Raymond Carver and the Nature of America’s Romance with Material Things.

As far as American authors go, Raymond Carver is hardly ever referenced beyond his influence over young writers, which could, very much, be seen as something terribly derogatory. However, the conversation of Carver’s work extends much farther than the exclusion of his universal significance and appeal.

Unfortunately for Carver, our culture does not take the art of poetry and short story writing very seriously, and he just so happened to only write in those two veins. As dead and remembered, he is revered by other authors for his dedication to these minimal arts, but it is these arts that reduced his readership and his authenticity as a serious writer because mostly, only other short story writers and poets read short story writers and poets.

Carver wrote a handful of books in his life, and one after his death. All of these books followed the minimalist structure—the idea of creating dramatically impacted brevity—the idea of Hemingway’s “Iceberg Theory” where only absolute and concrete details are visible on the surface; all the emotion, morals, thoughts and sentiment are hidden below the sea and must be inferred.

A lot of readers think that is lazy, allowing the reader to dictate the sentiments and feelings. It worked for Hemingway because Hemingway was an adventurer; his stories were about wild places and wild things and wild people that could handle their surroundings—

but this is not what Carver aimed to be. His stories revolve around the dissolution of the American dream. His constant question seems to be: what happens when you attain everything you’re taught to want? His themes did not circle around the actuality of segregation and the dissolution of the American Nuclear Family; his stories were dead set on the absolute impact of these negative American structures.

The problem, for Carver, was audience. He wrote and published between the 1960s-1980s, a time span when Americans did not want to readily accept the faults and shortcomings of the world they created.

We are a culture that thrives on the idea that if you throw enough money at a problem, the problem will go away, but when the problem still exists, we are faced with our inadequacies, and that is something we just have a difficult time believing.

The misfit we can accept: the misfit is a wanderer, the man in the black hat—he is the idea. But the actuality that the American Everyman is simply a wanton and fractured thing, full of fantasies and dreary beliefs, could never be true.

And keep in mind, Carver is a minimalist, which means that the sentiments around these actions are completely up to the reader—a reader that could not accept this reality.

And the reality is, we want the ones we can’t have. Two of his more popular, but impossible to find stories, “Neighbors” and “Are These Actual Miles?” maintain the theme of a world that is not so easily attained, and when the accruement of modern things have reached their peak, the characters are left facing their fractured relationships, relationships that center around marrying the wrong person, about searching for the fantasy, about cheating and leaving in order to find the next good thing.

Maybe if we could have been open to these realities—even in fiction—the constant up and down crises that have occurred from the 1980s until now could have been more steadily marked, more easily avoided. Maybe more of us could have married the right people, and not define our lives by the romance of the things we have collected but are still paying for, everyday, which is truly the ball and chain.

A Review of Z: a Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald &How Female Writers &Historians are Making Feminist Heros Out of Remembered Villains.

When I first began studying literature, the two most profound concepts that I became obsessed with are as follows:

one. Czeslaw Milosz's idea that the purpose of a writer is to create a space for the dead.

two. Jorge Luis Borge's insistence that everything is fiction.

 Each point is not only sound, but productive for both the writer and the readers; however, these opposing ideas insist, together, that one must always, always question the reliability of the narrator, which is why, when it comes to historical tomes about women— women that were misrepresented and mislaid out in history— I always question the goal of the narrator.

Furthermore, in recent years, it seems that numerous other women feel this way too, which is why it seems that so many female writers and historians fall back into those tomes and letters and histories to unveil the truth; and these volumes do not go unnoticed. For example, Antonia Fraser's 2001 biography, Marie Antoinette: the Journey, not only permanently disassociated Antoinette from the moniker of a self righteous queen with a "Let the eat cake!" mentality, but Fraser also disassociated Antoinette from the cause of the French Revolution completely, turning Antoinette into a scapegoat. Fraser's biography was not only a national best seller and on numerous Book-of-the-Year lists, but she caused an entire resurgence of art, fashion, literature and film that all focused on Marie Antoinette, the front runner being Sofia Coppola's 2006 film, Marie Antoinette, which Coppola wrote the screenplay for that was created from Fraser's biography.

Likewise, Therese Ann Fowler's 2013 biographical fiction, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, carries the same weight that a new manifesto of an old figure needs; however, Fowler needed to cut through a tremendous bit of rumor and memory before she could even get to the heart of the Zelda Fitzgerald's story.

