雷蒙德•卡佛采访录 【一】

《没有空穴来风的小说》 ――雷蒙德•卡佛采访录 【一】 采访者：克劳蒂•格里玛（Claude Grimal） 中文翻译：小二 ________________________________________

在出版了法文版的《大教堂》和《当我们谈论爱情时我们在谈论什么》之后，Editions Mazarine即将出版雷蒙德•卡佛的第三部短篇小说集，《请你安静些，好吗？》。这是卡佛的第一部作品集。它于1976年在美国出版，并于1977年被题名国家图书奖。

本书包括二十二篇短篇小说，每篇的篇幅大约在十页左右。在第一篇名叫《肥》的小说里，一个餐馆的女招待告诉她的两个心不在焉的朋友，鲁迪和丽达， 她招待了一个肥胖的客户，一个她由生以来见到过的最肥胖的男人。“真是个有趣的故事，丽达说。但我看得出来她其实只是随便说说。”读者和丽达一样，有点不知所云。故事中的人物喝茶，上床睡觉。故事以叙述者出人意料的一句乐观的话来结束：“我的生活将会发生变化，我感觉到了。”

在第二部名叫《主意》的小说里，一对夫妇偷看他们的邻居半夜跑到自家花园里，偷看自己的老婆在卧室里脱衣服。稍后，叙述者――一个有窥阴癖、和丈夫一起偷看对门那位同样有窥阴癖的男人的女子，一面用杀虫剂喷杀厨房水池下面的蚂蚁，一面恶狠狠地自语道：“那个垃圾货•••这么个主意！”

《把你的脚放在我的鞋里试试》中的马尔思俩口子去拜访一对夫妻。他们曾租用并重新布置了这对夫妻的房子。这对夫妇以马尔思先生是位作家为借口，向他和他的太太讲述了一个又一个奇怪的故事。后来，又指责他们在租房时损坏了许多东西，有些东西还找不见了。在整个拜访过程中，马尔思先生一边笑，一边胡言乱语。马尔思夫妇离开时，保拉•马尔思大声说道：“他们真是恐怖。”她丈夫默不做声地看着路的尽头，“他已处在一部小说的结尾处了。”

卡佛小说中的人物来自美国中部，他们在工作，爱情，以及被社会认同等方面随时受到威胁。他们常在现实生活面前束手无策，个人感受被裸露无遗、心理变态、对生活充满困惑。这些感受是如此难以理解和描述，可以说卡佛的细微和精准的写作是一种描述效果的艺术。卡佛写的东西直接了当，直奔主题。他认为小说“应该给读者留下很多悬念，但不是一种无能为力的感觉。”1987年4月，雷蒙德•卡佛在乡村之声书店朗读了他自己的几部小说，该书店还将于6月份举办他的诗歌朗诵会。

克劳蒂•格里玛（CG）: 为什么你选择写短篇而不是写长篇？

雷蒙德•卡佛（RC）：生活所迫。那时我很年轻，十八岁就结婚了。妻子只有十七岁，而且结婚时已怀孕。我当时身无分文，为了抚养两个孩子，我们每天不得不工作很长的时间。我还得去大学学习写作。我不可能写那些需要两，三年才能完成的东西。所以我把自己定位在短篇和诗歌写作上，这样我就可以坐下来，一次把它写完。

CG：你认为你的诗歌和你的小说一样好吗？你的诗歌和文章之间有什么关系？

RC: 我的小说名气更大些。但对我而言，我更喜欢我的诗歌。它们之间的关系？我的小说和诗歌都很短(笑)。我用同样的方法写它们，效果也很相似，这种对语言和情绪的压缩，在长篇小说里是不常见的。我常对别人说，诗歌比长篇小说更接近短篇小说。

CG: 在情景处理上手法相同吗？

RC: 哦，情景。要知道，就像有人对我说过的那样，我并不针对某一个景象来写我的小说或诗歌。正好相反，情景因该从故事中产生出来。我写作时并不先想着什么特别的景象。

CG: 你的诗歌属于哪一流派？

RC：这个吗…我不觉得史蒂文斯(Wallace Stevens)怎么样，我喜欢威廉姆斯（William Carlos Williams）、弗罗斯特（Robert Frost）和许多现代诗人，如金内尔（Galway Kinnell）、默温（W.S. Merwin）、休斯（Ted Hughes）、C. K. 威廉姆斯(C.K. Williams)和哈斯（Robert Hass）。目前美国诗歌界正在经历一个文艺复兴。散文界也一样，在短篇小说方面更尤为明显。

