Remarkable People: Making a Difference in the Northwest; Ted Solotaroff Interview on Raymond Carver, tape 38

that's your own introduction here in her her first impression of raymond carver's work and the changes won't do my first impression was of of a kind of writing that i respected agreed to forest for its integrity its honesty skincare but didn't really relate to all that well didn't feel didn't cotton to limits on ai i wanted i guess you know more complex fiction that i felt that the corridor stories where there was already a was one or two stories over the over though is they were very deeply felt in laser like in there are going to the heart of a person's to spare but that that they created a sense of the world so determined that that i felt it was a reduction of the ball

and that i i guess one of the reasons i still prefer puppy and stories for a while was was that there was more of a variety of movement of life of tone of follow on social coverage nixon own band it was only really after you joined us getting ready to give one of the eulogies that i read him through again trick with the later stories and then that original notion that this was a reporter's point of view according to this very of variability are

on extended rivera variably understood despair and along changed and i saw that there's a the feeling was in tripoli is in the later stories it wasn't so much to spare as a much more interesting and so to and philosophical feeling oh which was record of wistfulness own budget if there was a sense of of harrow oh well as i say the video our one's own but that the olympics is clear that the whistle was grew out of this feeling of ohio little chance there was ah to preserve the original dream the original ideals the original values that

that would have taken out into the world sort of like the battery is going to flow into poems truth and beauty in and to sacrifice and so and courage and dung remember what we were still recall nudo in which the writer who's on the verge of breaking up a second marriage says you know that going back was first mers and we start out in a full of those like you'll spend and to know that and the row corn and come down to nothing oh i don't have a destiny just errors and compulsions like everybody else and that phrase and began to resonate for me an audience to apply it to my own life which was not unlike grace well very deeply marc lynch

raising children all one or didn't have the money or the other the emotional resources to take on children and have enough problems parenting myself until well and dove of realizing that but opponents there is the corridors my original kind of shying away from what i call the terminus of corridor which is to conduct offensive linemen we confront the similarities in our experience we want to confront my own sword rock bottom of a sense of love of loss and of the roshan well and joe and then that

night i had a dream and you have this wonderful records home to the surprise of my first really good car and there are in the tree and it began to fail the red light came on which suggests woman yes to return it seems possible in connecticut they're too mechanical very bittersweet tale or were awoken correct fix it just to get to a park district so this gas station was legitimate and of course and hillary clinton forty nine to forty four which was and no one can just having course complex instruments and i could see it for it was my corporate wasn't and i kept running down this role of course you will come into this as a trooper ray

and the first i thought it was just about this relationship this friendship that we have been an awards is the same core because we were different in french and then later i realized that it was a different meaning that at that time and my own first novel which had been about precisely those years the room so much about american's fortunes and i pressed hard well one lesson less despairing so we have to work incidents where the and comfort of silence will not destined to be a novelist who was a stream to be saying to me was that really if someone would have told me to get that failing score for the root so therefore ergo what was the record given me and it

was this notion of you know your secrets that baby the rwandans own and that's what it failed to do and failed to have the courage of different groups who were actually a recent stroke on and for me really will always stand as this as the embodiment of all of the price you have to willingly pay to write week with power if in this rule is based on your own experience i don't go through dream again not ok well the conclusion was that ray was was that mechanic who could have gotten this defective machine one oval back on the road well

because he could've shown me you know what had gone wrong which is that i have failed to really to tell the route fail to tell the real secrets of that period had toward them out and change them change the circumstances to make it you know a more bouncy less lows to where was a depressing kind of story but that's the story i had to tell was a very bouncy and it was the story of a life and don't do nothing and die these responsibilities and going and and i actually goes sake of rape in that in that way as a writer who wasn't any other has totally made me realize the price that you have to pay a lot

so you write that you didn't know about yourself you have to be willing to live with that that's in power the report have and every sense re wrote the advent of that feeling i think of fall of the men going is now deeply as we can tell our eyes and sparingly as he can go home and was interesting too that so much of race were which as you say came from a kind of almost immediate transcription of six the circumstances of his life that's true but totally media transcriptions are the first drafts and and what ray used to do with this' you to write

to reformists writing was re writing and anna was in stripping away not just the you know the kind of literary thriller that we do we all the descriptions of the furniture in the room or boys face what a bakery look like in detail about all that sort of float literary bric a brac they strip away to write short stories but also stripping were think any any of the differences really the perhaps is then the eu of course is to allow the riders used to kind of a phone creative to actually

got from their material that agrees detention came from not from taking low ah the defenses that were covering up the truth the modern two together and that provision to him was cut into the bun and that's where the stories are you on and this evening oh aren't you notice is editor n and so if you heard a good deal about their relationship on film could we stop and work

here and the reason for that is that a few of the persons who are somewhat exaggerated and the amount that she's contributed to raise work and along the i mean i could go quite easily about the kind of support they gave each other about the kind of life that book that alone that both of them both who came from very similar backgrounds a test as this his father as we know from her autobiographical writing with was a young you're working with a lumberman and on and a hard drinker and i think that they do it and since two peas in a parked beside the second in the

real world i think that that is a discovery of each other most of scene you know with a great gift leaders have court lawyers and now they've found as a war on their literary kindred spirit as well as a person of the opposite sex the love and on and i think that but both of them coming from me you know quick deprived world backgrounds of having to kind of pull into cells hand over hand into the literary community are that they they shared that are that sort of common experience and our

