsit,
years,"providing,
of "a commonplightratherthana commonsuban exploration
NE
ject."51In Will You Please Be Quiet,Please? Carver rangesfrom

the Kafkaesque expressionismof "The Father" to the anecdotal
simplicityof "Nobody Said Anything"to the heavier,mildly
Faulknerian prose of "Sixty Acres" (which is in keeping with
the styleof earlierstoriespublishedlaterin FuriousSeasons),and
he rangeswith similarfreedomfromsubjectto subject.Despite
such diversity,
a numberof constantsarise in the volume-elements markingout the stylisticand thematicpaths Carver will
followin the course of his literarycareer.Most prevalentamong
these constantsis the issue of love-or, more precisely,the issue
of love and its absence,and the bearingof love's absenceon marriageand on the identitiesof individualsinvolved."His Jamesian
to the earlywork,
donnee was marriage,"Stull writes,referring
and "in particular,"he adds, citingCarver,"'a certainterrible
kind of domesticity'that he termed 'dis-ease.'"2 Even at this
1 Michael Wood, "StoriesFull of Edges and Silences,"New YorkTimesBook Review,
p. 34; William Stull, "Beyond Hopelessville: AnotherSide of Raymond
64 (I985), 2. I am greatlyindebtedto ProfessorStull not
Carver,"PhilologicalQuarterly,
26 April I98I,
only forinsightsgleaned in this and numerousothersof his fineessaysbut also forhis

generous bibliographicalassistanceand forhis even more generouspersonal supportin
this project overall. I am also gratefulto Tess Gallagher and Steven Allaback, whose
were invaluable.
commentsin conversationand writtencorrespondence
2 "Raymond Carver,"in Dictionaryof LiteraryBiographyYearbook:i988, ed. J. M.
Brook (Detroit: Gale, I989), p. 206. Citing Camus, Carver refershere to the storiesof
to Kittredge'sWeAre Not
William Kittredge,his statementappearingin an introduction
In This Together(Port Townsend,Wash.: GraywolfPress, I984), p. ix.
AmericanLiterature,Volume 63, Number 2, JuneI99I.
UniversityPress. CCC 0002-983I/9I/$I.50.
Copyright(C)i9i

by the Duke
Sexual Politicsin RaymondCarver
293
earlydate, moreover,love and itsmaladies are forCarveralready

an "obsession" (he hated the word "theme"),and with the appearance of his next volume-What We Talk About When We
Talk AboutLove-love takes full predominance,figuringas the
organizationaldevice to which its titleattests;one reviewerdescribesthe workas "a setof variationson thethemesof marriage,
infidelityand the disquietingtricksof human affection"-an
assessmentapplicable to Carver'sfirstbook of fictionas well.3
Many of these "disquietingtricks"Carver addresses in his
poems, which, as a rule, tend to deal rathermore straightforwardly with his obsessionsthan do the stories.In 1976-the
year in which Will You Please went to press-Carver brought
out a chapbook of poems called At Nightthe Salmon Move, a
slim,limited-editionbook concludingwitha poem called "This
Word Love":
I will notgo whenshecalls
evenif she saysI loveyou,
especiallythat,
eventhoughshe swears
and promisesnothing
butlovelove.
The lightin thisroom
coversevery
thingequally;
myarmthrowsno shadoweven,
it too is consumedwithlight.
But thiswordlove
thiswordgrowsdark,grows
heavyand shakesitself
and beginsto eat
throughthispaper.
Listen.4
In Carver's early stories,as in this poem, love is a darkly unknowable and irreversibleforce,a form of sickness not only
complicatingbut dominatingthe lives of characters.Characters
diminished,isoare alternatelybewildered,enraged,suffocated,
3AWood, P. 34.
4 At NighttheSalmonMove (Santa Barbara: Capra, I1976), P. 44.

294
AmericanLiterature
lated,and entrappedby love,though,unlikethespeakerof the

thepowerloveexertsoverhislifepoem-who acknowledges
rarelydo theyactuallyrecognizetheirindividualcircumstances
as such.As theword"growsdark"in theirlives-as lovebegins
eitherbetrayto eat throughthem,and theyfindthemselves
theycannot
sexuality
of
in
a
kind
or trapped
ing or betrayed,
of sexual politics,which
understand-theybecomepartakers
themas well.
but aggravate
not onlybringon love'ssicknesses
a kind
thepoliticsof sex reflect
For Carver'slovers,ultimately,
of largerpolitics,moretenuousand moreominousevenyet:the
unseenand unheard,
and fate,which,forever
politicsof fortune
of theirlives,provokingthe
dictatethe bleak circumstances
and dismaythatis forthema dailyfactof existence.
bafflement
Carver'smardomesticity,
Residingin theformof hardscrabble
larger,rather
riagesare thusscaled-downmodelsrepresenting
in
modelsreflecting,
moreterrifying
politics-or anti-politics:
the
of
and
chaos
caprice
and
the
arbitrariness
form,
human
worldin whichtheyare rooted.
the individual failuresof the

Equally if not more strikingly,
character'slives-the ailing and brokenmarriages,particularly
-are recapitulatedin the individual failuresof their tongues.
Like the speakerof "This Word Love," theyare struckdumb by
love's buffetings.They wait, they "Listen," and there,usually,
Carver leaves them,disconcertedand expectant,passivelywaiting at the edge of despair.Thus anotherconstantin Will You
Please Be Quiet, Please?-as its title suggests-is the issue of
language and its limitations(the second volume also picks up
this issue, notablywith its emphasison "talk"). As manycritics
have observed already,this issue is developed in the storiesas
or broodingsilence,on the part of the characinarticulateness,
ters,a phenomenonmirroredand enhancedby the sparenessof
prose."5Still,
what has been aptlydubbed Carver's"unforgiving
despitesuch limitations-despitewhat manycharacterssense as
a built-insystemof failure-Carver's is not a despairingworld.
"Raymond Carver'sAmerica is helpless,"Michael Wood writes,
"clouded by pain and the loss of dreams,but it is not as fragile
as it looks. It is a place of survivorsand a place of stories."6
5 Stull,PhilologicalQuarterly,
p.
6 Wood, p. i.
i.

