I just found a wonderful book at my favorite book store - our local swap shop that is part of our transfer station. I can't believe the fabulous books I have found here over the years, all free! And this book is just one more of the many that I've added to my extensive and forever growing book collection.
Although I've often been a bit confused when I've read Carver's stories, I have decided to keep going until something clicks for me. He has a reputation, well-deserved, of being known as one of the great short story writers and partly for bringing the short story out of magazines and into book form, able to stand on their own.
So his was the first interview I read in my new used book. The first bit of disturbing information that I found out about him was that he died at age 50 of lung cancer. The writer's life was not a financially profitable one and he, like a lot of the other writers at that time and still today, taught classes to support his family. He was fortunate and had a friend or two in the publishing business who helped him get his work out in the public.
Although he considers choices, conflict, drama, consequences, and narrating the five important elements in a short story, when he begins a story he lets it take a natural course unaware of where it is going until he gets there. "The drama enters the story and the consequences and choices present themselves."
When looking for a subject on which to base his stories, his advice from his father was to "write the stuff you know about." With his blue collar background Carver knew he had a subject and never had to go looking for material. Every writer should write about things that move him, too. "There are significant moments in everyone's day that can make literature. You have to be alert to them and pay attention to them. That's what you ought to write about."