Physical and Social Laws in Ray Carver's
^'Popular Mechanics"
NORMAN GERMAN and JACK BEDELL
And yet let no admirer . . . resent my saying that at the first reading
what most impressed me was not so much what was in the book as what
was left out of it. Looking Backward
1 he reviewers of Raymond Carver's 1981 collection of stories. What We
Talk About When We Talk About Love, praise his "laconic and spare'"
style for its "fierce compression"^ and liken it to that of Anderson, Hemingway, Cheever, and Updike.^ Apart from these labels, only one critic,
Robert Houston, attempts to explain the reason for the style.
Houston says that "Carver's characters never have 'epiphanies.' . . . Yet
there is revelation, a revelation that Carver locates not in the characters but
in the reader, . , ,"* Since Carver does not editorialize, the reader must discover for himself the morals—or, if you prefer, meanings—of the stories.
Carver is, however, involved in morality, unlike his characters, who have
experienced what David Boxer and Cassandra Phillips call "Carverian dissociation."* Carver's narrative art is detached from the emotions of his characters, but he disguises his concern for man's moral deficiencies so as to intrude as little as possible between the fiction and the reader. The actions of
the characters are sufficient to carry his themes.
Detachment, in fact, is one of the fictive stances by which Carver achieves
startling effects. As James Atlas says, the stories' "minimality gives them a
certain bleak power."* Because the endings of the stories are truncated, the
reader-as-literary-detective must often supply the conclusion.
A case in point is "Popular Mechanics," at little more than a page long,
the shortest short-short story in What We Talk About. Ambrose Bierce's
definition of love in The Devil's Dictionary ("a temporary insanity curable
by marriage") might aptly have served as an epigraph to the story, for,
despite its misleading title, its theme is the deterioration of love.
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Puzzling though the title "Popular Mechanics" may be. Carver is not
overly subtle or obscure about its intended meaning. The title, also the title
of a magazine for do-it-yourselfers, should conjure up in the reader's mind,
by story's end, physical laws such as "for every action there is an equal but
opposite reaction." Before the tug of war b e ^ s between the young husband and wife for the b ^ y , "they knocked down a flowerpot that hung
behind the stove." A passage from Robinson's "Mr. Flood's Party" may
serve as an informing contrast: "As a mother kys hs" skiing child / Down
tenderly, fearing it may awake, / He set the jug down slowly at his feet /
With trembling care, knowing that most things break." The flowerpot
should have reminded the parents in Carver's story that they, too, live in a
world where most things, even children, break.
The man tries to "break [his wife's] grip" by holding "on to the baby and
[pushing] with all his weight." Here, the greater force is bound to win.
Next, he works "on her fisted fingers with one hand and with the other
hand he gripped the screaming baby up under an arm near the shoulder."
Obviously, he is trying to gain an advanta^ through leyerage.
As the child slips from her, the wife catches "the baby around the wrist
and [leans] back." The husband then feels "the baby slipping out of his
hands and he [pulls] back very hard." In the tug of war, the woman first has
the advantage, then the man, then the woman again, based on laws involving force, mass, and leverage.
The conclusion of the story is understated: "In this manner, the issue was
decided." Based on mechanical laws, what can the reader know about the
outcome of the contest of wills turned into a contest of strength?—that the
husband "won," and that the baby lost. The grim conclusion, the breaking
or dislocating of the baby's arm, occurs in the re^er's mind, after some
thought. The n^taphor Carver works in the story is that of the baby as
wishbone. And m^bones break. W. D. Snodgrass uses the same image in
poem 3 of the sequential title poem to Heart's Needle, when the divorcing
parents lift the child over a puddle by pulUng it in op|K>^te directions: "The
child between them on the street / Q>mes to a puddte, lifts hU feet / And
hangs on their hands." The persona later c ^ the child "love's wishbone."
An argument for influence, or extreme fortmty, can be m ^ e based on the
fact that a similar inci^nt is mentioned in Sno^a«5*s poem: "I tugged
your hand, once, when I h^ed / Thin^ l^s: a nwre game disk>cated / The
radius of your wrist." BarUer, working a different image, Snodgrass says,
"something somewhere has to give."
The fin^ line of "Pt^HiIar Nfcchanics," "the issue was decided," is a
gruesome pun implying that the argument as well as the isAs of the parents'
offspring (issue) was deckted. These two "p(^uiar mechanics" deal with
their marital problem much as do-it-yourselfers mi^t fix their cars: not
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with finesse, but by force. In the heat of the moment, both peaceful legal
means and concern for the baby are forgotten.