295
The survivorswho people these stories,as Carver says in an

interview,"do the best theycan" given the natureof theircircumstances.7They talk, howeverunsuccessfully;theyhave sex,
or avoid it. They employboththeirbodies and tonguesin efforts
to find themselvesagain, strugglingto reassemblethe bits and
pieces of theirtatteredidentities-and theycontinuestruggling,
even as theirbodies get them intotrouble,and as theirtongues,
takingthem foreverin circles,fall silent.
The most frequentlycommentedupon of Carver's storiesafter"Cathedral," perhaps-is "Neighbors,"a tale of marriage
in the process of diminishing.Like so many of Carver's fictive marriages,the storydeals less with love or passion than
with its conspicuous absence and with the symptomsof love's
withdrawal.It is the tale of Bill and Arlene Miller, a "happy
couple" who-now thatthe originalintensityof theirmarriage
has begun to dwindle-experience sexual titillationin the home
of their neighbors,whose apartmentthey'relooking after (a
that JoyceCarol Oates borrowsfor"Harrow
story,incidentally,
Street at Linden," a rathermore graphic representationof an
identicaltitillationand itseffects).As in "The Idea," a storyconcerned specificallywith voyeurism,"Neighbors" presentsa pair
of figureswho are "obsessed with vicariousness"(as one critic
notes of Carver's early charactersin general); affectedperhaps
and by what seems to them to be the fading
by overintimacy,
vitalityof theirmarriage,theylook outward,imaginingthemselvesas others,and seek in the processalternate,more attractive
selves.8
"IN]ow and then,"we learn of the Millers earlyin the story,

"they felt they alone among their circle had been passed by
somehow."9By plantingthemselvesamid the articlesand residual energiesof theirvacationingfriends,theyexperiencevicariously a "fullerand brighterlife."With its plants and (possibly
exoticclothesavailablefor
lurid)photographs,and withstrangely
7 Interviewwith Mona Simpson ("The Art of Fiction LXXVI"), Paris Review, 25
(Summer I983), 207.
8 ArthurSaltzman, Understanding
RaymondCarver(Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, I988), p. 22. This book-the firstto date on Carver-provides a cursoryand
to Carver'swork.
occasionallymisleading(if not inaccurate)introduction
9 Will You Please Be Quiet,Please? (New York: McGraw-Hill, I976), p. 7. All further
citationsfromstoriesare takenfromthisedition.

AmericanLiterature
296
on-the "Hawaiian"shirtsand "Bermudas"and brasthetrying

is fortheMillers,
apartment
sieresand panties-the neighbors'
rumpusroom"whose
as one criticaptlyputsit,a "psychosexual
bad.10"As the timethey
altogether
influenceis not necessarily
Ann Beattieoblengthens,"
apartment
spendin theneighbors'
beginstobondthemtogether,
servesoftheMillers,"theirenergy
withnew
11Suddenlyreinfused
theirownmarriage."
revitalizing
fanningthe flamesof eroticdesire,theybelife,vicariousness
jointlyto know
loversattempting
come a pair of conspirators,
the sexual selvesof a couplewhoseexistenceseemsfarmore
games
thantheirown. But the Millers'psychosexual
attractive
Boxer
As
David
are not withouttheirnegativeimplications.
are often
and CassandraPhillipshavenoted,Carver'scharacters
. . . of theirown experience,"
but "voyeurs
not simplyvoyeurs,
seekersin perilousgamesof peek-a-boowhich,if carriedfar
glimpsesbehindthecurtain
enough,yield"sudden,astonishing
which separatestheiremptylives fromchaos.""12Thus one reviewer (discussing"Neighbors") lauds Carver for his expertise
in this
in "describingvarious typesof emotionalparasitism";53
storywe find representeda formof "dis-ease" which-as the
story'sending suggests resultsin psychiclosses that far outrun eroticgains. Leaving the neighbors'apartmentafterhis first
Bill pauses,having"the feelinghe had leftsomevisit,therefore,
thing"inside.What both Bill and his wife leave behind,in fact,
are themselves:shreds of the identitiesthey have been trying
to nourishin theirdaily visitationsacross the
self-destructively
hall-shreds that have grown,visit by visit,increasinglymalnourished.Finally locked out of theirnew paradise,and seeminglytoo jaded in the end to appreciatethe old quiet waysof the
past, theyare in "limbo" (as Boxer and Phillips put it) and thus,
"dissociatedfromboth lives,the Millersonlyhave each other."14
versionsof Dante's Paolo and FranLate twentieth-century
cesca, Bill and Arlene wait in the hall, poised between lives.
"They stayed there," the story's concluding sentences read,
10
Stull,DLB Yearbook:1988,p. 207.
11 "Carver'sFuriousSeasons,"Canto,2 (Summer I978), I78.
12"Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?: Voyeurism,Dissociation, and the Art of

RaymondCarver,"Iowa Review, io (Summer I979), 76.
13 Dean Flower,"Fiction Chronicle,"HudsonReview,29 (Summer I 976), 28I.
14 Boxer and Phillips,p. 77.

297
"They held each other.They leaned into the door as if against

a wind, and braced themselves."Like Dante's lovers,they are
intimateeven in theirdespair,but unlike theirprecursorsthey
are batterednot by the winds of passion,of love out of control.
Carver'sloversbracethemselvesinsteadagainsttheconsequences
of inauthenticpassion,a false kind of love which, requiringits
stimulusfromoutside influences,feeds on the attractivepossibilities of other worlds,and other lives, at the cost of self. In
"The Idea," similarly-where "the voyeurmotifis carried to
an extreme"-an older couple peer out theirwindow,makinga
nightlyritualof watchingtheman nextdoor,who standsoutside
Fully corrupted
his own window watchinghis wife undress.15
theirsexual energiesas dead as their verbal
by inauthenticity,
interchangesin general(and redirectednow intoeating,the only
act-besides voyeurism-in which theypartakewith any zeal),
thiscouple is the aging,decayingversionof Bill and Arlene,and
a previewof the Millers'ghost-lifeto come. Following the path
of Vern and his wife in "The Idea," the Millers toy with borrowed versionsof love, conspiringto bankruptthemselves,both
sexuallyand spiritually.
It is no coincidence,then,that as theyembrace in the frantic final momentsof the story,they both referto "God." As
Arlene realizes theyare locked out of theirnew world-which
representsforthem not just paradise but also, ironically,Eden,
the lost innocence of their early married life-she exclaims,
"My God . . . I left the key inside," and Bill, trying to re-
assure her, respondsin kind: "For God's sake," he says,"don't

worry."They have had not a single vital verbal interchangein
untilnow-when, with an explosivesudthe story,remarkably,
denness of vitality,they cling to one another and (indirectly)
call on God, invokingthat abstractauthoritywho is for them,
in some way or another,the keeperof the largerkeys. But the
Millers' burstof verbalexuberance-and physicalintimacy-is
simultaneouslya bang and a whimper.Their unconsciousinvocationsof abstractauthority(theyare no churchgoers,certainly)
testifyto the degree of powerlessnessthey have in the face of
determinedcircumstance.Not only are they shut out, cut off
fromthe possibilitiesof "fullerand brighterlife" in the future,
15Boxer and Phillips,p. 77.