CG: 能否举例说明？

RC：目前美国好的作品层出不穷，是作家的大好时光。短篇小说卖的不错，有很多年轻有为的作家。我最近编辑了一本选集，《1986年美国最佳短篇小说选》，发现了许多我过去从来没听说过的作家。他们都非常好，现代作家中我喜欢的有福特(Richard Ford)和沃尔夫(Tobias Wolff)，他们都是一流的作家。菲利普斯(Jayne Anne Phillips)的一些小说也很好。贝蒂(Ann Beattie) 、汉纳(Barry Hannah) 、佩利(Grace Paley) 、布罗契（Harold Brodkey）、厄普代克(John Updike)的一些小说，英国佬麦克尤恩(Ian McEwan)，我喜欢一个叫亨佩尔(Amy Hempel)的非常年轻的作家的小说，还有五十年代住在法国的叶兹(Richard Yates)。

CG：你有写长篇的打算吗？

RC：这个嘛，也许会吧。我现在可以写我想写的东西，而不仅仅是短篇小说了。我目前有再出一本短篇小说集的合同，其中的大部分已完成，预计明年一月份出版。这件事做完后再说吧。我的第一部短篇集出版后，所有的人都劝我写部长篇，压力很大，我甚至接受了一部长篇的定金……但是，我还是写我的短篇。哦，我真的不知道，不管怎样，我打算写一个稍稍长点的故事……，它有可能衍变成一部长篇。但我目前没有写长篇的冲动。我只写我想写的东西，我喜欢我现在拥有的自由。我在写些诗和散文，也写些自传性的随笔，写些与我的老师加德纳（John Gardner）以及我父亲有关的事情。也写我在1977年克服掉的的酗酒问题。目前我的小说卖的不错，出版商对我很满意。一切都很好。

CG：你后期的作品反而比你的第一部作品集先翻译成法文，对此你有何看法？

RC：好处是《大教堂》里的故事更加成熟了，而且，这本新书还会让一些读者去读早先出版的《当我们谈论爱情时我们在谈论什么》。到底怎么样，我也说不清楚……不过我想出版商作的决定是明智的。

CG：这么说你目前作品和早期作品的写作方法有所变化？

RC：是的，非常大。我的风格变得丰满了，也更加宽容了。在我的第二本集子《当我们谈论爱情时我们在谈论什么》里，故事都压缩得很短，不带感情色彩。在新出的《大教堂》里，小说的广度增加了，他们变得更丰满和有力了，展得更加开了，同时也更乐观了。

CG：你是故意这么做的吗？

RC：不，不是故意的。我没有计划这样做。我生活的环境发生了变化，我戒了酒，也许我年龄大了后反而更加乐观了，我也说不清楚。但我认为一个作家的变化应该是顺其自然的，而不是决定要这么做。所以，当我写完一本书后，在接下来的六个月里，除了少量的诗歌和散文，我什么都不写。

CG：在写小说集时，你是写的时候就计划好整个集子？还是分别地考虑每篇小说？

RC：我先想好整个集子的轮廓，然后一点一点地写，最后集子就成形了。

CG：你怎样选择小说集的题目？

RC：通常是里面最好的一篇小说的题目，同时也是最激动人心的。《当我们谈论爱情时我们在谈论什么》就是一个让人忍不住想看的题目。

CG：你最中意的小说有哪几部？

RC：《大教堂》，《有益的小事》。有很多小说我现在已经不喜欢了，但我不告诉你是哪些。我很想出本小说选，但肯定不包括我所有的小说。

CG：《有益的小事》是你改写早期的一部小说《洗澡》的结果，那部小说被收集在《当我们谈论爱情时我们在谈论什么》里。

RC：是的，《洗澡》曾登在一本杂志上，并得了个我已忘记叫什么的奖【二】。但这部小说让我难以释怀，总觉得没写完，有的地方没写透。当我在写《大教堂》这部小说集时(这是我写的最快的一部小说集，我用了不到十八个月就完成了)，我感到自己发生了一些变化，《大教堂》这部小说与我过去写的东西完全不一样，我内心处于一种宽容的阶段，回过头来看《洗澡》这部小说时，发现它像一幅没画完的画。所以对它进行了改写，它现在看上去好多了，有个好莱坞的家伙甚至据此拍了部电影。澳大利亚人不甘落后，他们以《羽毛》为蓝本，也拍了部电影。我看了第一部，很不错。第二部也看了，他们在里面放了孔雀，一副牙齿，非常滑稽。

