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Carver, Continued

Raymond Carver's "Where I'm Calling From," continued:

In his chair on the front porch, J.P. keeps his hands in his lap. I smoke cigarettes and use an old coal bucket for an ashtray. I listen to J.P. ramble on. It's eleven o'clock in the morning—an hour and a half until lunch. Neither one of us is hungry. But just the same we look forward to going inside and sitting down at the table. Maybe we'll get hungry.
    What's J.P. talking about, anyway? He's saying how when he was twelve years old he fell into a well in the vicinity of the farm he grew up on. It was a dry well, lucky for him. "Or unlucky," he says, looking around him and shaking his head. He says how late that afternoon, after he'd been located, his dad hauled him out with a rope. J.P. had wet his pants down there. He'd suffered all kinds of terror in that well, hollering for help, waiting, and then hollering some more. He hollered himself hoarse before it was over. But he told me that being at the bottom of that well had made a lasting impression. He'd sat there and looked up at the well mouth. Way up at the top he could see a circle of blue sky. Every once in a while a white cloud passed over. A flock of birds flew across, and it seemed to J.P. their wingbeats set up this odd commotion. He heard other things. He heard tiny rustlings above him in the well, which made him wonder if things might fall down into his hair. He was thinking of insects. He heard wind blow over the well mouth, and that sound made an impression on him, too. In short, everything about his life was different for him at the bottom of that well. But nothing fell on him and nothing closed off that little circle of blue. Then his dad came along with the rope, and it wasn't long before J.P. was back in the world he'd always lived in.


....And some thoughts....

-Carver's style can easily be parodied, like Hemmingway's style. Those short sentences. The chatty rhythms. It also seems to me that this narrator could easily be the narrator in "Cathedral," who regards his visitor with an edge of judgment: "I listen to J.P. ramble on." (Anne Tyler, a woman, is mocked for reusing certain bits of material. I don't think Carver was ever taken to task in the same way.)

-There are two stories unfolding: One is in the present, with the narrator struggling to pay attention to his friend. ("What's J.P. talking about, anyway?") The other is in the past, with the child J.P. going on a strange journey.

-A good story "defamiliarizes." It makes the world seem new again. How can you persuade yourself to look at the world with new eyes? Imagine you're a child, stuck in a well. Suddenly, quotidian things take on a weird kind of power: the well mouth, the "circle" of blue sky, the wingbeats of birds, tiny rustlings (which you might not notice, in "normal" circumstances).

-The "well" story seems to be a metaphor for everyday anxiety: The chattering voice in our head can persuade us to be a wreck, but in fact, often enough, "nothing" falls on us and "nothing closes off that little circle of blue." (And notice that we never actually confirm that the things rustling above J.P. are definitely insects. The mind supplies a narrative, a frightening narrative: The mind is so eager to be at war with itself.)

-Once again, I'm struck by the unusual material Carver uses for a story. You might not think very often about what it's like to be at the bottom of a well. But here it is--captured in an artful (though seemingly plainspoken) way. "It wasn't long before J.P. was back in the world he'd always lived in." You've taken a little journey with J.P.: You're lifted out of your mundane life, via words. From very modest origins--a flock of birds, a blue sky, some wind--you have an unusual and inventive story.

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