298
AmericanLiterature
buttheyarealso deprivednowoftheirpast.Growingevermore
desensitized,
theyshallknowonlytheimprisoning
limboof the
present,thatnumbingatemporalworldin whichGod is just
one of manyauthorities
authorizing
hardknocks.Enactingthe
earlierfallof Vernand his wife-who, rathermoresheltered
byage and custom,areblownfromtheoutside,theirhousebuffetedbywinds-Bill and Arlene"bracethemselves"
againstthe
limbicwindsofmediocrity
and,whenthewordsrunout,reach
out and hold on, comforting
themselves
thebestwaytheycan,
whiletheycan.
Love, as Oscar Wilde onceso gliblyputit,is a maladymost
oftencurableby marriage.In "Fat,"as in manyotherstories,
Carverexploresthatunfortunate
and sometimes
brutalreality,
thistimetakingon thepersonaof a womanin a storyof love
gone sour (a love that,thoughstillas freshas week-oldmilk,
was in "Neighbors"on thepointof turning).
It is a frame-tale
in whicha waitress,disillusioned
withher job and her marriage,explainsto a friendhermysterious
attraction
to an obese
customershe has latelyserved."I know now I was aftersome-
to get a handleon her

thing,"she tellsRita,herfriend,
trying
fortheman,"But I don'tknowwhat."As thestory
fascination
unfoldswe understand
graduallythatthewaitressis beingsuffocatedby herhusbandRudy-with whomshe bothlivesand
works-and that,curiously
to
enough,the fatman represents
hereverything
and "well-dressed,"
Rudylacks.Polite,articulate,
the fatman is the tokenof a kindof opulence-and gracious
makesthewaitress'own dull
affability-which,
bycomparison,
lifeseemlean and shabby.16
But morethana simple(and grosslyexaggerated)
symbolof
anotherlife,and morealso thana meansforretaliation
on the
part of the narrator(it is suggested,obliquely,that a flirtation
is going on between Rudy and anotherwaitress),the fat man
is a being with whom, on a deeper, personal level, the narratorstronglyidentifies.His verbal tick-the sustaineduse of
the royal"we"-beyond evokingregalness,a tirednobilitythat
so moves the waitress,evokes even more immediatelya kind
16 For alternative
and equally fascinating
possibilitiesin fictiveobesity,see also J.Hillis
Miller, "Poets of Reality" (I965), rpt. in The SecretAgent:A Casebook,ed. Ian Watt
(London: Macmillan, I973), pp. I87-89; and see also Rick DeMarinis, "Life Between
Meals," in Underthe Wheat(Pittsburgh:Univ. of PittsburghPress, I986), pp. 8i-ioi.

299
of complicity,a victimizationcommon to fatman and waitress

in which theydeviate
both. At the one pointin theirconversings
frombusiness fromthe businessof orderingand eating-the
fat man, with regard to the compulsivenatureof his gorging,
says,"If we had our choice,no. But thereis no choice." Justas
he is at the mercyof his appetite-and whateverlies behind that
("he is fat,"the waitresstellsher husband,"but that is not the
whole story")-she too is at the mercyof her world,oppressed
insensitiveto her needs.
by a husband and work environment
Like Nan in "The Student'sWife," the waitressshares her
bed with a man with whom she has littlein common,with a
man who is, like the "businessmen"she daily serves at work,
"verydemanding."Feeling more distantfromher husband than
ever afterher meeting with the fat man (and afterRudy, in
his one talkativemoment in the story,says exactlythe wrong
thing,describingthe "fat guys" of his childhood), she "can't
thinkof anythingto say" and, undressing,gets intobed, moving
"clearoverto the edge." As she expects,however,"Rudy begins."
Rudy's insistencefurnishesphysicaltestimonyto what she has
heard earlier,at the table of the fat man; thereis "no choice"
in such matters.Thus she allows Rudy to carryon-admitting,
as she tellsRita, that"it is against[her]will." Such
nevertheless,
complianceis, at the extreme-as anotherof Carver'sreluctantly
compliantfemalesmakes evident-a kind of violencelike unto
death: witnessClaire's sexual acquiescence in "So Much Water
So Close to Home," in which she identifiesherself,water roaring in her ears,witha raped and murderedwoman foundnaked
in a creek, the corpse ignoredby her husband and his friends
until theirfishingtripis conveniently
over.
thatthe waitress'vision of libIt is no coincidence,therefore,
eration comes to her during the act of sexual intercourse.But
her vision is as strangeas it is unfocusedand, in a sense, misdirected."When he gets on me," she tellsRita, "I suddenlyfeel
fat. I feel I am terrifically
fat,so fat that Rudy is a tinything
and hardlythereat all." Wantingto freeherselfof her husband's
influence,her desiresforlibertytake the form-consuffocating
sciouslyor unconsciously-of a literal,physical self-expansion
whose dimensionsreduce the man astrideher, shrinkinghim
both in importanceand size. "Surely we have diminishedone
another,"Carver writes in a poem (the opening poem of At

AmericanLiterature
300
Night the Salmon Move), the complaintof anotherlover falling

out of love.17In "Fat," ironically,the more diminishedlover of
the two-the wife-retaliates againsther husband (psychically,
imaginatively)in the verymannershe has been abused, thus recapitulatingher injuries.Reduced to thestatusof near-nonentity,
she responds in a way that is simultaneouslyan adopting of
Rudy's strategiesand a private,uniquelypersonalizedexpression
thatcenters,localizes (and, ideally,reactsagainst)diminishment
at the verylocus of violation:the flesh.Most vulnerableon the
sexual level-what may be intimacyto one party is coercive
herself,in a vision,
trespassto another-the waitresstransforms
with the fatman
fromnon-selfto mountainsof self,identifying
and his determinedworld even as she seeks refugefrom that
world-at once acceptingand strugglingagainst determinism,
againstthe complacencythatimprisons.
But visions,afterall, are not escape routes,and just as Carver
rarelyaffordshis charactersvisions,he neveraffordsthemroutes
of escape. While providingforher in its tellinga purgation,or
compensationof some kind-as talkingdoes forCarver'scharacters,to a degree,in all of his books-the waitress'story,like
her vision of amplitude,does littleto illuminateher on the dire
matterof her unhappiness.Justas the newlywedgirl of "Why
Don't You Dance?" keeps "talking" in an effortto get some
equally disturbingdetailsoffher mind-trying in her own way
"to get it all talked out" so does the waitressof "Fat" unfold
her tale. And like Rita, who "doesn't know what to make of
it," and who "sits therewaiting"at the end of the story,listennudge, the waitressremains
ing for some kind of interpretive
in the wake of her tale oddly baffledeven as she is expectant
about her life's forecast."My life is going to change,"she says,
in the final line of the story,"I feel it." (Is she intuitingthe
adventof pregnancy?-she's just describedan act of copulation
and earlierhad wondered"what would happen if [she] had children"-which suggestsa liberationof sorts,but also another
as one criticnotes,"stakes
trap as well.) "Her inarticulateness,"
out the limitsof her growthof consciousness,"but, even more
her closingwordsbelie such limits,reflectedas they
significantly,
She does not say,
are in her use of the passive construction.18
17
18
At NighttheSalmonMove, p.
Saltzman, p. 24.
i i.

