#22: Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver

Available in: Where I'm Calling From

My Favourite Carver stories: Neighbours, Cathedral

Damn, Carver gives me the blues.

Some of his stories are really sad. Some are hopeful, but the hope usually comes after a lot of sadness. Some are urban, some are rural, and some of his stories feature characters so remarkably unpleasant that I've decided never to reread them. Yes, Jerry and Bill from Tell the Women We're Going, I am talking about you.

The Story

Where I'm Calling From is not as crippling as Tell the Women We're Going, but it's still pretty depressing. An alcoholic hangs out with a bunch of alcoholics at rehab, including poor Tiny, who has a heart attack along the way and from then on, is scared to leave. Hell, everybody there is scared to leave rehab. Why wouldn't they be, when their wives are cheating and their girlfriends don't want to speak to them?

Carver's work is well written and often exquisitely pared down. This story is one of his longer ones and feels a bit like running on a treadmill while eating McDonalds and drinking Jack Daniels. On the one hand the narrator and J.P. seem like nice people, but at the same time, their alcohol addiction has destroyed both them and their relationships. That said, the ending suggests there may be hope yet for J.P. and the main character.

Why it sticks

This is an intricate story. Both alcohol and storytelling play important parts in the narrative. The main character and J.P.'s 'stories' both echo a similar pattern: their life before alcohol, the way alcohol affected the marriage, and the events that led them to Frank Martin's (the rehab facility they now both call home). Two of author Jack London's stories, To Build a Fire andThe Call of the Wild are also mentioned in the story, and The Call's half-dog, half-wolf creature most closely mirrors the dual lives of the patients at Frank Martin's.

These are not likeable characters, but they are forgiveable ones, and really, their biggest folly is their dependency for alcohol. As Natalie Merchant once sang in Don't Talk, "The drink you drown your troubles in, is the trouble you're in now." Carver's people are easily led astray, and perhaps this is what makes them so compelling. Personally, I think his world view was very much coloured by his own alcoholism; any victories in Carver's stories are small at best, and transient for the most part. There are exceptions (Cathedral, mentioned above, is perhaps the best example) and maybe these resonate all the more for the bleak cultural landscape Carver usually explores.

Sometimes the answers are not so clear. Perhaps he was just a writer wrestling with his demons... and to the end, he was still trying to work out whether the glass was half-empty or half-full.