UNIVERSIDAD VERACRUZANA
FACULTAD DE IDIOMAS
LICENCIATURA EN LENGUA INGLESA
NARRATIVIZATION OF EVERYDAY LIFE: RAYMOND CARVER’S
CONTRIBUTION TO THE MINIMALIST AND DIRTY REALIST NARRATIVE
TESINA
Que para obtener el título de
LICENCIADO EN LENGUA INGLESA
Presenta
GERARDO JAVIER MUÑOZ GUZMÁN
Asesor de contenido
VÍCTOR HUGO VÁSQUEZ RENTERÍA
Asesora de lengua
EILEEN SULLIVAN
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my advisors: Víctor, Eileen and Paula. Thank you very much, Víctor,
for your trust, your supporting words, your dedication and patience. Eileen, thank you for
your patience and your advices of wisdom. Paula, thank you very much for your time and
your work. I really appreciate your gesture.
I would also like to thank Paty for being a guiding light throughout these years. At last
but not least, I have to mention that I feel deeply obliged to those teachers who taught me
more than academic stuff.
DEDICATION
To my family, friends and strangers.
Thank you: mom, sister, Irving, Dennisse, uncle Fede, Ricardo, Anita, Mónica, Lalo,
Paola, Alice, Cibela, Daniel, Juan, Héctor and Roberto.
If I forgot somebody’ name, sorry.
NARRATIVIZATION OF EVERYDAY LIFE: RAYMOND CARVER’S
CONTRIBUTION TO THE MINIMALIST AND DIRTY REALIST
NARRATIVE
INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………..1
CHAPTER 1: MINIMALISM……………………………………………………………...4
1.1 Minimalism, visual arts and music…………………………………………4
1.2 Literature……………………………………………………………………...5
1.3 The devices of Minimalism………………………………………………….6
1.4 Minimalist writers…………………………………………………………...7
CHAPTER 2: DIRTY REALISM………………………………………………………..12
2.1 Realism and Naturalism: Dirty Realism’s predecessors……………….13
2.2 Two views of Dirty Realism and definition……………………………….15
2.3 Devices of Dirty Realism…………………………………………………..16
2.4 Dirty Realist writers………………………………………………………...18
CHAPTER 3: RAYMOND CARVER: WRITING ABOUT EVERYDAY LIFE……..20
3.1 The tone and the voice in “Boxes”……………………………………….20
3.2 Heroic characters in “Boxes”……………………………………………...22
3.3 Domestic settings and simple present narration in “Intimacy”………...26
3.4 Lack of ambition in “Intimacy”…………………………………………….27
CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………….......31
REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………...33
INTRODUCTION
Communication is one of the main human necessities. Since ancient times, the
human being has employed literature to narrate fictional stories, real life
experiences and to express feelings and thoughts. Throughout history, conditions
of society directly influenced literature. Those conditions were influenced as well by
historical events such as wars, industrialization and innovative art movements’
transitions. In spite of all of these incidences, literature is one of the main vehicles
of art to describe a world which, according to contemporary literary movements,
tends to worsen.
Leuilliot (in Éigeartaigh, 2009) asserts “everyday life is what we are given every
day….what presses us….every morning, what we take up again, on awakening, is
the weight of life” (33). While the general conditions of life worsen, Leuilliot focuses
specifically on the “everyday life,” which offers readers a concept that can be
applied for any time in history. For Leuilliot, everyday life acquires a negative
connotation, as occurs in the literature of Raymond Carver. This paper attempts to
identify the devices which Carver employs for describing everyday life. In order to
do this, I will analyze two of his short stories: “Boxes” and “Intimacy,” both included
in the collection Where I’m Calling From. New and Selected Stories. Before
analyzing these works, it is important to study the literary movements which Carver
develops in his works, Minimalism and Dirty Realism; and the conditions that
influence his writing style.
In the first section of this paper, I will provide a background of Minimalism, its
definition and general aspects. The term Minimalism was applied for the first time
to visual arts and music during the early 50’s (Bailey, 2010). It was not until the
1960’s that critics associate Minimalism with literature, although writers’ interest in
Minimalism increased during the decades of 1970 and 1980. Despite the fact that
many writers such as Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff and Amy Hempel, developed a
Minimalist style of writing, Carver won the title of “The father of Minimalism”
(Bailey, 2010. p. 23). According to Bailey, Carver defined the aesthetic aspects of
Minimalism. His conditions of life, poverty, alcoholism, a young marriage and
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divorce directly influenced most of his stories and his aesthetics. Regarding his
aesthetics, and owing to the influence of his life conditions, Carver depicted
American working-class issues, which was one of the aspects for Bill Buford, editor
of Granta Magazine, to categorize Carver’s work under Dirty Realism.
In the second section, I will provide a background to Dirty Realism. In addition,
I will employ two perspectives about Dirty Realism in order to define it. As I do in
the first section, I will mention Dirty Realist aspects. Having as predecessors two
literary movements which were a reaction against the Romantic aesthetics,
Realism and Naturalism, Dirty Realism responded to two main social conditions:
capitalism and Post-World War II conditions of society. Despite the fact that Buford
identified several writers who shared an aesthetics and labeled them as Dirty
Realists, Rebein (2001) asserts that Dirty Realism was, in part, a marketing
strategy for selling Minimalist literature in England as an innovative literary
movement from America (42). However, there were several writers who begun to
develop a Dirty Realist aesthetics. Among these writers stand out: Charles
Bukowski and Raymond Carver. Both wrote from what Bukowski named “inner gut
vision,” which, according to Dobozy (2000), means writing from “the conditions that
formed the self” (63). This allows us to infer that Dirty Realist writers had a deep
consciousness of their places in history and the issues of society.
That consciousness arose mainly from personal experiences. As we will see
in this paper, Dirty Realist stories contain aspects which could be considered as
biographical. Hallet (in Dobozy, 2000) states that Dirty Realist writers represent the
whole of society in “sliver of individual experiences” (4), that is to say, personal
experiences influence Dirty Realists’ works and, at the same time, it allows those
stories to acquire the aspect of depicting society’s issues. Hemmingson (2008)
identifies the following characteristics in Dirty Realist characters: “(they are)
everyday people, alcoholics, (and) the beaten-down by life” (11). Dirty Realism
narrates everyday life of working-class society, and influenced by its predecessors,
Realism and Naturalism, everyday life is represented as “the weight of life,” as
Leuilliot names it.
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In the third section of this paper, I will explain how Raymond Carver employs
Minimalism and Dirty Realism to narrate everyday life. I will analyze two of the
main works of Carver, “Boxes” and “Intimacy,” both included in the collection
Where I’m Calling From. New and Selected Stories (1989). I will develop an
analysis of the main aspects of Minimalism and Dirty Realism which Carver
employs to narrate everyday life such as simple prose, first person narration, Dirty
Realist heroism, safe settings and lack of ambition. I will provide a wider
explanation of all these devices in Minimalism and Dirty Realism sections.