301
thatis, "I am going to change my life,"but "My lifeis going to

way of statingthings.Verchange"-which is a ratherdifferent
bal passivityis a close relativeof passivityof action-it mirrors,
in fact,the passive role she plays in bed-and the sense of the
is thatthe waitresswill not act but will
story'sclose, ultimately,
continueto be acted upon; she is programmedto see her life in
those terms.Like the fatman, who admitsthat "A person has
to be comfortable,"and then,a victimof his appetite,can't stop
eatinglong enough to removehis coat, Carver'swaitresshas not
yet the capacityfor puttingon her expansiveself,comfortable
or uncomfortableas she may be.
A frail,mousy man wearing "slippers,pajamas, and robe,"
of "Are You a Doctor?"-spends
Arnold Breit-the protagonist
manyof his eveningsalone while his wife,in an odd formof role
reversal,is "away on business."One nighthis world is disrupted
by a phone call, by a woman whose forwardnessupsets the
seeminglypatternedevennessof his world.As with the waitress
in "Fat," his personal sense of self is threatenedby sex, but in
thiscase it is not so much sex thatthreatensas it is the potential
of sexual mobility.Hence, remindinghimselfthat"one couldn't
evades the advances of
take chances," Arnold only temporarily
the caller, and, pressuredfinallyinto a physicalconfrontation,
adventurethan a
his ordeal providesforhim less an instructive
painfuldestabilizationof self.
However,even beforehe is propositioned,Arnold appears insecure,hurryingas he does to thephone; perhapshe feelsthreatened by the independenceof his wife,who customarilyphones
"late . . . aftera few drinks-each nightwhen she [is] out of
town." Arnold's insecurityis a scaled-downversionof Carl's in
"What's in Alaska?" which takes the shape of a pair of eyesglowing animal eyes-that, embodyinghis paranoias about the
futureand his girlfriend's
stalk him in a darkenedhallfidelity,
way. In this sense,generallyspeaking,Carver'sprotagonistsare
creaturesin crisis,"as Michael Wood describesthem in a specific referenceto this volume. The storiesthey inhabit,Wood
concludes,are "full of menace" preciselybecause "the expected
catastrophe,though absent as crisisor melodrama,is perpetually presentas fear.""19Like Carl-and many others-Arnold
is stalked by fear,thoughthe embodimentof his fearis rather
19
Wood, pp. I, 34.

AmericanLiterature
302
moreconcretely
manifested
thanit is forsome-appearingin
theformof Clara,thewrong-number
caller,who makessexual
opportunity
risesuddenly
likea boilon thesmoothsurface
ofhis
sheltered,
thoughnotnecessarily
stable,domesticlife.Similarly,
in "Jerry
and Mollyand Sam," anothermale charactersenses
that,thanksto an affairhe is having,he is "losingcontrolover
everything."
Likewise,shakenby his caller'sadvances,Arnold
feelshisown (albeitfeeble)controlslippingawayin hiscase due
notto actualinfidelity
butto theverythought
of it,and to the
terrible
freedomsuchpossibility
implies(thefreedomthatdisorients,
releasing
one fromthecomfortable,
entrapping
bondsof
and thatterrifies,
marriage,
allowingone toimagineone'sspouse
capableof equal freedom).
the greatesterosionof Arnold'sself-possession

Appropriately,
comes with the relinquishingof his name. When Clara asks him
his last name he replies, "'Arnold Breit' . . . and then quickly
add[s], 'Clara Holt. That's nice. But I reallythinkI should hang

up now, Miss Holt.'" Realizing that he has voluntarilyturned
his name over to a stranger,he triesto blot it out of her memory at once, divertingattentionto her own name (which doesn't
work, of course; Clara's young daughtergreets him with his
full name when he arrivesat theirdoor). Even more strikingly
than the waitressin "Fat"-who admitsthat she has told Rita
"too much"-Arnold spreadshis alreadyunstablesense of self
dangerouslythin, and, as William Stull observes,tangles "his
identityin a web of his own making."20In the progressivetangling of self, Arnold more than once in the storylooks "at
himselfin the mirror"and inventoriesthe unsettlingand eroding of what had been beforea relativelysecure self.In the final
lines of the story,therefore-when the one and only exchange
between husband and wife occurs-his wife says,significantly,
"Arnold? .
. You don't sound like yourself."
The lure of sexual possibilitythus activatesin Arnold what

Boxer and Phillipscall "dissociation"-that "sense of disengagement fromone's own identityand life,a stateof standingapart
fromwhateverdefinesthe self,or of beingunselfed"21-and the
loss of his name figuratively
recapitulatesand clinchessuch dis20DLB Yearbook:1988,p. 207.
21 Boxer and Phillips,p. 75.

303
sociation. Furthermore,for Arnold's dissociatedcousins in the

volume,such psychicerosionis even more extreme:in "Collecters" Slater loses not only a letter,and the possibilityof a job,
but also, at the mercyof the man and his vacuum,himself-a
transientand precariousself,symbolizedby his name on the envelope, which is cartedoffwith the restof the debris,sealed up
in the bowels of the intruder'smachine.In "The Father,"even
more radically,the story'stitlefigureturnsto his familywith
a face "white and withoutexpression,"having been informed
that he "doesn't look like anybody"-the next removefromnot
sounding like oneself-and thus dissociationis pushed to its
expressionisticlimit.
In the final momentsof the story,Arnold falls mute. Questioned by his wife about his recentwhereabouts(in a joking
way), he does not respondbut instead"remain[s]silentand consider[s] her voice." Arnold's silence is both an intensification
and a natural end-resultof what has-as far as communication is concerned-been building and accumulatingthroughout the story;his reluctantthoughoddly enticingconversations
with Clara-particularly the one taking place in the fleshhave failed miserably,and by extensionso have his attempts
at communicatingwith himself.Now, verbal interactionwith
his wife-whom he doesn'tseem altogetherto trust-collapses.
Like Rita and the talk-spentwaitress,he waits,and like Leo in
"What Is It?" he "considers,"too dissociated now from himself and alienated in general to respondin any intelligibleway.
So perturbedis he by the ringingof the phone, in fact(before
pickingit up to discoverhis wife on the otherend), he takes an
inventoryof another kind-not by looking in the mirrorthis
timebut by placinghis hand "tenderly. . . against his chest" and
feeling,"throughthe layersof clothes,his beatingheart." Ineffectiveas the gesturemay seem-most of the gesturesCarver
is signifiallots his charactersare-Arnold's finalself-inventory
cant in that as he reaches up he becomes the "Doctor" of the
story'stitle:he is trying,howeverawkwardly,to doctorhimself.
Shatterednow by his trystwith Clara, "unselfed,"and destabilized again by the phone,Arnoldneeds more than anythingelse
an indicatorof self-however faint-and findsit.
What he findsis the "human noise" emergingout of silence
at the end of "What We Talk About When We Talk About

