Remarkable People: Making a Difference in the Northwest; Charles McGrath Interview on Raymond Carver, tape 30

i was fortunate to get at every whatever we're doing is that something that gives a leak into the rest of what you say set out of sodium to say one sentence about your relationship with him president may be just that they say as their security it's long been used to be that the benefit was you could say back in i think it was probably the early eighties i was the head of the fiction department at the new yorker and i have been privileged enough of working with ray and i and then i guess probably the last seven or eight stories that he wrote you and really easy to ready to do your first plays an enemy withdrew raise attention to me in the first place and unlimited

power the same thing it was just a wonderful a regional writer is of the sort that we haven't seen the like of in a long long time allotted said about ray carver being made some of the person who rescued the american short story from gentrification to release ray carver that brought about the poor and the working class and the dispossessed ms nelda the truth in that but it overlooks the fact that effect has a long tradition of of american fiction about poor people or marginal people but it's fiction that often sentimental lies these people with the patent system race fiction did neither and the point the setting of race stories was not the news sitting with the setting and was utterly accurate in convincing the news was the people ray i think was able to write about people who were unable to articulate completely their own sufferings own problems and he was able to articulate it for them and for us because in many ways these people are ourselves to heat he did this with

great sensitivity tact imagination was a kind of modesty means an ambition that that add up to something just absolutely use an editor's dream to work with i can't think of another it was so much fun to work with it was very interesting because one raid began to publish year he was already well established as a writer i'm numb and yet we hit it off immediately don't quite know why in part i think because i was a fan and because i knew his work in part because for some reason ray just put an enormous amount of trust in the editing process and very quickly i think it was we were as if we had been doing this forever undone still seen as a threat to taiwan anyway stories is still in the choir hardly anything in the way that it was some tinkering we would do together when we was a dissonance and things little things a word

repetitions of punctuation ray was very interested in the sound of the stories i remember we would have these long phone calls i make a suggestion that he re reading the change allowed themselves to trial a couple ways to ensure it sounded right it was a malaysia music so does give me pause because i would be times ran a phone may suggest and also they have to say whoa long awaited when it was recorded dealing with i worried sometimes that he also to watch and at the time i was too weary of trying to influence of too much but he knew was alive millions of the city is just a dream to work at finding the incessant you know indeed not really i better time the story's got to us they were nearly perfect it really was just paul scheer jason kidd was read that i was like the guy at the car wash but when the car and so it just has a fine a little swap of the tile syria the one story that

was interesting in terms of what we did was the very last story and which is based of course on chekhov's life and in a funny thing they're because all the fiction and then you're probably once to earth james fact checking department in the process of that we understood number of things and places we really had and so almost unwittingly got something almost right in me something up you've got something almost writers actually true to take place in other places where i think almost unconsciously had echoed passengers are images from wembley was only true explosive check that i think must have been impulse story so we have this very complicated business of trying to carve out the exact territory between fact and fiction with that particular story and that was a went a little bit beyond that kind of tinkering with them are also we take it a lot with the ending the very last paragraph re added it is the sense where the servant

bandstand or he sees a champagne cork reality he would do this race and i think ridley said he did this and we want to project the story and things in britain they didn't stop and that was the kind of little touch that you had the middle a difference but it was not a major subject to the law that is the eu is dying the court our hopes in your observation how much collaboration or cross creativity occurred between tess and raymond carver as you serve or did you and i don't know for sure from the outside it was hard to say i think one felt that that each of them was showing his overworked to the other i know i had in one story of testers here and to me it showed some call risk insolence it would be amazing if it didn't

i think we we were all everyone knew them words was aware that they retained just how the dynamics of that actually were i don't know they are writers are still in somewhat rustlers were very different raymond carver's only three instrumentalists i do have a problem in our review it i i think rays poetry was good i think his stories were great i think and i would write the story's higher than that and the poetry is by the pain a hard question and i think they've been their way the more daring way they accomplish more and more ambitious than the more suggestive them or resident of the palms tend to be i think to my mind little carefully observed wonderfully suggestive slices moments but the story's a whole