CG：能否谈谈你小说的结尾？比如《大教堂》的结尾。

RC：故事中的男主角对盲人有很大的偏见。但他在变化，在成长。我过去从来没写过这样的小说。这是我在完成《当我们谈论爱情时我们在谈论什么》这本集子，又过了六个月以后写下的第一部小说。我写这部小说时，我有种与以往不同的感觉，一种真实的冲动，不是在写所有小说时都会有这种冲动的。我感到我触摸到了一种新的东西，所以很兴奋。一个能看见的人的观点发生了变化，他把自己放在盲人的位子上来想问题。这部小说肯定了一些东西，是个积极的故事，为此我非常喜欢它。有人说这个故事暗喻一些东西，如艺术、创作等……但其实不是那样，我只是在想象握着一双盲人的手时的感觉，全靠想象，过去我从来没有这样做过，这是个不一般的发现。在写《有益的小事》时也一样，这对父母和面包师坐在了一起，我不想宣称这部小说净化了灵魂，但它的结尾是正面的，这对夫妇终于能够接受他们孩子已死这个事实，这是积极的，有了某种程度的沟通。这两个故事都以积极的调子结尾，我很喜欢。如果这两部小说能持久下去，我会很高兴。

CG：个人经历在你的小说里重要吗？

RC：对我所喜欢的作家莫伯桑和契可夫来说，小说总得来源于某个地方。在我乐意写的小说里，总有些来自现实世界的蛛丝马脚。

CG：你基于此来写作，但你觉得你的自传会帮助读者理解你的作品吗？

RC：完全不会。我仅仅采用了个人经历的某些元素，像一个画面，一句听来的话，看见的一个东西，做过的一件事。我把它们转化成不同的东西。是会有点个人经历的影子，更多的则是想象，至少我希望是这样。这些能激发出像罗斯，托尔斯泰，莫伯桑和其他一些我喜欢的作家火花来的元素是存在的，小说不可能是空穴来风，必须要有个火花。我对这样的小说才会感兴趣。比如《肥》这篇小说，我太太，我的第一任太太做过女招待，她有天晚上回来后告诉我，她接待了一个巨胖的男主顾，他在提到自己时用的是复数：“我们想再要点面包……我们就要那个特价的甜食。”那句话对我触动很大，我觉得这很不一般。这就是我写那部小说的火花。尽管我好几年后才写了那部小说，但我一直没有忘记我太太讲的那件事。后来，当我开始写这部小说时，我问自己，用什么方法来讲这个故事最好。我有意地以一个女招待，而不是我太太的观点来写这个故事。

GC：那个故事的结尾，那位女子说她的生活一定会改变，请解释一下含义？

RC：我不想作解释。也许我只是想加些积极的东西而已。

CG：这是个用现在时态写的故事。

RC：是的，似乎那个时态最合适。我去年发表在《纽约人》上面的四，五部小说，都采用了现在时态，我不知道自己为什么要那样做，这是个不知道为什么的决定。有时候决定是由决定自己做出来的，我不想让你觉得这里面有什么奥妙，但有时事情就是这样的。

CG：你尝试用美国方言写作吗？

RC：当然。有人说我的耳朵对对话很敏感，我其实知道大家并不像我写的那样说话。正如海明威，别人也说他有副好耳朵，但他写的对话都是自己发明的，现实中的人根本就不会那么说话，这是个节奏问题。