304
AmericanLiterature
Love,"thatautomatic
idle,in theformofa heartbeat,
presiding
over beingeven afterthe collapseof language,afterdissocia-
tion is ruinouslycomplete.Hurryingaway fromClara's apartment, earlier, he had wondered about "the other child-the
boy. Where was he?" he had asked himself.Not just the story's
"Doctor," as it were, Arnold is also the missingboy,himselfas
much a point of vacancyin the story'spsychiceconomyas the
boy is a hole in the structuralwhole of the narrative."I'm afraid
forthe boy,"Clara tellshim earlierin theday,just beforehe asks
her about her husband. Arnold,too, is afraid-afraid forhimself,afraidof what he experiencesas a terrifying
disintegration
of self.If, as Gary Fisketjonwrites,Carver"cutsAmerica'sheart
out and lays it open in a book," then in this world of inexplicable, terribledomesticity,
Arnold'sfearsare everybody'sfears.22
And thanksto the surgicaldeftnessof Carver'sart,the greatest
menace of Arnold's world represents,
ultimately,
to greaterand
lesser degrees,the missingessenceof us all.
In one of Carver'sdarkeststories,"What Is It?" sexualityand
loss of self are linked in a rathermore concreteway. In this
story,an insolventman, Leo, waits at home in tormentall night
while his wife is out "negotiating"a deal on theirconvertible
(and while also, we presume,she caps the deal by sleepingwith
the salesman who buys the car). Infidelity,
it should be noted,is
not an unusual subjectin Carver'sfiction;as an obsessionit resounds throughouthis canon. Treated explicitlyin this volume
in "What Is It?" as well as in the titlestoryand in "Jerryand
Molly and Sam," infidelitycrops up again indirectlyin a number of otherstories.WhatWe Talk Aboutdeals directlywith the
subject in "Sacks" and "Gazebo," and later volumes bring us
"Fever" and "Menudo," furtherfantasieson a common theme;
in the poetry,moreover,it is equally if not more prevalent.
In Carver,generallyspeaking(and everywhereelse, one would
manifestsitselfas one of manysymptomsof an
think),infidelity
ailing marriage,which,as we have seen, indicatean ailing sense
of self as well; in "What Is It?" as elsewhere,infidelityreflects
a kind of spiritual
such "dis-ease" and, even more specifically,
bankruptcythat marriagebringson, hasteningthat inevitable
thatis as much a resultof susloss of selfwith a destructiveness
22
"Normal Nightmares,"VillageVoice,i8 Sept. 1978, p.
132.

305
tainedconjugalproximity
as it is thebuffetings
of bad fortune.
"[B]etrayalis just anotherwordforloss,"Carverwrites,years
In theearlystories,neverthelater,in a poem,"forhunger."23
less,sexual politics-infidelity
chiefamongthem-go beyond
simplyreflecting
thehungerand thelossesofunfortunate
lovers.
Such politicscomplicatean alreadycomplicated
world,heighteningthedegreesof individuallosses,notto mentionthepain;
hence the moreCarver'scharacters
seek to recover,the more
theylose.
"You don't havemoney,"Toni,Leo's wife,tellshim,readying herselfto go out and sell thecar."And yourcredit'slousy.
You'renothing."Althoughshe is, as she adds,only"Teasing,"
she is also in earnest,considering
as we mustthe vehemence
withwhichshe hurls"Bankrupt"at him when she returnsat
dawn (one of the few words,afterher return,exchangedbetweenthemat all). In thisratherobviousway,Leo's value as
a personis reducedto his equivalency
in monetary
worth.He
is,literally,
ofno accountwhatsoever.
Himselfan adulterer,
Leo
findsthatthe sightof his neighbor-a witnessto the timehe
"broughta womanhome"-fills himwithan "urgeto cryout
and thushis wife'sinfidelity,
a confession,"
whichhe in a perversesenseencourages
("Leo sendsToniouttodo it,"thestory's
firstsentencereads),is an actof retribution
he inflicts
indirectly
upon himself.
But itis also muchmorethanthat.Toni'sinfidelity
is itselfan
of his failures-or,moreprecisely,
embodiment
a figuration
of
his nonexistence,
notjustin hiswife'seyesbutin
whichfigures
hisown as well.As thenightmarish
aspectsofhiseveningalone
beginto wearon him,Leo "considers
whetherhe shouldgo to
the basement. . . and hanghimselfwithhis belt. He understandshe is willingto be dead."The temporary
absenceof his
monetary
wife,underlining
and sexualinadequaciesin equivalent terms,is a loss thatis forhim as comprehensive
as it is
intense;he wouldrather"be dead"thanhavetowhollyconfront
thepsychiccontours
ofhisbankruptcy.
Leo's insomnia-a commonmaladyin Carver'secosystem
ofmalaise(thinkof the"terriblesunrise"in "The Student'sWife")-is a formofexistential
self-torment,
that"wakefulness"
whichrepresents,
as Boxerand
23 "Limits,"in Ultramarine
(New York: Random House/Vintage,1986),p. 37.

306
AmericanLiterature
Phillips observe of this story,"a particularlyineluctablesort of

Waking
awakeningto the tenuousnessof human connections."24
to disconnectedness,Leo confrontsthe tenuousnessof his relations not only to others but also to himselfand accordingly,
undergoesa gradual death of self: he considers
disconcertingly,
himself,in the end, as "nothing."
Leo's gradual acknowledgmentof and resistanceto this unpleasant awakening leads to a kind of paralysis,one affecting
him both verballyand physically.Aftera period of interminable fidgeting-just as the phone begins to ring again-Leo
"looks at his hand," which "makes a fistas he watches"; Leo's
crisisof self is such, by this point in the story,thatthe motions
of his body seem oddly separate,his motor reflexesexertinga
controlof theirown. By the time his wife returns,he is angry
enough to "cock his fist,"readyto strikeher,but-not the lion
that his name connotes-he doesn't follow throughwith the
motion. Instead, paralyzed,he allows her to tear his shirtfrom
him and looks "for somethingheavy,"respondingto a more
forthemboth) an equally ineffective,
brutalthough(fortunately
half-heartedimpulse.
On the verbal level, Leo is even more constricted.He utters
not a word to his wife when she arriveshome, and fails to articulatemuch of anythingto the car salesman when the two of
them meet. In contrastto the glib verbosityof the salesmanmirroringthe contrastbetweenthe salesman's"whitelinen suit"
and Leo's tatteredshirt,which he bunches"intohis trousers"Leo's verbal failureunderscoreshis feelingsof impotence,his
sense of himselfas a zero in the sexual as well as the material
of Carver'scharrealm. Tongue-tied,Leo is thus representative
actersin general,who, as Adam Mars-Jonessaysof the "walking
wounded" in WhatWe Talk About,"utterbrokensentencesand
tryto communicatetheirsense of loss"-and forwhom in their
"articulatenessis the firstthing
individual crises,unfortunately,
to go."25 For such characters,as Ann Beattie writes,"Silence
seems as appropriatea responseas anythingelse."26
The story'stitle,"What Is It?"-issuing fromthe mouth of
24
25
26
Boxer and Phillips,p. 85.