Furthermore, considering Carver’s significance in American literature, I consider it
a requirement to identify and mention the biographical aspects that influence
Carver’s style in “Boxes” and “Intimacy.”
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Minimalism
During the early 1950’s, a new artistic movement emerged: Minimalism. Although
the term was first applied in America to visual arts and music, some texts written
prior to the 1960’s showed aspects of Minimalism. According to Warren Motte (in
Bailey, 2010), Minimalism was born in Manhattan. A common misconception about
this movement is that it involves brevity and feelings of emptiness. Motte states, to
the contrary, that Minimalism has proposed to “create a meaningful experience in
the minds of viewers (or, as I will later demonstrate, in the mind of the readers)
through simple means” (in Bailey, 2010. p. 4).
Hourigan (2010) describes Minimalism as an experimental literary genre and
lists devices such as
…the repetition of themes and motifs, intentional misspelling and
missphrasing, an amoral narrativization that eschews any terms of
valuation, and the avoidance of abstractions such as time and
measurement.
(Hourigan, 2010. p. 26)
In the following section, I will provide a more thorough description of the devices of
Minimalism in visual arts, music and literature.
Minimalism, visual arts and music
Minimalism in visual arts is characterized by the use of specific techniques. Bailey
points out that art critics use the term “stripping down” to refer to the elimination of
unnecessary elements for the purpose of “allowing” viewers to focus exclusively on
important and essential parts of the piece (Bailey, 2010). Warren Motte, (in Bailey,
2010), lists the main exponents of Minimalism in visual arts: “Carl Andre, Dan
Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt” (Bailey, 2010. p. 4). In addition, Motte explains
briefly how Minimalism functions in works of art such as sculpture and painting:
Minimal art describes abstract, geometric painting and sculpture
executed in the United States in the 1960’s. Its predominant
organizing principles include the right angle, the square and the
cube, rendering with a minimum of incident or compositional
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maneuvering… [.] … In order to provide the viewer with an open,
unmediated experience.
(Bailey, 2010. p. 4)
As Motte asserts, Minimalism in visual arts provides an “experience” for the viewer;
likewise, minimalist music provides an experience for the listener and minimalist
literature for the readers.
Regarding music, Michael Nyman used the term Minimalism for the first time
in 1968 in order to “describe a new, experimental type of music” (Bailey, 2010. p.
10). The term was more fully defined by the composer Thom Johnson, who wrote
that minimalistic music is “any music that works with limited or minimal materials”
(p. 10). Bailey adds to the definition of Thom Johnson by suggesting that this
apparent lack of material in a piece of music invites the listeners to involve
themselves in the process of creation of the piece.
Musicians such as Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass employed
minimalistic resources to create their pieces during the 1960’s and the 1970’s.
Motte, (in Bailey, 2010), asserts that minimalist musicians, as well as minimalist
artists and writers, consider of vital importance the encounter of their works with
the audience. Without this encounter, Minimalism is incomplete. The audience of a
minimalist work has to interact with the work in order to experience Minimalism
(Bailey, 2010).
Literature
Despite the fact that writers like Ernest Hemingway, Anton Chekhov and Edgar
Allan Poe used some techniques of Minimalism, it was not until the 1960’s that the
term Minimalism was applied in American literature (Mozley, 2006). According to
Bailey, writers’ interest in Minimalism increased during the decades of 1970 and
1980. Among the main minimalistic writers are: Tobias Wolff, Chuck Palahniuk,
and Raymond Carver, better known as “The Father of Minimalism” (Bailey, 2010.
p. 23) or “The American Chekhov” (Mozley, 2006. p. 1). Carver, the most
representative writer of American Minimalism, was born in Oregon, in 1938. In his
early twenties, he married and had two children, later he divorced. Carver was
5
alcoholic (Mozley, 2006).
He rejected the categorization of his works under
Minimalism (Bailey, 2010). On this topic, Bailey cites a personal commentary of
Carver:
Somebody called me a minimalist writer. But I didn’t like it. There’s
something about “Minimalism” that smacks of smallness of vision
and execution that I don’t like.
(Bailey, 2010. p. 68)
Nonetheless, Bailey insists that “there is currently no better word (than
“Minimalism”) to describe the sparse, exacting and economical writing style in
many of his early stories” (Bailey, 2010. p. 68).
In 1976 Carver published Will You Please Be Quiet?, a volume which included
twenty-two short stories
written using minimalist techniques which would later
become trademarks of Minimalism. The most notorious aspect of Minimalism in
Will You Please Be Quiet? is its simple and precise prose. In 1981, Carver
published What we Talk About When we Talk About Love? which was described
“as the best single collection of minimalist stories ever written” because of Carver’s
experimentation with minimalistic techniques (Bailey, 2010. p. 67).
Carver died of lung cancer in 1988. After his death, many journalists, journals
and critics celebrated his significant works (Mozley, 2006); a number of studies and
books have been written about his life and work. Also, unedited works of Carver
have been published.
The devices of Minimalism
In his work “A few Words About Minimalism,” Barth (1986) asserts that “Old or new
fiction can be minimalistic in any or all of several ways” (p. 1) and, to support his
contention, lists different ways, involving choice of length, lexis, and tone, in which
Minimalism may be used by a writer:
There are minimalisms of unit, form and scale: short words, short
sentences and paragraphs… [.]…there are minimalisms of style: a
stripped-down vocabulary; a stripped-down syntax that avoids
6
periodic sentences, serial predications and complex subordinating
constructions; a stripped-down rhetoric that may eschew figurative
language altogether; a stripped-down, non-emotive tone. And there
are minimalisms of material: minimal characters, minimal exposition
minimal misses en scene, minimal action, minimal plot.
(Barth, 1986. p. 3)
Bailey (2010) offers a similar list of the principal devices of contemporary
Minimalism: a simple prose; that is to say, a basic prose, without adornments;
narration in first, and sometimes, in second person; the narration in simple present;
the repetition of words, phrases, ideas or motifs; a familiar, or informal tone of the
narration in general; domestic or safe settings; stories are contemporary and
realistic.
As has been mentioned, the reader plays a fundamental part in minimalist
literature. Bailey asserts that the reader is obliged by the lack of detail to project
him/herself into the text. (Bailey, 2010). The reader’s inferences complete the text.
Ernest Hemingway, whose works embody some aspects of Minimalism, references
precisely this element of Minimalism when he explains his narrative.
If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he
may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing
truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as
though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an
iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.
(Hemingway, in Mozley, 2006. p. 3)
Hemingway affirms that omissions create tension and shroud in mystery that
which reminds hidden. Hemingway asserts that in order to make omissions work,
the writer has to know what he is writing about and, in this way, the reader will
recognize the significance of what is omitted (Mozley, 2006).