CG：对话在你的小说里有多重要？

RC：非常重要。它对情节的发展和角色的说明都有帮助。我不喜欢人物无来由地说话，但我喜欢不认真听对方说话的人之间的对话。

CG：你能谈谈你的主题吗？

RC：一个作家应该说出对他来说是重要的东西。如你所知，我在大学里前后教了十五年的书，我还在大学里干过其他工作，但我没有写过一部与大学有关的小说，因为那段经历在我的感情生命上没有留下任何痕迹。我总是回到我年轻时经历过的人和事，那些人和事对我影响很深……我最近写的一些小说涉及到经理（比如发表在《纽约人》上面的《不管谁睡了这张床》，那里面的人所谈论的东西，是我早期小说里的人物从来不谈论的），还涉及到商人等。但我小说中的人物大多穷困潦倒，对生活充满困惑。真的，经济情况是很重要的……虽然我不觉得自己是个有政治倾向的作家，我还是受到美国右翼评论家的攻击。他们批评我没有给美国涂脂抹粉，说我不够乐观，专写一些不成功的人的故事，但这些人的经历和那些成功者的一样有价值。我把失业，经济和婚姻上问题当成生活中不可避免的一部分，人们总在担心他们的房租，孩子，以及家庭生活上的问题，这才是最本质的东西，是百分之八，九十，或上帝才知道多少的人的生活。我写这群不被注意的人的生活，没有人会为他们说话，我可以算作一个见证人。此外，我本人就过了很长时间那样的生活。我不把自己看成他们的代言人，只是他们生活的见证人。我是一个作家。

CG：你是怎样写你的小说？又怎样来结尾的？

RC：对于结尾，一个作家要有戏剧感。你不会奇迹般的来到结尾，你在不停地修改中找到它。我一般修改十五到二十遍，我保留所有版本……早先不这样，现在这样做是为了收集我的书的人。我喜欢写作过程中的体力劳动，我没有文字处理机，但我的打字机可以擦去写错的东西……我总是一遍又一遍的修改。托尔斯泰的《战争与和平》改写了七遍，他在送去印刷前的一秒钟还在修改。我见过与此有关的照片，我喜欢这种认真的工作态度。

CG：这么说来你肯定不喜欢凯鲁亚克（Kerouac）, 他宣称他的《在路上》是在一大卷打字纸上一气呵成的。

RC：对。尽管我喜欢《在路上》，我并不喜欢他的其他作品，它们简直没法读，经不住时间的考验。

CG：也许凯鲁亚克没说真话？

RC：就是，作家都是谎话大王（笑）。

CG：包括你本人？

RC：（笑）我的天啦，不包括我，我是唯一的例外。

CG：你对什么样的作家感兴趣？

RC：当我教学时，我选择我所喜欢并对我的成长起过作用的作家。福楼拜（Flaubert）的传奇和书信，莫伯桑（Maupassant）（我曾为他写了首叫做《问他》的诗），契可夫（Chekhov），奥康纳（Flannery O'Connor），加斯（William Gass）的一部长篇和他写的评论文章，韦尔蒂（Eudora Welty）……

CG：还有别人常把你和他作比较的海明威？

RC：我读了很多海明威，我在十九，二十岁时，读了大量的书，海明威是其中一部分。海明威的作品比我那时读的其他作家（如福克纳）的作品更能吸引我。毫无疑义，我从海明威那儿学到很多东西，特别是他早期的作品。我喜欢他写的东西，如果把我和他作比较，我感到很荣幸。对我而言，海明威的句子很有诗意，节奏抑扬顿挫。我可以反复地读他早期的作品，发现它们永远是那么的不同寻常，它们总能燃起我的激情，真是不可思议。他说过散文像建筑一样，巴洛克时代已经结束。我觉得他说的很对。福楼拜说过类似的话，他说词就像砌墙的砖石一样，对此我百分之百的赞同。我不喜欢粗心大意的作家，他们用的词滑溜的放都放不住。

CG：你自己总在说秘密，但从不告诉别人那是什么，读者常会因为你简短突兀的手法而气馁。比如小说结尾处的断裂，常让读者摸不着头脑。

RC：我自己都不知道我是怎样写小说的。我没有任何计划，只是写。有些作家说小说的情节应该发展，达到高潮，等等。对此我不太清楚，只是尽自己最大的努力写出最好的小说……小说本身应该能说明些什么，当然不是所有一切，小说里总该有些神秘的东西。我并不是想让读者摸不着头脑，不过这倒是真的，我常常制造出一种期待，但又不去实现它。