worlds oh i don't even know i can turn into a week we get here at the magazines in some history at once we get some when they would have to three thousand a week and a lot is it's there the magazine that year at the euro we get somewhere between two and three thousand men ms gives a week i'm told i don't read all those think of this but we do read them all and re i think was tremendously influential as a writer we used to see it it's crabs die out somewhat down but one way was at its peak we would see every week the hundreds of stories written and frank imitation of rand corp

and it was a just to me because these stories prove just how good recall was because people used to say race creates is a this is the this is flat unaffected languages is just boring story anyone can do is anyone could not and if you saw the imitation she would know ray ray was a seed turned american fiction around a little bit i think they've been very experimental as a lot of searching about for just one short story is rape broad american fiction on some ways it was unfortunate it is i think that reagan could do what he did and in a lot of other people didn't quite get it right and then you get a lot of the a flat not terribly interesting stuff in it and a kind of cautious to say in that it was a lasting they are in coral intended i think now that year of a frank imitation is somewhat passed on who you mentioned that would raise legacy will will be enduring is one of the just

a jew very great american shores tourism he was also i think probably one of the rise we could least afford to lose when we did anything yes i think he was i think if you look back and unknown and just at the end there he had he had taken it all up another notch that's stored blackbird pilot talked about that before the strange image there has seen a foreigner was coming out of the same happened onto with a chekhov story is way of transforming the password history this whole new kind of feeling into cars and expansiveness i think it is running and at the end it would have just been wonderful and it will see whether go i also the he was in the voyager one and its only friend said that that he was so generous was time with students who knew he was a wire that was that took over was with him in a

lot of ways and that process set in the long term is the new sensor as you read this you censored more designers for society and i think it was it was both great love to tell a story as with any good writer that's his primary influence and an ambitious timeframe ray also i think felt a strong moral sense about getting it right and i think if you won a moral dimension raise work that's where it was honesty getting getting the facts right and even more important getting the emotional truth right race stories never ring phony was never a stage your exaggerated moment is there a line that you say maidan known would ever say that ray was

passionate about getting that kind of thing right he got it he had a heart of a phony exaggerate and that in the end there was in his in his single mindedness about that and the way he would revise and revise revised reviews things align himself here the weight son and that was certainly something close tomorrow some people say that they're not interested in they're those kind of characters the race that he's just on interest them because they can't communicate they seem to be so disorganized that are financing to guess i would say that those people or us a few non interest and take his characters and an interest in yourself have the point i made earlier i think the rays setting is not the message of his stories should lead with fear and changes or or alterations that the summer stores could be sent in other words the point is that these people sort of stumbling through the allies with good intentions with bad intentions

not always able to articulate their needs their wants that his eyes filled with regret sometimes with longing moments of joy and the says the laws of of anyone of us all of us so i don't say i just don't understand that perhaps we could to a bit of that rein in the hand you would see in any realm of history and and writers isn't going to be a lasting detainees can be a nasty person maybe just representing this era of american history or is it at a lasting person in the world of literature i think he's going to be a lasting person i think he as i said i think is one of the important american writers he fits into a tradition and we get along comes as well and the way this joke of that he's his own lawyer is one of those people and a handful of writers the standout a man who knows how people in the future to look

back and use people time is there one standard if they want to know what we really were like what we felt that it didn't need to recover yes it is previous their green invasive which he goes through her life is at least his saints and was to rely on in his life and yet he said an honest writer and it just seemed so strange to me again as the value and that yet that that's kind of a dichotomy here that says i wondered well i think he told all the slices that's the case i mean his fiction if you want is honest was it's made up name is based on reality that autistic was transformed in many ways but the point is it on the page it rings with utter conviction and really you don't doubt it for a moment and there's this complete natural listener farting and you just accept that there's no