Minimalist writers
Despite the use of minimalist techniques by writers like Ernest Hemingway, Edgar
Allan Poe and Anton Chekhov, who influenced the minimalistic style of writing, it
7
was more contemporary writers who forged the characteristics of Minimalism. In
addition to Raymond Carver, writers such as Chuck Palahniuk, Amy Hempel and
Cormac McCarthy have contributed to the definition of the aesthetics of
Minimalism. Below I have used two authors in order to illustrate how minimalist
writers employ different techniques of Minimalism.
Chuck Palahniuk, like Carver, experimented with the use of minimalist
techniques of “descriptive narrativisation” (Hourigan, 2010. p.26). For instance, in
his novel Diary, Palahniuk avoids a complex narrative construction and uses very
simple prose and rhetoric, just as Raymond Carver does. This novel is written in
the diary format by a woman named Misty Wilmot, who relates her failure as an
artist to be read by her comatose husband Peter upon his recovery. Set on
Waytansea Island, the text contains references to anatomy, psychoanalysis and art
history.
Regarding the minimalistic devices of Diary, according to Hourigan, the
minimalist narrative avoids any judgment and, at the same time, any orientation for
the readers; as a result, the language used by the minimalist writer must suffice to
lead the readers to a full understanding of the minimalist text. In Diary, Palahniuk
compels the readers to involve themselves in Minimalism by introducing the novel
with a description of changes in the readers’s faces owing to the time that they
spent reading it. Consequently, the readers reflect themselves in the narrative.
Concerning rhetoric, Palahniuk employs repetition in Diary by describing the
rooms of several houses in Waytansea Island. The rooms are similar because all
were refurbished by Peter Wilmot: “Writing around and around the walls, it’s always
the same rant. In all these vacation houses…” According to Hourigan, the function
of Palahniuk’s rhetoric is to “perform the function of civilization,” and argues that
the rooms are “spaces that solidify attachments to a place, a time (and) a history”
(2010. p. 31).
As a result, if the rooms of the whole island were refurbished by Mr. Wilmot, the
readers infer that all of them share the same characteristics; for this reason, the
8
spaces repeat again and again in the narrative and in the mind of the reader.
Derived from repetition, Misty smells the walls of the rooms refurbished by Mr.
Wilmont, which, she says, smell like millions of cigarretes, and instantly she finds
herself transported to different time and ambiance. Owing to the use of olfactory
images, Hourigan (2010) relates the characteristics of the rooms with some of the
primary feelings of the human being.
Amy Hempel, another well-known minimalist writer, writes stories less widely
praised stories than Palahniuk’s, but which are cleverly constructed with an
admixture of metafiction. Patricia Waugh, (1984), defines Meta-fiction as
…a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and
systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to
pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality.
(Waugh, 1984. p. 2)
Hempel’s works have been analyzed by only a few scholars, but acclaimed by
some book critics and other writers. Regarding the structure of her works, Hempel
asserts that although the writer withhold information from the readers, they will
intuit what the writer omits. On omissions, as Hempel does it, Chekhov mentioned
that he expected readers to complement his texts by inferring the information he
withholds from them (Zavala, 1995). As the reader is required to be active in
his/her function, writers have to provide readers with the exact information in order
to make inferring possible. Hempel claims that in her writing she makes use of
precise words in order to describe a situation and to involve the reader in the text.
As has been mentioned before, the role of the reader is to identify that which has
been silenced in the story and link it to what is written.
In “What Were the White Things?” Hempel employs some characteristics of
Minimalism as: the first person narration, narrator is also the protagonist and
simple sentences are used throughout the text. “What Were the White Things?” is
a short story of only 656 words and due to the rhetoric, the use of direct language
and the role of the reader, it contains ample information for the readers even
9
though it is a short text (Bailey, 2010). For instance, in the following paragraph,
Hempel gives “bits of information” to the reader about the protagonist:
I arrived at the lecture on my way to someplace else, an
appointment with a doctor my doctor had arranged. Two days
before, she was telling me his name and address and I have to say,
I stopped listening, even though—or because—it was important.
So instead of going to the radiologist’s office, I walked into a
nondenominational church where the artist’s presentation was
advertised on a plaque outside: “Finding the Mystery in Clarity.”
(Hempel, in Bailey, 2010. p. 98)
First of all, reading the paragraph as a whole, one notices that the protagonist is
also the narrator. As mentioned previously, the protagonist is a woman; in the first
line, one become aware of the fact that this woman avoids a visit to a doctor and,
instead, visits a church. The second line shows the attitude of the woman,
specifically the following words: “…I stopped listening, even though—or because—
it was important.”; the woman even avoids listening to the words of her doctor
implying that his words deal with a serious health condition. Therefore, she “blocks
out the words” and “escapes” to the church, thus avoiding a possible confrontation
with the extent of her illness. In that church a presentation is announced with the
words “Finding the Mystery in Clarity.” It is unclear whether the woman identifies
hope or a mean of avoiding to think in her health condition in that tittle.
Like many other writers, Palahniuk and Hempel employ Minimalism as a
vehicle for all, or most, of their works. The distinction of Hempel, however, is that in
addition to using the structure of Minimalism, she employs metafictive devices, e.
g. the church sign, which is a metaphor inside the fictional text. On the other hand,
Palahniuk uses Dirty Realism and his stories are realistic and contemporary,
aspect of Minimalism.
As I mentioned before, Minimalism is defined mainly by its structure. Barth
(1986), as previously mentioned, identifies several ways of Minimalism in literature:
Minimalism of unit, form and scale; Minimalism of style; and Minimalism of material.
In addition, Bailey (2010) states that Minimalism also employs an informal tone of
10
narration, as well as domestic or safe settings and contemporary and realistic
stories. According to Bath and Bailey’s assertions, Minimalism can be defined as a
modern literary movement which narrates everyday contemporary life. Minimalist
writers must have deep consciousness about what they write in order to
complement a story with the exact words and sentences. Precision in Minimalism is
what leads the reader to infer writer’s omissions and, consequently, to complement
the story. Carver employs Minimalist devices to narrate contemporary situations,
which he experienced or he noticed in society, and to make easier for the reader to
identify aspects of contemporary life. Furthermore, a new style of writing is derived
from Minimalism: Dirty Realism. Such style employs the structure of Minimalism but
adds a variety of characteristics that associate both literary movements to the
narration of everyday life.
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Dirty Realism
Dirty Realism responds to two main social conditions: the culture of consumerism
in America, best known as “capitalism,” and the social conditions of post-World
War II America (Dobozy, 2000). The writers of Dirty Realism were born into a postWorld War II consumer economy and reacted against the social activism of the
1960’s (Dobozy, 2000). These characteristics of Dirty Realism imply a hyperconscious vision of reality on the part of the writers of this literature. However, Dirty
Realist writers use capitalism to criticize the system, profiting from their
publications. In respect to that, Rebein (2001) states that the label “Dirty Realism”
was only a marketing strategy for selling Minimalist stories to the English readers.
Regarding Rebein’s statement, it is important to clarify the fact that in spite of
considering his statement, there was a real Dirty Realist movement in America, as I
will demonstrate in the paragraphs below and in the stories to analyze.