CG：你的小说里常出现有窥阴癖的人，他们经常窥探别人，对左邻右舍的生活着迷？

RC：对。但可以说所有的小说都这样。写作本身就是说一些你在正常情况下不会对他人说的东西（笑）。《邻居》里有窥阴癖者，《主意》里面也有，有年纪大的夫妇，也有性冲动。《邻居》里的那对夫妻，在参观了邻居居住的公寓后，变得亢奋起来。

CG：你小说中的性似乎都很单调，要不就是因窥探别人的私生活而亢奋。如《羽毛》和《邻居》……

RC：我的小说里有关性的描写本来就不多，故事都很冷漠，性也一样，是冷淡的，不是炽热的。我的小说里如果有性，大多都发生在幕后或者是一种机械的……我真的不知道。

CG：在《主意》这部小说里，你把偷看邻居的夫妇和水池下面的蚂蚁这两件似乎不相关的事情扯到一起。你总把看上去没联系的事情揉合起来。

RC：是的，但它们之间的联系不仅是可能的，而且是必然的，我不知道怎样把它说清楚。再强调一遍，我写小说时事先并没有一个计划。我在写那部小说时，并不知道我会把蚂蚁加进去，我在开始写的时候不知道最后会写成什么样子。在这方面，我有一个非常杰出的榜样，当海明威被问及他将如何为他在写的一部小说结尾时，他回答说：“我不知道。”奥康纳也说过，写作是个发现过程，有时她在写上一句时，并不知道下一句会是什么。但如我前面所说，你不会奇迹般地到达结尾，你必须要有戏剧感，结尾往往是在写的过程中，更确切地说是在改写过程中发现的，因为我是改写的信奉者。在改写的过程中，故事的主题，还是说对故事的把握吧，我对主题这个词有点过敏，对故事的把握是在改写过程中逐步显露出来。

CG：你对法国目前的的写作状况了解吗？

RC：嗯，不太了解……自从“新小说”【三】后就没怎么关心过。（这是件好事，对不对？）。但好像短篇小说目前在法国不太流行，我听说去年一年只出了十本小说集。怎么回事，你们可是莫伯桑的后代呀！

【一】 本文是法国Editions Mazarine在出版雷蒙德•卡佛的第三部短篇小说集，《请你安静点，可以吗？》法文版前，评论家克劳蒂•格里玛（Claude Grimal）对卡佛的采访录。原文为法文。译者根据美国哈特福德大学威廉姆•斯图尔（William L. Stull）教授的英文译文《Stories Don’t Come Out of Thin Air》而翻译成中文。 【二】 《洗澡》曾获得哥伦比亚杂志的卡洛斯•富恩特斯（Carlos Fuentes ）小说奖。―――译者注。 【三】 法国新小说派诞生于20世纪50至60年代间。以罗伯•格里耶、娜塔丽•萨洛特、米歇尔•布陶、克洛德•西蒙、马格丽特•杜拉斯等为代表。他们公开宣称与19世纪现实主义的文学传统决裂，探索新的小说表现手法和语言，刻画前人所未发现的客观存在的内心世界。这一文学流派在50年代刚出现时被认为是“古怪”、“荒诞”、“好像发精神病”。但到了60年代，新小说派已经蔚然成为一大文学流派。―――译者注。