22 Jan.I982,
"Words forthe WalkingWounded,"TimesLiterarySupplement,
Beattie,p. i 8 i.

p.
76.
307
the man who has just slept with Leo's wife-further emphasizes Leo's incapacitiesby drawingattentionto the silence that
hinders his effortstoward articulation.The salesman's question, with the expectationit evokes, deflatesin advance Leo's
key word, "Monday"-his life-raft,his password to freedom,
the day (as Leo earlier imagines) he and his wife "startover."
Thus the awkward silence envelopingLeo's statementreflects
littlemore than the hopelessnessof his hopes, the paucityof his
speech mirroringthat (doubly) speculativevoid in which hope,
like money,is swallowedup forever.Reissuingthe storyin Where
I'm Calling From, however,Carver assigned the storyanother
title, calling it instead "Are These Actual Miles?"; with the
revised title he adopts anotherof the salesman's questions-a
question that,this time,goes unansweredby Leo. Emphasizing
even more concretelyLeo's verbalparalysis-and, by extension,
his failuresoverall-the revised title also evokes with greater
explicitnessthe loss thatsuch failuresimply.The "actual" miles,
the story'sfinal sentencessuggest,are the ones Leo's marriage
has accumulated (symbolizedby the "roads" in Toni's skina detail picking up earlier parallels between her and the car;
Toni's absence is thus most tangiblewhen Leo looks out the
window "to the place in the drive where she always parks"),
miles whose residual toll is embodied by equal diminishment
on the parts of husband and wife. Equating one anotherwith
objects and figures,the balance-sheetof theirmarriageis dangerouslyoverdrawn,and "Monday"-the key that Leo thinks
may turn back the odometer of their misfortunes-if it ever
comes, carriesfew promises.Materiallyand spiritually,Carver
suggests,the forecastis not good.
In "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" Carveragain takeson
the subject of infidelity,
providinga fullerpsychologicaltreatment of it than in any other of his stories.Unlike "What Is
It? -a storyin which we see the inevitablebreakdown of a
broken man-this storydeals with a relativelystable character. It presentsa (temporarily)"happy couple" and the kind of
relationshipthat,with the partialexceptionof the Millers,never
emerges elsewhere in the volume. In contrastto Leo-and to
a host of Carver'sothercharacters-Ralph Wyman is relatively
successful,contentwith his life. Still, like a number of other
males in the collection-Leo and Arnold,forinstance,or Carl in

308
AmericanLiterature
"What'sin Alaska?"-Ralph is oddlynaivein hisdealingswith

in a veryrealway,vulnerable.
the femalesex and is therefore,
Only a "singleinjuryto theirmarriage"existsforhim in the
in whathe thinksmaybe a singleact of informof possibility,
on thepartof hiswifeMarion,the"certainunthinkable
fidelity
of whichhavegnawedat him foryears.When
particularities"
as reality-whenRalph has wrunga
is confirmed
possibility
of the
confessionout of his wife-the suddenencroachment
him
his
life
destabilizes
utterly,
throwing
"unthinkable"
upon
his seemingly
secureidentity,
and hisentireworld,intoturmoil.
how
yet,Carverillustrates
In his mostgraphicdemonstration
foryearsbefore
menacecan lurkin thecalmestof relationships
finallyrisingto the surface.More stablethananyotherfigure
in thisvolume,Ralphis subjectedto themostviolent,explosive
identitycrisisof themall (perhapsbecausehe, unlikeothers,
his crisisas such).And,
is relatively
capableof comprehending
as we have seen again and again in Carver,the crisishinges
on sex. As the storysuggests,Marion'sadmissionreleasesin
Ralph anotherself-an olderand moredestructiveself,goingby

the name of "Jackson"-which, for the love of wife-to-beand
career,he had earliersuppressed;as Boxer and Phillips observe,
Ralph "has paved over,not rid himselfof Jackson,the Dionysian side of him which continuesto haunthis consciousmind."
In the burstingof Ralph's world we see, ratherless obviously,
that Marion's "threateningly
mysterioussensuality"is associated
in his mind with the "squalor and open lust" that had once
appalled him years before in Mexico, where he'd had a disturbing"vision" of his wife,watchingher secretlyas she leaned
Inexplicablyintimidatingto him,
againstthe railingof a porch.27
Marion's "breastspushing"againsther blouse are forRalph connected to the "great evil pushing at the world," that sense of
that,as his night-longdrunkwitnesses,is both
uncontainability
feminineand pregnantwith danger.
mysteriously
Ralph's fear of the uncontrollablyfemininearises with sporadic intensityduring his nightmarishdescent into hell (an
American neo-realist'sversionof Joyce'snighttown),fear heralded before he leaves by his wife's referenceto a trio of exemplarymisogynists-Nietzsche,Strindberg,and Mailer-and
27
Boxer and Phillips,pp. 88-89.