In American literature, Zelda Fitzgerald is remembered much in the way of Marie Antionette, as Zelda Fitzgerald is seen as the guiding force of her famous husband's, F. Scott Fitzgerald's, inability to write, absolutely ability to drink, and ultimately, his untimely death. She is associated to a world of torment for her husband; however, most of these accounts come from F. Scott Fitzgerald, somewhat, through numerous novels, which he credits lifting completely from Zelda herself and her journals, and Ernest Hemingway, who was not only a famous drunkard himself, but most of his knowledge was based off of his nights out with F. Scott, where the complaining came between the party. Not to mention, F. Scott was at his peak of popularity when he brought Hemingway into the literary circle by endorsing Hemingway's novel and sending the copy to his publisher, which soon became Hemingway's publisher, and sent Hemingway into literary stardom.

If there is anything that has occurred throughout history, it's the literary boys' club, and Fitzgerald and Hemingway were established members. Besides their drinking, the only thing these two men couldn't control was Zelda herself, which Fowler proves. The Roaring 20s and Flapper Movement were not only built around prohibition, but the women involved in the movement themselves: the rebellious, partying, intelligent, take-no-prisoners flappers, which Zelda had invented. Furthermore, she maintained her status as the figurehead, and it is virtually impossible to topple a figurehead; one can only chip away at it. And throughout history, Zelda is known for these parts that have broken away and defined her, which was mostly found in Hemingway's 1964 autobiography, A Moveable Feast, which Fowler all but toppled herself.

If Zelda Fitzgerald's status as a feminist figure has ever been questioned, Fowler moves Zelda Fitzgerald's relevance into sharp focus because she moves past Zelda's emblem as a party girl, and focuses more than half the tome on who Zelda became after giving birth to her daughter, Scotty. In a culture that defines motherhood as the end-all-be-all of coolness and sexuality, Fowler proves that Zelda became even moreso in her own right. 

While F. Scott sunk deeper and deeper into alcoholism and depression, Zelda became a writer, a ballerina and a painter. However, there are things the movement could not do, and most of Zelda's stories were published under F. Scott's name, not only because F. Scott was paid a higher sum, but also because he saw it as embarrassing that Zelda was publishing when he could not write a thing.

More so, as a ballerina in Paris, Zelda was not only dedicated to ballet, but she shined, and she was offered a position with a ballet company in Italy, which F. Scott refused to let her take, and instead, Zelda was sent to a sanatorium for months on end, and mostly, she was there because F. Scott saw her as uncontrollable, and Zelda saw her life as unlived. It was in the sanatorium that Zelda took up painting.

Fowler's Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald builds a new manifesto to the memory of Zelda Fitzgerald. Not only is the story itself intriguing, but the language and descriptions create a sense of being steeped in reality, and that sense of reality is why the book is classified as a historical fiction, despite the years of research. And though Fowler discredits F. Scott Fitzgerald's and Hemingway's accounts, she still gives parts of them relevance, and she brings all the negative to light, which not only creates a place for the dead, but questions the relevance of truth in history and memory.

strippers and strangers and stories

i've been thinking a lot about strippers and strangers lately. strippers and strangers in the way that good stories, good stories that the people you know tell you, the stories that you can hardly believe are true, but they have the pictures and the bruises to prove it, are made. i am sick of stories where nothing happens. i am sick of reading hemingway, sick of reading salinger, and i have never ever liked faulkner. give me flannery o'connor any day. give me a story where something actually happens; not stories where characters just look at each other and think about what has happened or what they want to happen and are too weak to compel to happen.

last night i had a dream that i was at a pool party at this party that was right across the street from the house i lived in. the house where the pool party was at was okay; the pool was big and dirty and screened. i could see my own pool across the street; it had these beautiful birds of paradise and succulent plants all around it and the bottom of the pool was black tile; it looked like a lagoon. no one was there.

the pool where everyone was, everyone being everyone, like everyone i've ever met, even the ones that are all but ghosts now, even the real life ghosts and the ones in the grave, the people that are all colored photographs and sloppy grins, the ones that talked to much and gossiped to much, that drank too much and we liked to fight too much, the ones that listened to nofx and would skateboard off the roof. the ones that chained smoked and whined when the right girl showed up, and the girls. the girls were even better. the girls all bright; long black hair and lipstick, heavy eyeliner and menthol cigarettes. all those people were there. and it was rowdy and messy and fun and it ended when one girl brought these portuguese soccer players to the party; they all wore yellow speedos and then got naked, swimming in that big dirty pool like it was theres. taken on those long haired lip sticked chain smoking girls like they were theres. 

the party ended when those portugese soccer playing strangers showed up. no one could compete with those strippers, those bodies those accents.