Concerning the narrativization of everyday life, Dirty Realist writers “illustrate
how reality is a reified language” (Dobozy, 2000. p. 40) by writing from the mere
experience. That means that this literary movement is an unmediated simulation of
reality in which readers must participate. As they do in Minimalism. The Dirty realist
writer invites readers to be aware of their own position in history and to open their
eyes to reality by describing contemporary issues of society but, ironically, avoiding
any compromise with readers (Dobozy, 2000).
Despite the fact that writers of Dirty Realism were born before or during the
decade of 1950’s, it was not until 1983 that writers of post-1960 realism acquired
the Dirty Realism label. Bill Buford, editor of the Granta Magazine, used that term
to describe this group of writers who, in his view, “shared an aesthetic” (Dobozy,
2010. p. 1). As I previously mentioned, “Dirty Realism” label was a marketing
strategy used by Buford to sell the new fiction of America to the English readers,
who considered Dirty Realism as a “truncated documentary Naturalism that told the
truth about America” (Rebein, 2001. p.41). Among Dirty Realists group of Buford,
stand out writers as Richard Ford, Tobias Wolf and Raymond Carver. These three
writers are also mentioned by Frank Shelton, Michael Mewshaw and Paul Guinn
12
when referred to Dirty Realism. In order to clarify the way in which Dirty Realism
narrates everyday life, it is necessary to remember, in general terms, the Realist
and Naturalist tradition from which it sprung.
Realism and Naturalism: Dirty Realism’s predecessors
Dirty Realism was strongly influenced by two previous literary movements:
Realism and naturalism. The former rose between the end of the American Civil
War and the beginning of the First World War. The latter flourished between 1865
and 1900. In the following paragraphs I will explain in greater detail the
contributions of each.
American Realism was mainly influenced by the American Revolution in 1776
among other social changes. Similar condition to that from which Dirty Realism
sprang. Despite the fact that American Realism influences dated from the
eighteenth century, it arose, as I mentioned before, in 1860 as a reaction against
Romantic “rose-tinted” fiction. Singley (2013) states that American realism is a
“(written) representation of ordinary life” (Singley, 2013. p. 331) Aspect that shapes
Dirty Realist literature as well.
From Singley’s view, American Realism was a vehicle for social awareness.
That is another characteristic that influenced Dirty Realism. In 1883, Warner, (in
Singley, 2013), asserted that Realist writers portrayed middle and lower classes of
society, as Dirty Realists would do later. On the other hand, Garland, (in Singley,
2013), would categorize American Realism as a vehicle “for democracy and social
progress.” If we consider Naturalism as “Realism in extreme form,” as Singley
asserts, Garland’s categorization lost validity when the Naturalist writer Dreiser
wrote Sister Carrie (1900) and The Financier (1912). In both novels, characters
confront defeat in life. Characteristic which would be employed in Dirty Realism as
well.
Realism is applied to fiction of Howells, Twain and James, among others
(Singley, 2013). According to Singley (2013), Realist writers were concerned with
“documenting the world around them” by writing about their own experiences and
13
the changes they noticed in society (332). Writers such as Twain, Howells and
Crane were journalists. Their work allowed them to be aware of social conditions
and this influenced their literature. While Twain and James developed a Realist
style of writing, Crane employed Naturalism. Movement that I will discuss in the
following paragraphs.
The writer Emile Zola employed for the first time the term “Naturalism” in order
to label his own works. His central thesis was that heredity, social conditions and
nature determined human character and fate. That influence and its consequences
is defined as determinism. Zola, (in Zhang, 2010), affirmed that elaboration of
Naturalist’s characters and plots was influenced by the evolution theory of Charles
Darwin. That is to say, only the fittest survive in Naturalist stories. Despite the
influence of the Darwinian Theory, Naturalism and Dirty Realism focus on those
who are unable to survive or to improve their life conditions.
In addition to determinism, objectivism and pessimism are used in Naturalism.
Objectivism refers to the author’s self-representation as a scientist-narrator, who
writes all exactly as he or she sees it. Regarding pessimism, author makes
characters to repeat a phrase with negative connotations in order to achieve a
pessimist mood. Such repetition is a characteristic of Dirty Realism.
American Naturalism innovates a “harsher Realism” (Zhang, 2010. p. 195).
Works of Theodore Dreiser, Jack London and Ernest Hemingway were label under
Naturalism. Theodore Dreiser was one of the main Naturalist writers. Social issues
derived from industrialization influenced his works. With his first novel Sister Carrie
(1900), Dreiser would influence both contemporary and postmodern writers. On the
contrary, struggle for survival is one of the main themes employed by London
(although Carver fails to do this in the works to analyze in this paper). In his novel
The Call of the Wild, environment influences character’s survival. Ernest
Hemingway, instead, criticizes contemporary conditions which favor failure in life
and death. For that reason, Hemingway is also linked to Determinism. According to
Zhang, the great achievement of Hemingway was that his characters show “grace
under pressure (197).” This is not the case in the stories to analyze.
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Ernest Hemingway is the most influential American writer in American
literature. His Naturalist writing influenced Minimalism and Dirty Realism among
other literary styles. Below I will define Dirty Realism and develop a clear
explanation of its characteristics, writers and works in order to demonstrate how it
narrates everyday life.
Two views of Dirty realism and definition
Wilson and Dobozy offer two radically different visions of Dirty Realism. Wilson (in
Dobozy, 2000) essentially perceives no difference between Minimalism and Dirty
Realism. A later critic, Dobozy (2000), claims that it is truly innovative. Wilson
confines himself to commenting the structure and content of Dirty Realism texts
and asserts that is impossible to consider Dirty Realism as an experimental
movement owing his view that Dirty Realism is a genre that “restricts itself to
depicting the working class and the “belly side” of contemporary life” (Dobozy,
2000. p. 7). It is extremely programmatic, here referring to the fact that all Dirty
Realist stories shared exactly the same structure and content, and it employs a
linguistic and thematic self-containment.
On the other hand, Dobozy (2000) criticizes Wilson for failing to investigate the
effects of that self-containment of Dirty Realism. In the words of Dobozy, Dirty
Realism offers:
… a highly systematic non-system; its self-containment
simultaneously offers its authors and protagonists an unlimited
freedom. The selective vocabulary of Dirty Realism restricts
significance, but also lends to summary verdicts and universal
statements
(Dobozy, 2010. p. 7).
Dobozy defines Dirty Realism as “a contradiction-ridden, tension filled unity of
the embattled tendencies in the life of language” (Dobozy, 2000. p. 7). Dobozy and
Wilson coincide that Dirty Realism is a literary movement which contradicts itself
and whose writers are conscious of social conditions. It makes use of a minimalist
structure and its characters are usually from the American working class.