309
reinforced
progressively
by whathe sees in hell: pornographic
graffiti,
visionsofMarionin theactofcopulation,
a "hugeneonlightedclam shell witha man'slegs stickingout"-even the
sightof a woman tossingher hair,whichis as "frightening"
on his
to Ralph as anything
he has everseen.But by insisting
wife'sconfession on fuelinghis personalmale eroticnighteven beforehe leaves,embarking
mare-Ralph is journeying
on
early a dangerousdescentavailableto him in the formof
is "just talking,"but to
language.To Marion,such an activity
Ralph,as thestorysuggests,
thisis perilousintercourse
indeed.
Thus as Marionbeginsdishingout the meat-and-potatoes
of
her tale, Ralph directs"all his attention
intoone of the tiny
blackcoachesin thetablecloth,"
wherehe sees"fourtinywhite
prancinghorsespulledeach of theblackcoachesand thefigure
drivingthe horseshad his armsup and wore a tall hat, and
suitcaseswerestrappeddownatopthecoach,and whatlooked
like a kerosenelamphungfromtheside,and ifhe werelistening at all it was frominsidethe blackcoach" (p. 234). Riding
throughthe dark in a coach,Ralph'simaginedjourney-preof Eureka-is another
figuring
calamityto come,on thestreets
manifestation
of that"greatevil" pushingat the seamsof his
world,thoughit is also,justas significantly,
a responseto such
evil. As a participant-a passivelistenerin a "black coach,"
along forthe ride-Ralph unconsciously
fashionshimselfthe
victimof "evil"comingto him in the formof language.Like
Leo-speechless in theend,helplessly
"considering"-Ralphis
on theroad to silence,wherewords(and thepotentialforhorrorbehindwords)can do him no harm.Fittingly,
just before
Marionbeginsherstory,
Ralphadmitsto his reservations,
telling his wifethathe'd "justas soon leaveit at that,"and then
tellshimselfthat"it wouldbe silentsomewhereif he had not
married."Faced withthedevastating
and contradictory
nature
of love,and withitsmanifestations
in discourse,
Ralph,likethe
speakerof "This WordLove,"does littlemorethan"Listen"and thensuffers
forit.
Thus silencebecomesin a sensetheantidotefor"bad talk";
it haltsand negatesthecircumlocutions-those
nightmare
journeys-of potentially
destructive
conversation.
PlayingoffHemingway'sline,"Will youpleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease
pleasebe quiet?"(borrowed
froma storymakinga similarstate-

310
American
Literature
mentabout the efficacy

of talk),Carver'stitle-and Ralph's
repetitions
ofit-reinforcesthenotionthat"quiet,"likesex,is a
ofone's
one due to themachinations
restorative
forillsafflicting
body and tongue.The bathroom-a havenforsilence-prothoughnecessary
isolation,along
vides Ralph withtemporary
withthebaptismaleffects
of water(and he succeeds,to an extent,whereothershave failed:like Leo, who actingon the
"splasheswateron his face"but cansameimpulse,continually
and like JakeBarnes,who,
not purgehimselfof his torments;
bangedup also in thenameof love,can'tgetthebathwaterto
flow).Ralphrunsa bathand actuallygets"intothewater,"itself
soon
a positiveact and preludeto thegreateract of restoration
to be availableto him in the formof sex. Hence Ralph finds
after
to his wife,finally,
it is "easierto let go a little,"turning
placatedhim."He turned
she has climbedintobed and silently
and turnedin whatmighthavebeen a stupendoussleep,"the
marveling
story'slast sentencereads,"and he was stillturning,
at the impossiblechangeshe feltmovingoverhim."With the
of thegerund,Carversuggestson thelevelof syntax
repetition
emphasizthe kindsof possibility
residingin the"impossible,"
too.He also
is partofthejourney,
ingthattheroadto recovery
thattheremedyforsuchdis-easelies in its
ironically,
suggests,
cause; forRalphand Marion,sex will now-at leastin partto destroy.
restorewhatsex has earlierundertaken
"Love comforteth,"
Shakespearewrites,"like sunshineafter
rain -though it is oftenthecase,we shouldhastento add,that
love,or a versionof love,is whatbringsthe rainin the first
place."How shoulda man act,"Ralphasks himselfin his dis-and then,givingin to
traction,
"giventhesecircumstances?
himself
love,answershis own questionby quietlysurrendering
to thatwhichhas beeneatinghimforso long.Ralph'scompenbut
sation-embodiednotonlyin theformof sexualintimacy
an
of acceptance,
also in the possibility
understanding-strikes
affirmative
notethat,as we haveseen,is rarein thisvolumeand
thatwill not emergeagainuntilCathedral;28it is a lightnote
amida tideofdarkeronesand anticipates
Carver'slater-often
28 "[Alctually,"Tess Gallagherhas informed
me-by way of qualification-"it began
in WhatWe Talk About,but because of severeeditingby Gordon Lish, it did not become
visible untilCathedral."

311
more affirmative work, includinghis revisionof "This Word

Love," the last stanza of which he alteredradicallyforinclusion
in the finalvolume of poems:
But thiswordlove
thiswordgrowsdark,grows
heavyand shakesitself,
begins
to eat,to shudderand convulse
itswaythroughthispaper
untilwe too havedimmedin
itstransparent
throatand still
are riven,are glistening,
hipand thigh,your
hair
which
loosened
knows
no hesitation.29
Not content-as he was in the earlierversion-to merely"Listen" to love's corrosion,the poem's speakernow celebrateslove
even as he condemns it. The lovers,swallowed and devoured
in the maw of love, "are riven even as they "are glistening,"
simultaneouslytorn apart and intimatelyunited in the act of
sex. In this sense are Ralph and Toni also "dimmed" in the
"transparentthroat" of love. Turning to his wife in the end,
Ralph-like the speakerof the poem-relinquishes himselfto
somethingfarlargerthan himselfor his wife,farmore encompassing than theirpettyacts and words,and fargreaterthan his
fears.In doing so, Ralph is precursorto a new strainof character in Carver's canon, anticipatingcharacterswho, turningup
here and therein the last two volumes,persistin theirstruggles
almostto the pointof acceptingthem,characterswho, in rareinstances(as in the case of "Elephant,"one of Carver'slast stories),
come close to celebratingthesestruggles,findingcomfortin the
small, good thingsof theirlives and consolationin the face of
an incomprehensible,
unfair,brutalworld.
"[T]he world is the world,"says Stephen Spender,excerpted
by Carver in an epigraphto a poem, "And it writesno histories
thatend in love."30Indeed, as Carver'sfictivehistoriesattest,the
world and its relationshipsare marked more by love's absence
than by love itself.Struck down by love's diseases, batteredby
impulsesas contradictory
and powerfulas thedisorientingworld
29
30
In A New Path to the Waterfall(New York: AtlanticMonthlyPress, I989), p.

