Late Fragment by Raymond Carver Analysis

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.


I am no stranger to Raymond Carver's prose but I cannot say the same for his poetry. Carver is known for a minimalist style championed by his editor and teacher Gordon Lish. These days I find it harder and harder to sit down and read an entire story. Perhaps looking at poetry will get me back in the groove of reading and writing about literature.

The first thing I noticed about Carver's poem 'Late Fragment' is its short length. The poem is six lines long and one line is only two words. The poem reads quickly. I felt I understood the poem completely after reading it two or three times. Lines two and four as a question that is then answered in the following line.

Enough about the poem's structure. Let's get into the content. The repetition of the question "what did you want?" seems to be the essence of the poem. The speaker is asking this question to himself or perhaps to someone else. Whoever is answering the question knows that he has got exactly what he wanted from life. It's the kind of question one would ask in his or her final moments when there is nothing to hide. In typical Carver fashion, the answer is frank: "to call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth." 

Love is a prominent theme in Carver's fiction as well as in his poetry. I think we could all use a bit more love in the world, especially given the current political climate. We can look to writers such as Carver to remind us what is important in life. What's important to Carver is feeling loved and calling himself loved. It's a simple answer to a question that is often answered with money, power or fame.

Thank you Raymond Carver for reminding me what is truly important in life.

What To Do If You Are Stuck Writing a Story

As someone who reads a lot of short stories, I often think about story structure and whether or not it is an important element of effective storytelling. It makes sense that structure is related to good storytelling but how does this relationship work exactly?

The majority of my favorite stories have a structure. If you take a screenwriting course, narrative structure is going to be one of the first things you learn. The traditional method of analyzing a story is to divide it into three sections called acts. This method is interesting but I have never found it to be particularly helpful.

One of my favorite philosophies when it comes to fiction writing is that a writer should include only what is absolutely necessary. This idea is helpful to me because I usually feel like I am flying by the seat of my pants while writing. If I have planned enough in advance, then I usually can tell if what I'm writing is necessary to my story. It may be unclear if what I'm writing is necessary. In this case it is helpful to reflect on where you are and think about the various paths that your story could travel. Something that I have found helpful in this situation is Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling. Rule #9 explains what to do when you are stuck:

#9: When you're stuck, make a list of what WOULDN'T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up. 

It doesn't matter what is on this list. The only thing that matters is making the list. This exercise is essentially a way of increasing your chances of writing something that coheres with the rest of your story. You must take a second to get all the bad ideas out of your head before anything resembling a good idea can show up. This directly relates to rule #12:

#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th - get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

Unless you want to write boring stories your entire life, you should make this rule a habit. Writing the first thing that comes to your mind is a great way to create predictable stories.

Writing effective stories is difficult and it takes practice. Even if you manage to complete a first draft, you should revise that draft to make it better. Although writing stories is difficult, there are many tools to help you make it through. I find that focusing on thought processes while writing helps me recognize and thus break free from the patterns that limit my creativity. It also helps to consistently question whether what you are writing is necessary to your story. The most important question you can ask yourself while writing is "why does my story need this section?".

Car Crash while Hitchhiking Summary and Analysis

Summary

The story begins with the narrator waking up in a delirious state. The narrator has done a lot of drugs with a salesman, a Cherokee Indian and a college student. The narrator is in pain but he also seems strangely coherent. He states that he can sense things before they happen.

The narrator is picked up by a family in an Oldsmobile. The narrator knows that there will be a car crash but he chooses to say nothing and goes to sleep. The Oldsmobile crashes into another car and the narrator takes the baby into the night. Walking by the other car, the narrator notices a person lying on the ground. The narrator can tell that this person will soon die and later refers to him as the "dying man". The narrator is taken to a hospital where he sees the wife of the dying man. The wife shrieks like an eagle and the narrator states that hearing the shriek actually felt wonderful. The narrator then describes lying on a hospital bed and being given vitamins by a nurse. Then he describes an outdoor setting while directly addressing the readers of the story.

Analysis

In "Car Crash while Hitchhiking" Denis Johnson introduces us to the narrator that will remain throughout all of the stories in the book Jesus' Son. We do not learn the narrator's name until later in the book. It's a mysterious story without barely any explanation. The narrator's tone is similar to that of a journalist attempting to describe something as clearly as possible. The problem is that the narrator is high on several kinds of drugs which threatens the reliability of his story. The ending of the story presents the possibility that the entire story is just a hallucination occurring in the narrator's mind. Although we have no reason to suspect that the narrator is a bad person, his actions in the story make him seem self-interested. 

Another reasons why I believe this story occurs in the narrator's head is that he claims to possess the ability to see the future. I find it hard to understand why Johnson chose to include this element in the story. It does not serve a purpose for the story, seeing how the narrator does not act on his premonitions. The narrator is either too stoned or too tired to share his knowledge of the future. The only times the narrator expresses any feelings on the events taking place are when he sees the dying man on the road and when he hears the wife of the dying man shriek in the hospital. The narrator does not express grief during these moments but he does express feelings of awe.

"Car Crash while Hitchhiking" is an aberration of normal storytelling. There is a climactic event some exposition but none of the characters possess an arc and the story might be merely a figment of the narrator's imagination. There is more work than usual on the reader's end to find meaning because the story's purpose is unclear. 

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