15
Devices of Dirty Realism
Despite the characteristics that Buford (1986) identifies in dirty realist texts, Dobozy
(2000) is convinced that the environment in those texts is clearly their main
characteristic. As in Naturalism, environment in Dirty Realism shapes characters’
fate and actions. However, Dobozy describes the Dirty Realism context and its
design:
(These are strange stories), unadorned, unfurnished, low-rent
tragedies about people who watch day-time television, read cheap
romances or listen to country and western music. They are
waitresses in roadside cafés, cashiers and supermarkets,
construction workers, secretaries and unemployed cowboys… They
could just about be from anywhere: drifters in a world cluttered with
junk food and the oppressive details of modern consumerism.
(p. 9)
According to Dobozy’s view, “Characters (of Dirty Realism) are defined (not)
by what they are, but by what they do (Dobozy, 2000. p. 9).” On the other hand,
Hemmingson (2008) describes Dirty Realist characters as “everyday people,
alcoholics, (and) the beaten-down by life (11).” Related to Dobozy’s affirmation,
Hallet, (in Dobozy 2000), identifies in Dirty Realist texts a particular aspect: “the
whole of society (is) reflected in sliver of individual experience.” Dobozy confirms
the statement made by Hallet by mentioning that Dirty Realism represents
universal sceneries by giving specific characteristics to its characters, stories and
places. By further identifying the lexis as a method for Dirty Realism to offer the
writer the opportunity to describe universal statements, the reader has the
possibility of identifying those statements and localize them in history. In addition to
the characteristics that Dobozy identifies in Dirty Realist characters, he also refers
to brevity of the dirty realistic stories, the sort of characters and the absence of
historical figures with “lack of ambition (Dobozy, 2000, 42).” On the other hand,
Hemmingson (2008) shares the “lack of ambition” aspect in Dirty Realist characters
and adds another characteristic specifically to Carver’s characters. Despite the fact
16
that they suffer from lack of ambition, Carver’s characters “wait for better days”
even knowing that those days will never come (15).
Grebstein, (in Dobozy 2000), asserts that paradoxes in Dirty Realism define
the personality of its characters and, as a result, of people in “real life” (Dobozy,
2000. p. 42). These oppositions also enable Dirty Realism to avoid any political
affiliation. In the case of the personality, paradoxes in Dirty Realism suggest
situations rather than delineating them. That is what Hemingway did it in his texts.
He reflected the human experience by discarding unnecessary explanations and
writing only what he considered vital for the reader in order to understand the text.
Dirty realists also “string details in suspension” (Dobozy, 2000. p. 42) to force
readers to search their own conclusions.
Dobozy affirms that the prose of Dirty Realism persuades readers to infer the
historical and social situation that surrounds them. By simulating reality and
excluding political mediation, Dirty Realist prose persuades readers. Dirty Realism
succeeds when it makes its readers conscious that “their “revelations” come from
their relation to the text and textual conventions, rather than the mediation of reality
by language” (Dobozy, 2000. p. 44). Bukowski, for example, avoids influencing the
reader with his intentions. The writer stands as an individual who rejects “solidarity
with the readership, either on and aesthetic or political level” (Dobozy, 2000. p. 44).
Neither the rejection of social nor political postures exclude the heroism of dirty
realist characters. Unlike popular heroes, the dirty realist hero is a human who
confronts everyday life despite personal defeat. Dobozy cites a poem by Raymond
Carver in order to illustrate and argue that the Dirty Realist hero is a confrontational
human: “The anonymous husband, barefooted, / humiliated, trying to save his life,
he / is the hero of this poem” (54). The Dirty Realist hero is admired for being
aware of his inability and weakness and by protecting his life against everything.
Dobozy associates the heroism of Dirty Realism with the personal life of the
dirty realist writers. He asserts that personal defeat is the source of the artistry of
Dirty Realists and argues his point by suggesting that Carver’s lifestyle –
17
alcoholism, poverty and unhappy marriage- directly influenced his aesthetics of
heroism. Bukowski, on the other hand, recommends writing from an “inner gut
vision”, action that involves “a writing of the conditions that formed the self
(Dobozy, 2000. p. 63).” The writer becomes conscious of his position in history and
writes about his own experiences, with which most of the readers can easily
identify themselves.
Writers of Dirty Realism
The writers of Dirty Realism describe the social conditions of their times through
narrating, the indeterminacy in their texts, the critique to contemporary society’s
conditions and the reflection about their positions in history. Post World War II
conditions raised writers’ consciousness. Rampant consumerism influenced the
mediation of Dirty Realism despite its avoiding of political or social postures.
Besides consumerism and social conditions derived from the World War II,
other historical situations influenced Dirty Realist writers. Some of these were:
…the Great Depression, the youth movements of the 1960s and
1970s, the rapid proliferation of pop culture, the right-wing political
conservatism of the 1980s and the collapse of the Iron Curtain.
(Dobozy, 2000. p. 130)
Furthermore, according to Dobozy (2000), most of the main writers of Dirty
Realism “spent many of their formative years immersed in the cultural milieu that
Dreiser, Norris, Farrell and Steinbeck examined and critiqued” (2000. p. 130). That
is to say, Dirty Realist writers read naturalist “examinations and critics” and were
influenced by those.
As a result of these facts, dirty realists became hyper-
conscious of their historical position although the reader must struggle to find it.
Dobozy proclaims that Postmodernism historically “encapsulates” a range of
dirty realists such as Richard Ford, who was born in 1944; Raymond Carver, born
in 1939; and Charles Bukowski, born in 1920. As previously mentioned, and due to
the situations Dirty Realism derives from, dirty realists reached their aesthetics
through resisting social and politic postures. For Dobozy, the affiliation between the
18
texts of Dirty Realism and society is owing to the movement from “realism to
naturalism to Dirty Realism” (Dobozy, 2000. P. 130). Dobozy also states that
writers such as Theodore Dreiser, John Steinbeck, Richard Ford and Charles
Bukowski describe the historical moment in an “individual manner” (Dobozy, 2000.
P. 130), that is to say, from their own experiences and points of view.
Acting like scientist observers, Dirty Realists depicted contemporary conditions
of society. Their influences and own experiences made them aware of their
position in history, just as they tended to do it with readers. Fiction resembles
reality in Dirty Realist texts, even if Dirty Realism was only focused on workingclass characters. In the following section, I will analyze “Boxes” and “Intimacy” in
order to explain how Minimalism and Dirty Realism narrate everyday life.
19
Raymond Carver: writing about everyday life
After the death of Raymond Carver, in 1989, the collection “Where I’m Calling
From. New and Selected Stories” was published. That collection includes the short
stories “Boxes” and “Intimacy,” objects of study of this work. Both short stories will
be analyzed according to the theory of Minimalism and Dirty Realism of the first
and
second
chapters,
respectively,
in
order
to
demonstrate
how
the
aforementioned aesthetics construct the discourse in both Carver’s short stories.
