There are few moments where I clasp my hands to my mouth. Fewer still where I simultaneously drizzle tears. Today I did both these things.
Raymond Carver was the man everyone tried to set me up with. I’d heard a lot about him, everyone else seemed to know him well and felt that I should too. These friends were full of accolades—sure my curiosity was peaked, but with all the gushing I was dubious.
Working my way through 'What we talk about when we talk about love' allowed me several moments with Carver, seventeen to be exact. Each moment had me wanting another. And with each, I found my courtship with Carver moving from like into something more like love.
It was 'Popular mechanics' though, a brutally sparse five hundred words that left me feeling utterly broken. In this he both wore me down and won me over.
Carver takes a simple domestic argument; a moment in time where a husband is leaving his wife, puts a child into the equation and in doing so shows human desperation at its most abysmal.
There are those films where you hear the dad say something to his kid like, “Sonny, It’s about time you saw what life was really like.” Reading Popular Mechanics, I felt like that kid. I felt like that kid watching the nice neighbors through some slit in the curtains go at it full throttle, watching their story and my little ideals about the world shatter.
Carver uses understatement like a knife being slowly sharpened for the final line: “In this manner the issue was decided.” Never will such matter of fact words wound you so deeply.
Carver is my man.
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