Stories Don't Come Out of Thin Air Claude Grimal ________________________________________ Having published French editions of Cathedral (1985) andWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1986), Editions Mazarine is now publishing Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, a third collection of short stories by Raymond Carver. This was Carver's first major work. It was published in the United States in 1976 and nominated for a National Book Award in 1977. The book contains twenty-one stories, each running about ten pages. In the first one, "Fat," a waitress tells two relatively uninterested friends, Rudy and Rita, that she had a fat man for a customer, the fattest man she had ever seen. "That's a funny story, Rita says, but I can see she doesn't know what to make of it." The reader feels a little bit like Rita. The characters drink tea, go to bed. The story ends with an unexpectedly optimisitic (?) phrase from the narrator: "My life is going to change. I feel it." In the second story, "The Idea," a couple observes a neighbor who goes out in his garden at night to watch his own wife undress in the bedroom. Later the same evening the narrator--the voyeuristic woman who with her spouse has observed the voyeuristic husband across the way--sprays insecticide on armies of ants that have appeared under the sink in her kitchen. All the while she fumes, "That trash. . . . The idea!" In "Put Yourself in My Shoes," the Myerses pay a visit to a couple whose house they had rented, furnished, for a seinester. The couple, on the pretext that Mr. Myers is a writer, tell him and his wife strange stories, then accuse them of having ransacked their belongings, of having messed up or lost some of them. Through it all Myers bubbles over with laughter. When the Myerses take their leave, Paula Myers exclaims, "They were scary." Her husband watches the road in silence: "He was at the very end of a story." Carver's characters, drawn from middle America, are threatened in their work, their love lives, their equilibrium, their identity. They are always caught at a moment of truth: revelation, "dis-ease," anguish, fascination. These feelings remain incomprehensible, so inexplicable that it is safe to say Carver's subtle and precise art is an art of effects, never of causes. Carver's sentences, straightforward and direct, fly to the mark, in stories that the author says "ought to leave the reader with a great sense of mystery, but never a feeling of frustration." Raymond Carver read several of his short stories at the Village Voice Bookstore (6, rue Princess) in April 1987. The bookstore will host him again in June for a reading of his poetry. Claude Grimal: Why did you choose to write short stories rather than, say, novels? Raymond Carver: Life circumstances. I was very young. I got married at eighteen. My wife was seventeen; she was pregnant. I had no money at all and we had to work all the time and bring up our two children. It was also necessary that I go to college to learn how to write, and it was simply impossible to start something that would have taken me two or three years. So I set myself to writing poems and short stories. I could sit down at a table, start and finish in one sitting. CG: Do you consider yourself as good a poet as a short story writer? And what relationship do you see between your poetry and your prose? RC: My stories are better known, but, myself, I love my poetry. Relationship? My stories and my poems are both short. (Laughs.) I write them the same way, and I'd say the effects are similar. There's a compression of language, of emotion, that isn't to be found in the novel. The short story and the poem, I've often said, are closer to each other than the short story and the novel. CG: You approach the problem of image the same way? RC: Oh, image. You know, I don't feel, as someone said to me, that I center my poems or my stories on an image. The image emerges from the story, not the other way around. I don't think in terms of image when write. CG: In what poetic tradition do you place yourself? RC: Let's see . . . I don't care for Wallace Stevens. I like William Carlos Williams. I like Robert Frost, and lots of contemporaries: Galway Kinnell, W.S. Merwin, Ted Hughes, C.K. Williams, Robert Hass, lots of contemporary poets. There's a real renaissance in the United States right now in poetry. And in prose too, especially among short story writers. CG: For example? RC: There's lots of very good work going on right now in America. It's a good time for writers. Short stories are selling well. There's an enormous amount of young talent. I edited an anthology, The Best American Short Stories 1986, and discovered writers I'd never heard of, all of them very good. Among the contemporaries I admire there's Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, who's a first-rate writer, Jayne Anne Phillips for some of her stories, Ann Beattie, Barry Hannah, Grace Paley, Harold Brodkey, certain stories by John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates. The Englishman Ian McEwan. There's also a very young writer some of whose stories I like, Amy Hempel. And Richard Yates, who lived in France in the fifties. CG: Are you thinking about writing a novel? RC: Well, nowadays I can write what I want, not just stories, so maybe I'll do it. I'm under contract for another short story collection. Most of them are written, and it will come out in January. After that, I'll see. After my first collection, everyone wanted me to write a novel. There were lots of pressures. I even accepted an advance to write a novel . . . and instead I wrote short stories. Oh, I don't