new deal as a reader i don't think you ever go that's what's so wonderful about them to pick you up and in and just and take us why this is a levee that kept the white house at bay and when you compare how he has since september i don't know seventy to save cities i think honestly you know the whole karma story is part of this rich probably we don't even really know yet but i mean the job of any writer i think in the long run is to learn how to sound like himself to discover his own voice and ray made that his job with a kind of devotion and rigor that the many writers don't bring to the task and he finally got it and when he got it so resonant and so true couldn't help but failed to make an impression and maintenance once he began to have the bats with alcoholism the separations and his family in

a lot of privacy in the political pandering days that he played in the great grain i don't know i'd i'm leery of this kind of romantic view of the writer that you have to suffer and very leery of this romantic view of alcoholism in american fiction that somehow alcohol is something that the show or fires the writer at sunrise imagination salon nonsense and then the truth is of all isn't as a total season as a terrible human cost of rabid and the one gathers the people rounded i mean it's i don't know the point is is to be grateful that raid get past that and the tools could be ray was so sears ozark in it not because of the bad raymond as we might have had ten more years of good way i'm just leery of that he's the kind of any easier to

use deputy editor did you work with his pursuers with aaron they did your listeners last poems and used his own death we talk among his telephone so how how would you i did not i didn't speak to re train i don't think it's i knew the ray was sick and we spoke but i did know how how how badly the second i don't think he wanted me or people of my particular range of distance to know the year in the poetry i can do with a way that went to two word howard moskowitz a poetry event and then subsequently we published some palms of ray's actually died and house cleaner fortune teller those two twos equipment as it's an intense word king's great shock to me here and i think that we only was second and then the word went out well things are looking better and then i heard the tantrums was i didn't really know if i remember where i was i was

on vacation is in my summer house in massachusetts says reading chekhov fact when the phone rang and sold half they've re actually in the phone rang and i was devastated as i hadn't really known that things have gone on that for a few years as deities at your feedback do a raymond carver story with the car was a very popular writer we can get fan mail i think ray himself got a lot of family and one of the funny things about ray was that i think that people restoring the american and more than likely you're going to be more up just right away because that was the kind of immediacy that his stories seem to create he was a writer that we in the magazine here all

adored it was a great day for us when we first publisher a car and selling a bunch of us had been hoping would happen sooner or later and we just feel very lucky that we've had as many wonderful stories this week and they really are wonderful looking back over the ones we've published just this morning i was at my breath taken away all remember just how good they are they get better and better each one thing that makes it so much more pungent than that it was their stories of of tremendous simplicity and directness and plainness and modesty is a message that they're also full of feeling in a funny way car stories happen with emotional moments of the drama sometimes happens in the moments the spaces between the lines but somehow he's a tremendously suggestive are either in that way and you have these people talking you know will

talk around a problem they might not ever be able themselves are together to articulate what's going on but that the resonance that those lines the details the images in the rhythms of a sense create just suggests a tremendous degree of of feeling which to my mind is almost directly connect itself to where it leads and the strange thing is that an iceberg that if you use so few words and yet did you feel it was kind of interesting yes indeed brought along he'd be in the trust of the reader he asked a lot of the reader i think he did because he didn't take it by the hand expect injured to tim alben yourself and be receptive but if you did that the rewards were tremendously any was respectful korea we were taught we was to talk about the reader when we have

some of these airing conversations that really was a character for ransom and he cared about women's needs in response is all over it very much on his mind reading wrote for people he was losing weight from self you will from audience and he wanted to have an effect on a new high have it begins very conscious of just what his powers were what they were he knew what he could do and we couldn't any indeed at the end he was he was just it was right at the top of this came in and using every element as well to cut its interesting to say so that ease the enormous this little boy from western wall at what's happening and they always inherently find themselves because we you know we just felt the same way or having way i think one of the summer's you think of the new yorker as a sort of museum of literature and then we don't want to be there and then sometimes writers cinco onto raw find to