The tone and the voice in “Boxes”
“Boxes” is the first of seven short stories in the last section of Carver’s “Where I’m
Calling From. New and Selected Stories” (1989). The story is about the aging
mother of the narrator-protagonist, who moves from one city to another trying to
find “something” which makes her happy, but she seems unable to find that
happiness. At the moment the narration begins, his mother is about to move to
another place. This constant moving worries the man, but he is unable to do
anything to help his mother. The story ends with a call from his mother to talk to
him about the new place, where she just moved, and she tells him it disappointed
her. The man concludes that probably he will never see his mother again and he is
unable to answer his mother or say anything.
As previously mentioned, Barth (1986) affirms that a fictional text can employ
Minimalism in different ways. Between the types of Minimalism in literature,
“Boxes” employs Minimalism of material and style. Readers are able to identify
Minimalism of material since they are aware of the fact that Carver uses only four
characters in “Boxes” and the action in the story is minimal. In the case of
Minimalism of style, Barth categorize the “non-emotive tone” into this form of
Minimalism.
20
Carver employs a non-emotive and informal tone in order to avoid influencing
the reader with his “intentions,” as Bukowski did it, and to place the reader nearer
the action in the story. In addition, Carver employs first person narration in
“Boxes,” which also works for placing the reader nearer the action. In “Boxes,” the
first person narrator opens the story when the protagonist says:
My mother is packed and ready to move. But Sunday afternoon, at
the last minute, she calls and says for us to come eat with her. “My
icebox is defrosting,” she tells me. “I have to fry up this chicken
before it rots.” She says we should bring our own plates and some
knives and forks. She’s packed most of her dishes and kitchen
things. “Come on and eat with me one last time,” she says. You and
Jill.
(Carver, 1989. p. 409).
The identity of the narrator (“the son”) is established indirectly; the identity of
“Jill,” who is also invited to eat, and the reasons for the mother to move, are
disclosed later. Regarding the tone of the narration, the narrator tells a story to a
“well-known” reader. The aspects of formality in the narration are totally excluded;
despite this exclusion, the simple vocabulary works only with its significance,
adornments in the narration are avoided, which, according to Bailey (2010), is
another aspect of Minimalism, and the words employed by Carver in the text are
“enough," as Hemingway would say. In the following paragraph, the protagonist
revels to the reader that his mother has been planning moving for months:
Within a day or two of deciding to move, she’d packed her things
into boxes. That was last January. Or maybe it was February.
Anyway, last winter sometime. Now it’s the end of June. Boxes
have been sitting around inside her house for months. You have to
walk around them or step over them to get from one room to
another. This is no way for anyone’s mother to live.
(Carver, 1989. p. 411)
The fourth line of the paragraph has a double function in the text, specifically the
word “you.” The simple word implies certain informality in the narration. The
narrator of Minimalism is familiar to the minimalist reader. The barriers between
21
Minimalism and its reader are minimal. “You” invites the reader to approach to the
protagonist and to read between the lines. Whether Bailey affirms that the lack of
details force the reader to draw himself/herself into the story in order ti complete it,
the tone of narration works for the same objective as well, but, it invites instead of
forcing the reader to draw himself/herself into the story.
The story continues with the arriving of the protagonist and Jill to the house of
his mother. After sharing the meal and little inconsequential chitchat, the mother
takes his son and Jill to his home and then goes driving toward a highway. A few
days later, the mother calls the protagonist from her new destination. Her son is
looking through a window to a family which just arrived home when he answer the
phone. The call brings memories to the protagonist, a repeated action in the text,
and this call leads the story to and open ending, which is another aspect of
Minimalist stories:
What’s there to tell? The people over there embrace for a minute,
and then they go inside the house together. They leave the light
burning. Then they remember, and it goes out.
(Carver, 1989. p. 424)
Because his mother leaving town, the protagonist is unable to do anything to help
her and the story finishes without a clear resolution. The ending suggests that the
three of the characters remain unchanged. In opinion of Auquilla and Villa (2013),
the family is a projection of what the son wished all the time: a happy family.
However, the tone and the voice in “Boxes” place the reader near the protagonists
in order to make him/her participate in Minimalism, establishing a link between
fiction and reality. Additionally, Auquilla and Villa assert that in the American
culture, moving from one city to another is typical. As a result from this assertion, it
is possible to affirm that Carver narrate a common aspect of American lifestyle.
Heroic characters in “Boxes”
As mentioned in the Dirty Realism section, Dobozy (2000) defines the Dirty Realist
hero as a person who is able, and has the willing to live despite his/her negative
22
conditions of life. In “Boxes,” the four characters fit in the definition provided by
Dobozy. The protagonist, Jill, the mother and Larry Handlock. These characters
share certain similarities but, in general, is the courage to keep on living without
improvements in their situations what defines them.
The reader learns neither the name nor the line of work of the protagonist.
What is described is his situation about the actions of his mother, who just moves
from one city to another and he is unable to help her, even having the desire to do
it. Every time he talked to his mother by telephone or directly, he is unable to find
words to help or support her. In fact, when the narrator knows that his mother is
about to moving back to a California and might be he would never see her again,
he is unable to act owe to his unwillingness:
… But now I’m not listening, either. I am thinking how she is about
to go down the highway again, and nobody can reason with her or
do anything to stop her. What can I do? I can’t tie her up, or commit
her, though it may come to that eventually. I worry for her, and she
is a heartache to me. She is all the family I have left. I’m sorry she
didn’t like it here and wants to leave. But I’m never going back to
California. And when that’s clear to me I understand something
else, too. I understand that after she leaves I’m probably never
going to see her again.
(Carver, 1989. p. 421)
First of all, the words “I’m not listening” show that the narrator is avoiding, in a
certain way, what he is unable to face. In this case, is the fact that he can do
nothing for his mother; and affirms it in the following lines “What can I do? I can’t tie
her up, or commit her, though it may come eventually.” After failing in helping his
mother, he “understands” that after his mother leaves, there are null possibilities to
see her again. Instead of fix it, he reaches for a cigarette and his mother drives him
and Jill home. According to the information left out by Carver, the protagonist and
his wife does not own a car, which sustain Dobozy’s statement about one of the
Dirty Realist characters’ aspects: they belong to the working-class.
23
As many times before his mother moved, the narrator has to handle the
situation and keep on going; and he does it: “I feel sad for a while, and then
sadness goes away and start thinking about other things” (423). The constantly
moving of the mother can be related to the aspect of repetition that Hourigan
(2010) identifies in Minimalism. Whether the mother constantly moves from one
city to another, consequently, the son’s sadness remains all the time. So, what the
son does to avoid sadness is to “thinking about other things,” that is to say, to
distract himself until the next time her mother moves. He carries sadness all the
time, he is unable to do something about it and just continue living.
On the other hand, Jill grooms dogs in order to earn some money. She had two
children who were kidnapped by his first ex-husband. Years later, she got married
and divorced for the second time. Her second husband left her with bills to pay and
physically hurt after causing her an accident. Considering her previous
experiences, it is possible to identify that she copes her situation, the
consequences of past situations, by having a passive attitude. Her life could be
seen as a tragedy. An event which causes great sadness. The narrator mentions
that Jill and his mother “act friendly enough when they find themselves together”
(410), but also mentions that his mother “bums (Jill) out” (411). This means that Jill
try to fit into the situations despite disliking them. Based on what the narrator
mentions, the only thing Jill enjoys is grooming dogs. A common employment in
which her, probably, earn little money.