p. 5'.
Epigraph to "The Authorof Her Misfortune,"
in Ultramarine,

14.
AmericanLiterature
312
theymirror,
Carver'scharacters
aredissociated
fromthemselves,
alienatedfromeverybody
and everything
theyknow.But despitetheirindividualdissociations
andalienations,
thecharacters
rarelygive up. "It's theirlivesthey'vebecomeuncomfortable
with,"Carversaysin an interview,
"livestheyseebreaking
down.
They'dliketo setthingsright,buttheycan't.And usuallythey
do knowit . . . and afterthattheyjustdo thebesttheycan";31
"it's reallya questionof enduringand abiding,"Carversays
in anotherinterview,
speakingforhis characters
as well as for
himself.32
of Carver'searly
Ralph Wyman,the mostarticulate
narrators-andmouthpiecefora numberof othercharacters
whosequestionstaketheformof onlyhalf-hearted
gesturesenduresbyshutting
up and actinginstinctually,
realizingthathe
"did not knowwhatto do . . . notjust in this,not just about
buteverydayon earth."Archetypally
this,todayand tomorrow,
a survivor,
Ralph does the besthe can in what is forhim an
situation:
he makesloveto hiswife,he
unbearable,
"impossible"
abides,and he endures.
Calling himselfan "instinctualwriter,"Carver explains:
"There are certainobsessionsthatI haveand tryto givevoice
to: the relationships
betweenmen and women,whywe oftentimeslose thethingswe putthemostvalueon,themismanagein survival,
mentofour own innerresources.
I'm also interested
what people can do to raisethemselves
up when they'vebeen
survival:theseare the hard
laid low."33 Loss, mismanagement,
forus,
cold factsof Carver'sworld.It shouldnotbe surprising
therefore,
to findso manyof his figuresat a loss forwordsmanagingbadlywiththe delimitedvocabularies
theystruggle
ifnotreducedto speechlessness
to master,
outright.
Still,silence
of inner
is forsuchcharacters
morethanan outwardexpression
on thelevel
mayhem,morethana personalresponse,
emerging
on the
oflanguage,to thechaoswithwhichtheyareconfronted
levelof phenomena.Like sex,silencecan be medicinal,providflowoflanguagethatoftenconinga respitein theready-made
morethanit sortsthem
fusesalreadyconfusing
circumstances
31 Interviewwith Mona Simpson,p. 207.
32 Interviewwith William Stull,"Mattersof Life and Death," in Livingin Words,

ed.
GregoryMcNamee (Portland:Breitenbush,I988), p. 153.
33 Interviewwith Kasia Boddy,"A Conversation,"
LondonReviewof Books, 15 Sept.
I988, p. i6.

313
out. "Talk and love run at odds,"34William Stull writes of

Carver's second book of stories,a work that is by comparison
far more laconic in both characterizationand style,and whose
title storyends with a pair of marriedcouples sittingspeechon the subject
less in the dark, weariedby theircircumlocutions
of love. "Love, and be silent,"Shakespeare'sCordelia observes
(under her breath),insisting,on a similarnote,how much more
ponderouslove is than her tongue.
In a poem appearingnearlya decade afterthe appearance of
Will You Please, Carver's speaker admits,"There was a time /
I would've died for love," but adds, evokingan apocalyptically
"No more.That centerwouldn't
Yeatsian kind of disorientation,
hold." In the last stanza of the poem, shaken by memoriesof
old love, and by thoughtsof death, the speaker says, "I find
myself,at last, in perfectsilence."35Lacking thisdegree of selfpossession,Carver's earlycharactersalso "find"themselves-or
at least make effortsin that direction.Arnold Breit, checking
his identityforvital signs,considershis wife'svoice but cannot,
or will not, respond; Leo and Ralph, likewise silent considerers, are men whose torments,bad as theyare, bringthem back
to the very source of their troubles-to bed-with markedly
varyingdegreesof relief.Such impulsestowardsilence,to make
thingsrathermore complicated,are (thoughmore extreme)on
a par with the waitress' impulse toward talk, with her urge
to share her storyabout the fat man; all are seeking on some
level to "find"themselves(in the sense of encounteringand discoveringboth) in the "perfectsilence"of understanding-in that
ideal and onlyvaguelyimaginablerealmof maritalcomplacency
hold neither
where worryand jealousy and self-diminishment
however-and formost
sway nor say.For all of thesecharacters,
of us, whetheralive in the fleshor on the printedpage-such
is impossible.But we have to admire
silence,such self-assurance,
them for trying,and we also have to admire Carver for giving
them the incentiveto persist,oftenagainstgreat odds, in their
trials.
34 "RaymondCarver,"in DictionaryofLiterary
BiographyYearbook:I984, ed. JeanW.
Ross (Detroit: I985), p. 241.
35 "The SensitiveGirl," in Ultramarine,
pp. 38-39.


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"This Word Love": Sexual Politics and Silence in Early Raymond Carver

Author(s): Kirk Nesset

This content downloaded on Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:34:58 PM

"ThisWordLove": SexualPoliticsand Silence

ject."51In Will You Please Be Quiet,Please? Carver rangesfrom

only forinsightsgleaned in this and numerousothersof his fineessaysbut also forhis

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Sexual Politicsin RaymondCarver

earlydate, moreover,love and itsmaladies are forCarveralready

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lated,and entrappedby love,though,unlikethespeakerof the

the individual failuresof the

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Sexual Politicsin RaymondCarver

The survivorswho people these stories,as Carver says in an

"IN]ow and then,"we learn of the Millers earlyin the story,

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on-the "Hawaiian"shirtsand "Bermudas"and brasthetrying

Stull,DLB Yearbook:1988,p. 207.

11 "Carver'sFuriousSeasons,"Canto,2 (Summer I978), I78.

12"Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?: Voyeurism,Dissociation, and the Art of

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Sexual Politicsin RaymondCarver

"They held each other.They leaned into the door as if against

assure her, respondsin kind: "For God's sake," he says,"don't

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to get a handleon her

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Sexual Politicsin RaymondCarver

of complicity,a victimizationcommon to fatman and waitress

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Night the Salmon Move), the complaintof anotherlover falling

This content downloaded on Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:34:58 PM

Sexual Politicsin RaymondCarver

thatis, "I am going to change my life,"but "My lifeis going to

Wood, pp. I, 34.

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the greatesterosionof Arnold'sself-possession

add[s], 'Clara Holt. That's nice. But I reallythinkI should hang

. You don't sound like yourself."

The lure of sexual possibilitythus activatesin Arnold what

This content downloaded on Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:34:58 PM

Sexual Politicsin RaymondCarver

sociation. Furthermore,for Arnold's dissociatedcousins in the

This content downloaded on Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:34:58 PM

"Normal Nightmares,"VillageVoice,i8 Sept. 1978, p.

This content downloaded on Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:34:58 PM

Sexual Politicsin RaymondCarver

This content downloaded on Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:34:58 PM

Phillips observe of this story,"a particularlyineluctablesort of

Boxer and Phillips,p. 85.

This content downloaded on Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:34:58 PM

Sexual Politicsin RaymondCarver

This content downloaded on Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:34:58 PM

"What'sin Alaska?"-Ralph is oddlynaivein hisdealingswith

Ralph anotherself-an olderand moredestructiveself,goingby

Boxer and Phillips,pp. 88-89.

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Sexual Politicsin RaymondCarver

This content downloaded on Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:34:58 PM

mentabout the efficacy

This content downloaded on Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:34:58 PM

Sexual Politicsin RaymondCarver

more affirmative work, includinghis revisionof "This Word