and supported each other not only in and doing the ratings so far as we know there was a lot of cross fertilization to this is to say that they really hope to other stories and he she helped him with his poetry on until but also seeing them together you you had the sense of of this of the other who genuinely shared life a genuinely shared life and i remember our with the race said ah one point where his literary history in arabic literary history and the elephant with a pig both you know what might seem you know a little that i believe working for hats on you know oh coach didn't do was

ryan tests and that's how they understood themselves they were written literary history that work there's no exaggerations was no call on the list with a sense of having arrived off to verizon a wonderful line of us lonely in italian riders speaks with a man who's come from for it is going for and that's similar how i think of ray men who who came from four men and went for a home and there was nothing about his personality to it anyway distract me from my feeling you know arrogance well and then there was the annals of those low false humility oh you knew him as important and was grateful well i think it's going to be impossible to

write a literary history of the last twenty eight years without giving gray very prominent place i would say that he's oh certainly along with jonathan groff from home in one of the indisputably major fiction writers of his generation along on the ray rice permanent you know the city you yes that they so mean i see he

wrote this tune in the movie and just you know is that you know one of the things that only i also very much learned from russell banks his essay which as a salute is going to appear in the atlantic monthly i think in july maybe god is that he he distinguishes the stages of ray's career from ripley early kind of naked alone stripped down our feelings or two to the power to the most to more sort of modulated and on all along and call more complex stories of avoid a phase on comedy of course and a

great story the death of chuckle which he wrote on this until separated i just remembered o o of issues about six months before it could use in virginia in the letter o and to save each still recalls that wonderful day we spent together in london are out and police in before been very lucky to have a band but for seven and he's just too about the fact that both of us would have blocked them has been our choice of one phone on its own but he also was talking about that he on the recent tone and that that he are as he says in iran and remarkable poem of his last ten years

of those new yorker the questions that he had that he was given to us is given those last ten years on and that our police in in the situations in which a slow rate during those last but the views in the news last month says he was in an insurance as troubled as he was there there was there wasn't any of the kind of a fun you know morbidity or or self loathing even going to the moon you know that you are the soul from the patient it wasn't the

patients hadn't intruded sofas a patient ah he truly selfless as someone who was living out what was left was left and that tone that he tried as much i think the sentiment could too with work he's been given clinton's last ten years rather than what was being taken away now so there was a pretty quiet sweet courage about his physical presence alone the major would be within haven't had friends in similar circumstances whom i want to see more out of a sense of duty or that with ray was much more out of a sense of aborting of of that there are important life lessons

here that he was teaching but his way of god and that on sunday was an experience that allow us to go through at some point and he was kind of a role model for him and that focus before but it'll be destroyed and i can remember sitting there just kind of taking it in taking it in now is a real grace of the new grace both in the and he was kind of a big champagne bear of a man but but he he kind of turned himself with grace and power and also i think he hasn't been the grease into senseless world support

the story of fruitless as one of the turf as he explained that the television business in the eighties well it's it's an interesting story and an ode to a protest to say you know what when i was editing test the stories of the week i made a point of saying to you know i i really don't want this this collection which i think is really first came to the law and anyway attached to the raymond carver or i figured it's should stand tall alien soon

in that are americans sure that they are the factory and living with race then within three years is is sung as appropriate for the purpose of this book in and tests so is your life and if you and then she said but amongst or she sent me was a story about a blind man who comes to visit up to the couple and in which the mansour a kind of charity mission well and touche and so enjoy it says sewer into tests we really can use the story it is one of the strongest but apart from that it's all it's so close too

cathedral overtones to create the separation between your fiction race would just kind of compression garments and she said what you know that that was the friend was moment he was my friend and i have my version of that experience itself to and i said well i think you know for an hour we'll talk about it again an issue eventually did was put the spring among our but it's true i think that's the story in connection with what i was saying before about the congress and really our love of the way in which the heat the merit of the story is true it is a healthy sign overtones both

this version floyd patterson drawings and also the idea that he is you know his wife's friends and the full evening at least the members of comfort wheel when and how her resume into the chemistry of the students experience of an unheralded it it takes on the moon this religious song along to mention that he that he manages to captures so quickly and so brilliantly going strong the fetal heart cutting his hair and just whatever his heart in this story the slowest and so as well as as ray's experience when we speak

of experiences since well these were the circumstances that the story grew out of all yours have to see those circumstances as as mediator informed by his eyes are filled with the law the spirit of record for or otherwise they just you know the small change of life in the sticks in this way he's often compared to check off that wistfulness that they both shared the sense of the ironic turns life takes usually negative directions that's the same tone as a collision the and sparingly honest about his characters at the same time that these people are important

it is illustrative is as those of a rich and famous they articulate and a successful one i mean actually we've been covering for the group let's listen he says there are you know so much of the circumstances of ray's life and particularly in the last two years and the gallantry with which he conducted himself well and then a kind of knowing newton's an affection for

can construe the fact that that he was not the sweethearts that he was alive he was not on the page on the contrary one the page was often a son of a bitch and orr who was who was doing justice to the on the circumstances of his life on long the narrators who were really capable of of grit to this cruelty of fun there's terrible kind of male obliviousness that i think he he understood so well and awe is that you can lose track of that hard core core of

ray's book it's so this ability for new rock bottom honesty is his son as you know is very phrase is painful alice stripped bare arm on the slade and listen listen you just raise we're in such a way that you sleep in mcallen the destructive elements in the destructive elements in which was the dawn