For Felski, (in Éigeartaigh, 2009), the “domestic space” is a sort of
“entrapment” for women. While Jill spends her free time reading a catalogue in her
house, the mother spends hers moving from one city to another. According to
Éigeartaigh’s view, the mother’s constantly moving can consider as a “source of
order” for her. I would say that the mother’s constantly moving is a way of
confronting life. As Hemmingson (2008) asserts, Carver’s characters wait for better
days which, they do know, will never come. Regarding that fact, the mother
confronts life by hoping for better days. On the other hand, Jill is a passive woman
who confronts life by reading catalogues.
24
As it was mentioned before, the mother started to move after her husband lost
his job. They looked for better opportunities of work. After her husband died, she
kept on moving. The reason why she keeps on travelling is unmentioned in the
text, but, as mentioned above, it can be inferred. What is revealed by herself is that
“(her) life caved in on (her) down there, and (she) went be going back” (419). In
spite of the fact that her life has fallen apart, she tries to find something she will
never find. So, she moves from a place she disliked to another place that she
disliked before, because she is constantly depressed. Jill suggest the possibility
that the mother of the protagonist still alive because of her constantly moving. Jill
says “Moving around keeps her alive… [.] It gives her something to do…” (415)
According to this commentary, it becomes clear that what keeps the mother of the
protagonist alive is going on despite the dead of her husband, the lacking of
willingness to help her of her son and the hope of finding something which gives
her happiness.
Larry Hadlock, says the mother of the protagonist, is “an unhappy man with a
good sense of humor” (417). In addition, the narrator describes Larry as a man
who looks like “a magazine illustration of a farmer” (417). After saying this, he
asserts that the man is “a retired construction worker who’s saved a little money”
(417). Like Jill, Larry has an ordinary job. As far as the reader knows, Larry lives
from his rent and it seems to be little, based on the description that picture him as a
farmer. Larry is a widower and is retired, what he does is for supplement his
pension is cutting the grass of the house he rents. If we are to trust Hemmingson
opinion about the aspects of Dirty Realist characters, Larry Hadlock is a “beatendown by life” (Hemmingson, 2008. p. 11) man. A retired man whose wife is dead
and has nothing to live for but cutting the grass. Ironically, Hadlock takes cutting
the grass as a reason to keep on living.
The four characters are under pressuring owing to different situations and
everyone has a different way of confronting life despite their conditions. In spite of
two of the four characters, Jill and the mother, have suffered different calamities,
they keen to go on living. In “Boxes”, Carver gives the characters the willingness to
25
live, but not the willingness to improve their life conditions. Regarding the hope of
the mother, whether one considers that she already knows she will never find
happiness, as Hemmingson asserts, it is valid to reject the fact that she really looks
for improving her conditions. According to Dobozy (2000), life conditions becomes
the characters into Dirty Realist heroes, as it occurs in “Boxes.”
Domestic settings and simple present narration in “Intimacy”
“Intimacy” is the third short story in the section “New Stories” of the collection
Where I’m Calling From. New and Selected Stories. The text is about a writer who
visits his former wife during a work trip in search of reconciliation. After he enters
his former wife’s house, the woman complains about their marriage at which point
when she asks him to go out of her house. “Intimacy” is a ten-page text with two
characters and narration in simple present tense.
According to Bailey (2010), domestic settings and simple narration are
Minimalist devices. Carver employs both devices in “Intimacy.” Barth (1986)
distinguishes between different sorts of Minimalism: Minimalism of unit, form and
scale, which uses short words, short sentences and paragraphs; and Minimalism of
material, which uses minimal characters, minimal exposition, minimal misses in
scene, minimal action and minimal plot. In “Intimacy,” Carver employs both
Minimalism of unit, (the paragraphs of the text are constructed with short
sentences), and Minimalism of material, (there are only two characters in the story,
minimal action and minimal plot).
Regarding domestic setting in “Intimacy,” most of the action occurs in the
house of the former wife of the narrator-protagonist. After he provides a brief
background to his visit, the protagonist narrates the moment he enters his former
wife’s house, the domestic setting of the story, and the conversation which follows:
But she lets me in. She doesn’t seem surprised. We don’t shake
hands, much less kiss each other. She takes me into the living
room. As soon as I sit down she brings some coffee. Then she
26
comes out with what’s on her mind. She says I’ve caused her
anguish, made her feel exposed and humiliated.
(Carver, 1989. p. 444)
In “Boxes,” unlike “Intimacy,” Carver employs two different domestic settings, the
house of the protagonist and the house of the mother. In “Intimacy” all the action
occurs in the ex-wife’s house. Specifically in the living room. Like occurs in Diary,
by Palahniuk, when Misty smells the walls of the rooms which were refurbished by
Mr. Wilmot and remember past times doing that, the living room in “Intimacy” works
for readers to infer some of the reasons to justify the animosity of the ex-wife. In
addition, the living room gives intimacy to the readers in order to focus on the
narration. For Bramlett and Raabe (2004), to narrate the “meaning” into one’s life is
a fundamental need of the human being. “Intimacy” is a great dialogue in which the
ex-wife narrates, precisely, what gives her meaning to her life and what did it
formerly.
According to Ayala (2010), “Intimacy” contains a “monologic dialogue” from the
ex-wife which, apparently, keeps the narrator in silence most of the time. As Ayala
asserts, the narrator answer his ex-wife questions with short answers. Sarraute,
(in Ayala, 2010. p. 48), states that those short answers “keep the “novelist” away
from his characters.” That keeping away from characters was an aspect of
Bukowski’s writing. Throughout the story, those answers are repeated randomly
and employed in a simple present and informal narration, they invite readers to
infer the motives of the ex-wife’s verbal attacks. In addition, the words “she says”
work in the same way:
She says, You know what? I think if you were on fire right now,
if you suddenly burst into flame this minute, I wouldn’t throw a
bucket of water on you.
(Carver, 1989. P. 448)
Written in simple present, both words, (“she says”), place the reader nearer to the
action, as occurs in “Boxes.” And, owing to the bitterness of the ex-wife, the
readers can infer that the writer did something that hurt his ex-wife when they were
27
married. Ayala asserts that what the narrator-protagonist did was to write and sell
stories about their lives. As it was mentioned in the first section of this paper,
Carver had a divorce and he wrote about personal experiences. These facts lead
us to relate “Intimacy” with the narativization of Carver experiences in real life.
