雷蒙德·卡佛

雷蒙德·卡佛（英语：Raymond Carver，1938年5月25日—1988年8月2日），全名小雷蒙德·克列维·卡佛（Raymond Clevie Carver Jr.），美国短篇小说家，诗人。其作品以极其简练的风格著称。

生平

卡佛出生于俄勒冈州哥伦比亚河边的锯木城镇克拉斯坎尼，后在华盛顿州的亚基马市长大。他的父亲是从亚利桑那州来的锯木工人、渔夫，长期酗酒；母亲则是餐厅服务生和销售员，工作不稳定。他有一个弟弟，生于1943年。

卡佛逝后葬在华盛顿州安吉尔港的海典湾公墓，他的文学遗产依生前指示，由泰丝·葛拉赫继承。他的墓碑上刻了他的诗篇〈晚期断章〉。

作品列表

短篇集

1976年 《能不能请你安静点？》

1981年 《当我们谈论爱情时我们谈论什么》

1983年 《大教堂》

Raymond Clevie Carver Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was an American short story writer and poet. He published his first collection of stories, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, in 1976. His breakout collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981), received immediate acclaim and established Carver as an important figure in the literary world. It was followed by Cathedral (1983), which Carver considered his watershed and is widely regarded as his masterpiece. The definitive collection of his stories, Where I'm Calling From, was published shortly before his death in 1988. In their 1989 nomination of Carver for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the jury concluded, "The revival in recent years of the short story is attributable in great measure to Carver's mastery of the form."

Early life

Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, a mill town on the Columbia River, and grew up in Yakima, Washington, the son of Ella Beatrice Carter (née Casey) and Clevie Raymond Carver. His father, a sawmill worker from Arkansas, was a fisherman and a heavy drinker. Carver's mother worked on and off as a waitress and a retail clerk. His brother, James Franklin Carver, was born in 1943.

Carver was educated at local schools in Yakima. In his spare time, he read mostly novels by Mickey Spillane or publications such as Sports Afield and Outdoor Life, and hunted and fished with friends and family.

After graduating from Yakima High School in 1956, Carver worked with his father at a sawmill in California. In June 1957, at age 19, he married 16-year-old Maryann Burk, who had just graduated from a private Episcopal school for girls. Their daughter, Christine La Rae, was born in December 1957. Their second child, a boy named Vance Lindsay, was born a year later. Carver worked as a delivery man, janitor, library assistant, and sawmill laborer, while Maryann worked as an administrative assistant, high school English teacher, salesperson, and waitress.

Writing career

Carver moved to Paradise, California, with his family in 1958 to be close to his mother-in-law. He became interested in writing while attending Chico State College and enrolled in a creative writing course taught by the novelist John Gardner, then a recent doctoral graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, who became a mentor and had a major influence on Carver's life and career. In 1961, Carver's first published story, "The Furious Seasons", appeared. More florid than his later work, the story strongly bore the influence of William Faulkner. "Furious Seasons" was later used as a title for a collection of stories published by Capra Press, and is part of the collection, No Heroics, Please and Call If You Need Me.

Carver continued his studies under the short story writer Richard Cortez Day (alumnus of the Iowa program) beginning in autumn 1960 at Humboldt State College in Arcata. He chose not to take the foreign language courses required by the English program and received a B.A. in general studies in 1963. During this period he was first published and served as editor for Toyon, the college's literary magazine, in which he published several of his own pieces under his own name as well as the pseudonym John Vale.