home homespun aware of the new yorker and in the race posing as true for the new workers is another matter i'll go to that and to the us i don't know exactly what happened but we were delighted when we finally a conference to an unknown just look on the western ira feeling of the western northwestern aaron whitby take place just totally i guess there is a feeling of the of the northwest sides i say that as a kind of warm cheer revive never been to the northwest and in fact i guess the fight must much of my own notion of the northwest now falling and for my recorder it's a literary landscape in my mind but you guys i still think there is an element of the kind of openness kind of skew and democracy to have a kind of a

source of social range a kind of fluidity people are always on the move in cars stores here and they're there and they're packing up and then driving and that seems more western and eastern to me was a sense of of economic dislocation course these days that's true everywhere but that at the time that made them more question i have food carver's stories pictures you know just going in where i'm calling from there the mountains in the background checks houses to exclude set in the west of the fishing streams twenty there really is a book or a landscape and to be hard especially if you went back and looked at the stories that examine the evidence for us this slight because it is not where he's at fault in descriptive riders believe that there is there is a definite sense of setting in place a concert just inform someone thing they were stepping on with my boys vincent there

is a sense of the northwest maybe just at this sense again re communicate it which i think there is a dvd just say something that there is a sense of the western countries during that sensitive when asked before i was to you is a sense of the northwestern and current for me it's a perfect is my only sense of the northwest i've never been there a sense of openness of expansiveness of boat tours of people moving around a lot to some of you that with a very very very clear kerrey's you think you've got more army though and the way ahead i must say being a little girl in a year when you were kids and my job you do tend to import self defense and we import because you don't have time to lawlessness was we don't have big theories don't have big picture site we have

stores i have a story that works or doesn't make it work you publish it in any one of the next one i've got ten believes that the the big sinking in the ranking of writers whose going door i mean i don't care where a time as one in a magazine uk but re was exceptionally and i knew when i was working with jerry parr i knew those were some degree and as i say it was a funny feeling sometimes to think all my identity very careful and then in american literature have not to send the story i didn't sell it quote you know it is what it is worth documenting this particular time in his eye i am as a seventh is pastures of great interest there was a year when you asked the question of the northwest i realized the other thing thats thats for my sense in love with the new policy this book of photographs called corporate country which i

have tabler will go a lot and it's odd to be a separate i think that my mental picture of a car with his special for that is it's a life was worth of jeans was getting stuff done is use some in sweat stains important because the certainty and a head of abc did a piece on an american company i guess i saw that they know that their water where we're going to switch over to the senate this is is saying that he can see the saudi and he's talking about is you say you in these shoes and man say i mean he's been portrayed det not that you do see families are in those a lot of there's a lot of cam simpson cliche mcconnell shuts of the diners in the end the only one out there that's what's what's with

the brits want to say samir is a bigger i hope the very same way as has safeguard because for scavo is ray's favorite writer and when ray was each call in some ways it has hearts have they with a tickle book as reading was a little payback anthology that had been edited by toby wolf was a friend of ray's part of ray's circle so it was a summer morning all i was gathering general austin scott's circling around in my head ray check off too or did you did you did you really think we turn down i think one or two stories of race i can't remember now which one it's not special i think that there's probably not a not a writer whose contribute to us believe that any body of work that we have had at one

time or another turn down rightly or wrongly that's part of what goes with the business of publishing and magazines great twitter like a pro that's because he was an nfl were sprung and raided the great heroes income right back with a story of you know we slay was even better than thin than the one before the one he turned down so that was never an ease i never really worried that that this would rupture relationship or getting ready to get surges are like that he'd be amnesty so unique at that time i think he'd been he helped create a style within it became popular i think there's a lot of color isn't that came about as a result of ray but i think he waved week a role i was what was so striking susan breath of fresh air when he first turned up no one was quite doing as i say i think some of what he did was misjudged afterwards and people imitate him imitate the wrong

stuff they wrote epics of working class life in the epics of blue collar misery with that is and what rate was about