Carver seems to be retelling and altering the story of Solomon and the
two mothers (who were also prostitutes) to highlight a disconcerting fact of
contemporary culture. In I Kings 3, two women have babies bom three days
apart. One woman's baby dies, and she exchanges her dead baby for the
other woman's living baby. The just woman goes before Solomon with her
complaint. Wisely, Solomon suggests dividing the baby with a sword and giving each woman half of the child. The just woman, with true motherly concern, urges Solomon not to slay the child, but to give it to the other woman,
who in her turn says, "Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it."
In Carver's story, the baby's welfare is obviously not the "issue," Had
the parents been tested by Solomon, they would have been served an equal
share of their baby. In updating the story. Carver exposes a trait common to
all in some degree, a selfish cruelty that often causes innocents to suffer. Interestingly, Snodgrass's "Heart's Needle: 3" concludes, "Love's wishbone,
child, although I've gone / As men must and let you be drawn / Off to appease another, / It may help that . . . / Solomon himself might say / I am
your real mother."
Ironically, the parents adore the icon of their baby but are careless with
the baby itself. Early in the story, the husband is about to pack the baby's
picture in his suitcase when the wife sees it and takes it to the living room.
The argument over the baby's image turns into a struggle over the real baby,
who, though identified as a boy, is usually referred to as "the baby," "this
baby," or "it" ("She would have it, this baby"), thus disturbingly impersonalizing the child as an object to fight over—to the parents, a victory symbol and little else.
As Carver's other stories testify, this kind of squabble is too often the
decadent result of "true love." In the opening sentence of "Popular Mechanics," the ideal of marriage is contrasted with the reality via a meteorological metaphor: "Early that day the weather turned and the snow was
melting into dirty water." What was snowy pure is now corrupt.
In the expository first paragraph of the story, the light that seeps in on the
characters from the outside world is fading rapidly. As the light dims, the
civility of the parents wanes. After packing his belongings, the man need
only turn off the light to put an end to this segment of his life. At the climax
of the fight, when the baby is endangered, "the kitchen window [gives] no
light."
Volume of sound is inversely proportional to amount of light in the story.
The darker the setting gets, the louder the characters become. Yet, despite
the shrill voices of the parents, the reader senses a histrionic air, a faking or
exaggerating of emotions. Impervious to his wife's ravings, the husband
simply keeps packing. Both have screamed at the other so often that they
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259
are immune to hostility—immune, even, to the baby's ^nuine screaming.
The only remnant of tme vitality in the house is the flowerpot behind the
stove, and it is broken t h r o i ^ cardesaiess. The breaking pot symboMzes
the bresd^up of the nmrriage. Anoth^ i^adins i^ ^^&t the flowerpot contains
no life—at least no plant is mentioned. Tucked away "behind the stove,"
away from the 1^^, any once-potted flower would long since have withered.
The empty pot is like the house, a lifete^ hull.
The bedroom, the kitchen, the living room—places of warm f^nilial
gatherings and intimacy—constitute the story's settings. In a typically Caiverian liminal emWem of peoirfe on the vei^e, the author situates the
woman "in the doorway of the kitchen." Before Mid after this scene, the
narrator says, "Streaks of Jdirty water] ran down from the little shouklerhigh window that faced the b^kyard" and "The kitchen window gave no
light." In both passives, the window-as-thr«shold reminds the reader of the
intimacy-distance d^hotomy that Carver works throu^iout the story.
The turning off and on of li^ts and emotions in the story rqn^ents the
ease with which (x>nten^arary lo>%i^ step in and out of marrrages. The violence and hatred of the chmacters are the "popular mech^iics," or modus
Vivendi, of present-day relationships. Here and in many of his stories.
Carver paints a diu-k vision of the prraent state of human relations.
NORTHWESTERN STATE UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA
NOTES
1. James Atlas. "Less is Less." The Atlantic Monthly, 247, 6 (June 1981) 97.
2. Meredith Marsh, "The Mutalality of the Heart." The New Republic, 184, 17 (April 25,
1981) 38.
3. I^vid Boxer and Ca^andra Phillq)s, "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please!: Voyeurism,
Dissociation, and the Art of Ray Carver," Iowa SevKW, 10. 3 (19S0) 81.
4. Robert Houston, " A Stunning Ituuticulatcness," The Nation, 233. I (July 4, 1981) 23.
5. Boxer. 77.
6. Atlas, 97.
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