Lack of ambition in “Intimacy”
Hallet (in Dobozy, 2000) relates lack of ambition to Dirty Realism characteristics
such as the length of the Dirty Realist stories, the Dirty Realist working-class
characters and the absence of successful characters in Dirty Realist stories. On
the other hand, Hemmingson shares Hallet’s view and adds another aspect which
contradicts it: Dirty Realist characters have hope. They hope to improve their
conditions even knowing that it will never happen. However, in “Intimacy,” the
narrator-protagonist seems to be a successful writer, which also contradicts
Hallet’s view. Finally, Carver, (in Mozley, 2006. p. 2) affirms that he was unable to
spend time writing a novel because he needed money, as a result, he wrote and
sold short stories and poems. Considering these arguments, Hallet’s statements
seem to be useless to develop an explanation of how Carver narrates everyday life
in “Intimacy.” However, in the following paragraphs I will use Hallet’s statements to
find lack of ambition in “Intimacy.”
“Intimacy” is a ten page story. As I mentioned before, the length of Carver’s
stories was a product of Carver’s economic needing. Regarding the working-class
characters, the former wife of the protagonist mentions that his actual husband
works hard, affirmation which can make the readers infer that his husband works
hard for economic necessity, just as Carver did. In the case of the narratorprotagonist’s ex-wife, it is true that she left him in order to improve her personal
conditions, but, as I will explain in the following paragraphs, she is dissatisfied with
her life and she does nothing to fix it.
The minimal plot employed by Carver in “Intimacy” makes difficult the task of
identifying lack of ambition in the text. The first indicator of lack of ambition is
presented after the mid-point of the story. Like most of the main information of the
28
story, lack of ambition must be read in between lines. Carver aids readers to
identify lack of ambition by placing the key words in italics. As can be seen below:
She says, I have a life now. It’s a different kind of life than yours,
but I guess we don’t need to compare. It’s my life, and that’s
important thing I have to realize as I get older. Don’t feel too bad,
anyway, she says. I mean, it’s all right to feel a little bad, maybe.
That won’t hurt you, that’s only to be expected after all. Even if you
can’t move yourself to regret.
(Carver, 1989. P. 451)
The words “too” and “little”, both in the third line, are the key words that indicate
lack of ambition. Reading the paragraph as a whole, readers will know that the exwife feels somewhat dissatisfied with her life, as previously mentioned. When she
says “It’s my life, and that’s important thing I have to realize as I get older” means
that she is resigned to her life conditions. In addition, the ex-wife feels satisfied
because her life conditions are harmless to the narrator-protagonist.
On the other hand, the narrator-protagonist also suffers from lack of ambition.
Before his visit, he sent all the articles, interviews and reviews about his works to
his former wife. Taking into account Ayala’s statement about the themes of the
writings of the narrator-protagonist, readers can infer that the ex-wife feels angry
because he read the texts, based on their marriage experiences, which he wrote.
In the following lines, the narrator-protagonist’s seems to be looking for
reconciliation, but, according to Ayala (2010), he is asking pardon for writing about
their life together:
It’s crazy, but I’m still on my knees holding the hem of her dress. I
won’t let it go. I’m like a terrier, and it’s like I’m stuck to the floor. It’s
like I can’t move.
(Carver, 1989. P. 451)
For an unclear reason, the narrator-protagonist is unable to act and to let her
former wife go. Those lines contains between lines the possibility that the
protagonist-narrator was unable to write about other things that he and his ex-wife.
29
That is why he keeps holding his ex-wife’s dress. If we are to trust Hallet’s
assertion about the fact that Dirty Realism represents the whole of society in “sliver
of individual experiences,” Carver must write “Intimacy” influenced by his own
experiences: the narrator-protagonist is also a writer, Carver also divorced and
wrote for a living. Regarding the biographical influence in Intimacy, it is important to
add that, like occurs with Palahniuk, Hallet, Bukowski and other Minimalist and
Dirty Realist writers, experiences in everyday life influence their writing.
Sharing aesthetics and Dirty Realist aspects, Carver wrote “Boxes” and
“Intimacy” to gain money without knowing that both short stories would be two of
the major works of Minimalism and Dirty Realism, even if he rejected the Minimalist
label. While one can easily identify aspects of both literary movements in “Boxes”,
“Intimacy’s” construction difficults readers to identify Dirty Realist aspects. Both
short stories are written in a simple prose which makes reading much more
comfortable. Despite the fact that both texts are great examples of Minimalism and
Dirty Realism, it is easier to find essays, thesis and articles about other stories
such as “Cathedral” and “Elephant.” Undoubtedly, Raymond Carver has the
arguments to be considered “The father of Minimalism” and one of the main
exponents of Dirty Realism. His narrations of everyday life, in spite of the influence
of Post-World War II and capitalism, can make readers aware of their own social
issues and their position in history.
30
CONCLUSION
In this paper, I analyzed “Boxes” and “Intimacy,” by Raymond Carver, in order to
demonstrate how, by means of aesthetics and construction, Carver narrates
everyday life. In the process of analyzing, I applied some of the aspects of the
Minimalist and Dirty Realist theory. To reach my purpose, I supported my
statements with several critics’ opinions about Minimalism, Dirty Realism, and
Carver’s works. Regarding theory, I chose specific works to argue it and make
valid my selection of theorists and content.
As a result of the analysis, it was possible to identify many of the Minimalist
and Dirty Realist devices which Carver employed for narrating everyday life.
Furthermore, after reading this paper, one is able to associate the aspects of
Carver’s life with his aesthetics and also the content of his works, in this case,
“Boxes” and “Intimacy.” It is important to highlight the connection between the
influence of Carver’s conditions of life in his aesthetics and the narrativization of
everyday life. In sum, Carver profited from narrating everyday life stories which
derived from everyday life experiences. Regarding the active readers, as we could
see in “Boxes” and “Intimacy,” Carver provides readers with enough information to
complement his stories. As a matter of fact, Carver makes the task easier for the
reader by employing a precise writing, narration in first person and an informal tone
of narration.
Regarding the functions of this paper, I hope to make a small contribution to
the way that students, teachers and readers can have access to further information
about Raymond Carver, Minimalism, Dirty Realism and literature in general. If it is
true that this work is only an academic paper, I would like to underline the fact that
it could be useful for its readers to acquire interest in Raymond Carver’s literature
as well as in universal literature. This interest, in my opinion, should be developed
by every student in the Universidad Veracruzana in order to become more critically
aware of social issues, which, nowadays, is more than necessary. Concerning the
English Language students, reading literature in English would be useful not only
31
to improve their English level, but also to acquire wider knowledge about foreign
cultures.
While this paper tends to invite its readers to know Carver’s literature, Carver,
as previously mentioned, tends to make readers aware of their place in history by
employing Minimalist and Dirty Realist devices in his works. Additionally, Carver is
considered one of the major writers in American Literature. These facts help us to
notice the importance of reading such a great writer. In my opinion, Carver
succeeded in writing such great works, though unintentionally, that he must be
considered one of the great depicters of American reality. I would like to invite
readers to investigate and read Carver’s work in order to notice our society’s
issues, which, as I mentioned before, is essential to understand our conditions of
life and the general conditions of society.
32
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Bailey, Jeremy Robert (2010). Mining for Meaning: A Study of Minimalism in
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