know, I'm thinking about a longer story in any case . . . which might turn into a novel. But I don't feel any compulsion to write a novel. I'll write what I want to write. I like the freedom I have have now. I've written poetry and essays, autobiographical essays too, on John Gardner, who was my teacher, on my father, on my problems with alcohol that I overcame in 1977. At the moment the publisher is very pleased; my stories are selling well. Things are great. CG: What do you make of the fact that in France your later short story collections were translated before your first one? RC: Well, the advantage is that the stories in Cathedral are more developed and that this new book will attract readers who wouldn't have been drawn to What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. In the end, I don't know . . . Yes, I think the publisher made a good decision. CG: So you think that between your first book and your latest you've changed your way of writing? RC: Yes, very much. My style is fuller, more generous. In my second book, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, the stories were very clipped, very short, very compressed, without much emotion. In my latest book, Cathedral, the stories have more range. They're fuller, stronger, more developed, and more hopeful. CG: Is this something you did intentionally? RC: No, not intentionally. I don't have any program, but the circumstances of my life have changed. I've stopped drinking, and maybe I'm more hopeful now that I'm older. I don't know, but I think it's important that a writer change, that there be a natural development, and not a decision. So when I finish a book, I don't write anything for six months, except a little poetry or an essay. CG: When you write your stories, do you write with the idea of a set, a whole that will be a collection? Or do you consider them independently of one another? RC: I think of them as a set. I write them and little by little the idea of a whole takes shape. CG: How do you choose the titles of your collections? RC: It's generally the title of the best story. But it's also the most exciting title. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is an irresistible title. CG: Which stories are your favorites? RC: "Cathedral." "A Small, Good Thing." There are lots of stories I don't like anymore, but I won't tell you which ones. I'd like to publish a "selected stories," but certainly not a complete collection of my stories. CG: "A Small, Good Thing" is the result of rewriting an earlier story, "The Bath," that's inWe Talk About When We Talk About Love. RC: Yes. "The Bath" appeared in a magazine. It won I no longer know what prize, but the story bothered me. It didn't seem finished to me. There were still things to say, and while I was writing Cathedral (I never wrote a book more quickly than that one, let it be said in passing; it didn't take me more than eighteen months), things happened for me. The story "Cathedral" seemed to me completely different from everything I'd written before. I was in a period of generosity. I looked at "The Bath" and I found the story was like an unfinished painting. So I went back and rewrote it. It's much better now. Someone's even made a film of it, a fellow from Hollywood. The Australians, too, they've made a film of "Feathers." I've seen the first film and it looked good, as did the second one. They put in the peacock, the set of teeth. It's very funny. CG: Could you talk about the endings of your stories? The ending of "Cathedral," for instance? RC: Well, the character there is full of prejudices against blind people. He changes; he grows. I'd never written a story like that. It's the first story I wrote after finishing What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and I'd let six months go by. Then, when I wrote that story, I felt it was truly different. I felt a real impetus in writing it, and that doesn't happen with every story. But I felt I'd tapped into something. I felt it was very exciting. The sighted man changes. He puts himself in the blind man's place. The story affirms something. It's a positive story and I like it a lot for that reason. People say it's a metaphor for some other thing, for art, for making . . . But no, I thought about the physical contact of the blind man's hand on his hand. It's all imaginary. Nothing like that ever happened to me. Well, there was an extraordinary discovery. The same thing happened in "A Small, Good Thing." The parents are with the baker. I wouldn't want to say this story lifts up the soul, but even so, it ends on a positive note. The couple is able to accept the death of their child. That's positive. There's a communion of sorts. The two stories end on a positive note, and I like that very much. I'll be very happy if these two stories last. CG: Is the autobiographical element important in your stories? RC: It is for the writers I like most: Maupassant, Chekhov. Stories have to come from somewhere. In any case, those that I like do. There have to be lines of reference coming from the real world. CG: That's true for you when you write, but do you think your biography can help the reader? RC: No, not at all. It's only that I use certain autobiographical elements, somethingÑan image, a sentence I heard, something I saw, that I did, and then I try to transform that into something else. Yes, there's a little autobiography and, I hope, a lot of imagination. But there's always a little element that throws off a spark, for Philip Roth or Tolstoy, for Maupassant, for the writers I like. Stories don't come out of thin air. There's a spark. And that's the kind of story that most interests