a few weeks ago, i had a dream about a party i was going to. we were walking through town and country, walking to the other side of hanley road, by jackson springs, and tim said we had to stop at this house. the house was stucco and beat and everything was chalky and white washed and covered in weeds. tim went inside, and i was hot, so i went swimming. after diving in, this giant stranger shows up. he reminded me of this straggly guy i used to know that kept a machete under his mattress; he was a real paranoid. all his friends threw their shoes on his electric lines above his house, and it always creeped me out being there. his mom put wall to wall mirrors in the living room, wood paneling, and chain smoked in the house. she wore tank tops that stretched out in funny ways and she never wore a bra and she never said a word. the guy in my dream was that kind of stranger. when he saw me coming up for air, he pushed my head back under water; he tried to hold me there, but he couldn't. i ripped his head off his neck and spit in his face. i was that kind of stranger.

when i was a stranger in omaha a while back; when i dyed my hair red to look like a stranger, one of my friends called to tell me that one of my old friends was on the girl's gone wild bus, doing wild things on tape.

a few years back, when i was dead set to move to new york, i devoured biographies written by strippers in seattle that did peep shows in glass bowls to pay for college, and once they received their degree in sociology, they still stripped. at the time, i made coffee on the strip. i worked across from a strip club called the Liquor Box that was first women nude and then became a gay strip club for nude dudes, but the club never put any rainbows up outside, so patrons got a little upset. it was down the street from the Mons Venus and the 2001 Space Odyssey, and even though i've lived in florida my whole life, i always wonder what it's like inside that space ship. i once saw my neighbor standing outside of that club. it was right after he dropped his wife off at the airport. he didn't answer the phone. he was that kind of stranger.

i went to the Mons once. the strippers ignored me and they only served water, and my friend got a lot of lap dances that didn't look too fun for anyone. it was nothing like Madonna's "Open Your Heart" or those amazing scenes in Flash Dance. it wasn't even sad or tragic or violent in the way that stripper stories tend to go. it was just there.

i mean, the girls were okay looking; they were blank slates. the moves were okay; the music was bad. it just happened. there was nothing about anything to it. they might as well have been in a hemingway or salinger or faulkner story. it may as well have been like that. david lynch or even vincent gallo could have made something of it, but no kind of stranger like that was there.

all tomorrow's parties.

-->

it’s only 830p and i am alone on the island. down the street there is a party going on. on the steps of the Hemingway-esque house, there are women in beaded black dresses. there are women with flat hair from the rain and men are taking their arms and walking them through the glass doors to the temporary bar in the corner, with some red headed boy in a starched white shirt. i know all of this because i am sitting on a bench by the bay, across the street from the house with the party.

and i cannot decided which direction is more useful to look. out: the sky is black and low and there is no shape to this. the world has no angle. the waves are grey-faced and grimy the lights are of buildings along bayshore. in: the party. there is a valet stand for this party. there are no decorations. there is no punchbowl and no one is dancing. it’s a pretty dull party but there are boys in the yard chain smoking because there are no more guests arriving, no more cars to park and run away from.

i have a terribly dull headache. and i read myself far too much into anything, which is why i cannot read anything anymore or at least right now by anyone i know. lately i have been trying to interact more with the outside of things. but the more outside i am, the more separate i feel. my dad just came home from the hospital and he has 60 staples in his stomach. my dad is pretty sure that i am going to be somebody. he says things are going to come together and things like this. i drink coffee and prefer to talk about other things. i think about other things like how when i talk to my parents they take everything i say figuratively and when i talk to everyone else in the world, the world takes it literally, and how difficult it is for me to live in a place like that.

i really want to be off the map. this afternoon it rained and i was bike riding along bayshore and the dingy water of the bay was breaking over the ledge and i was getting soaked. wearing a godspeed you black emperor! ripped up tee and a brazilian bikini and it was all so funny to me. it was all such a great distraction. this bike riding. but now looking into other people’s parties, all those expensive and ugly dresses, those colored cummerbunds. i fantasize about the most absurd things. even while looking at this ugly scene on this ugly night, i cannot write a true word about how i feel. the bicycle the kitten the party the clothes its all a distraction. i feel like i am drowning. i feel like i am under the sea with a rock on my chest.

and i fantasize about the most absurd things. like clotheslines on golden days and riding my bike barefoot on the beach and some old man, walking his groceries to his house, stops and gives me the thumbs up (this actually happened yesterday) or wearing just a sweater and goloshes on a boat in Maine. leaning over the side of the boat to touch a whale. even tonight i have to stop myself from the either/or. even tonight i cannot make a decision about anything. i keep thinking that if i wait if i just keep moving faster than fast enough then the world will come crashing into me. i just want to sit in the rain, on this bench, soaked to the core with this pounding headache, and watch all these old people in their dresses and coats, telling myself im glad im not them. im glad im still young. and trying to mean it. if only i could write a word of it. if only one word could be untrue.