me. For example, for "Fat," my wife, my first wife, worked as a waitress and she came home one night and told me she had had an enormous man for a customer who spoke of himself in the first person plural: "We would like some more bread . . . We are going to have the dessert Special." That struck me; I found that extraordinary. And that was the spark that gave rise to the story. I wrote that story years later, but I never forgot what my wife had told me. Much later, then, I sat down to work and asked myself what would be the best way to tell this story. It was a conscious decision. I decided to write from the viewpoint of the waitress, not my wife, but the waitress. CG: And the end of the story, where the woman says her life is going to change, how do you explain that? RC: I don't explain it. There too I wanted to put in something positive, maybe. CG: It's a story in the present tense. RC: Yes. That was the tense that seemed most appropriate to me. The four or five stories I published last year in The New Yorker are in the present tense. I don't know why. It's a decision I make without knowing why. Part of the decision makes itself, but I wouldn't want to lead you to believe it's something mysterious. That's the way it is. CG: Do you try to write in the American idiom? RC: Sure. It's sometimes said that I have a good ear for dialogue, and so forth. I certainly don't think people talk the way I write. It's like Hemingway. It's also said that he had a good ear, but he invented it all. People don't talk that way at all. It's a question of rhythm. CG: What importance do you attach to dialogue in your stories? RC: It's important. It ought to advance the plot or illuminate character, and so on. I don't like people to talk for no reason, but I really like dialogue between people who aren't listening to each other. CG: Could you talk about your themes? RC: A writer ought to speak about things that are important to him. As you know, I've taught in universities, in fact for some fifteen years. I had time there for other work, and I never wrote a single story about university life because it's an experience that left no mark on my emotional life. I tend to go back to the time and the people I knew well when I was younger and who made a very strong impression on me . . . Some of my recent stories deal with executives. (For example, that one in The New Yorker, "Whoever Was Using This Bed," where the people discuss things the ¥charaters in my earlier stories would never discuss.) He's a businessman, and so on. But most of the people in my stories are poor and bewildered, that's true. The economy, that's important . . . I don't feel I'm a political writer and yet I've been attacked by right-wing critics in the U.S.A. who blame me for not painting a more smiling picture of America, for not being optimistic enough, for writing stories about the people who don't succeed. But these lives are as valid as those of the go-getters. Yes, I take unemployment, money problems, and marital problems as givens in life. People worry about their rent, their children, their home life. That's basic. That's how 80-90 percent, or God knows how many people live. I write stories about a submerged population, people who don't always have someone to speak for them. I'm sort of a witness, and, besides, that's the life I myself lived for a long time. I don't see myself as a spokesman but as a witness to these lives. I'm a writer. CG: How do you write your stories and how do you bring them to a close? RC: For the ending, a writer has to have sense of drama. You don't miraculously arrive at the ending. You find it in revising the story. And me, I revise fifteen, twenty times. I keep the different versions . . . didn't do it in the past but I do it now because of the book collectors. I like the physical labor of writing. I don't have a word processor, but I have a typist who gives me back clean corrected texts . . . then I revise them and revise them. Tolstoy rewrote War and Peace seven times and he kept revising right up to the last minute before printing. I've seen photographs of the proofs! I like this concern for work well done. CG: Then you surely don't like Kerouac, who claimed to have written On the Road in a single stretch at the typewriter, on a huge roll of paper? RC: Yes, though I like On the Road a lot. But not the rest of his work. It's unreadable. It's aged very badly. CG: And maybe Kerouac was lying. RC: Yes, writers are big liars. (Laughs.) CG: Yourself lncluded? RC: (Laughs.) My God no, not me. I'm the sole exception. CG: What writers interest you? RC: When I was teaching, I chose writers I liked and who were useful to me as a young writer. Flaubert, his Tales and his letters, Maupassant (about whom I've written a poem, "Ask Him"), Chekhov, Flannery O'Connor, a novel by William Gass and his critical essays, Eudora Welty . . . . CG: And Hemingway, with whom you're so often compared? RC: I've read a lot of him. When I was 19 or 20 years old I read a lot, and Hemingway was part of what I read. Hemingway interested me more than, for instance, Faulkner, whom I was reading at the same time. I'm sure I learned from Hemingway, no doubt about it, and especially from his early work. I like his work. If I'm compared with him, I feel honored. For me, Hemingway's sentences are poetry. There's a rhythm, a cadence. I can reread his early stories and I find them as extraordinary as ever. They fire me up as much as ever. It's marvelous writing. He said prose is architecture and the Baroque age is over. That suits me. Flaubert said close to the same thing, that words are like stones with which one builds a wall. I believe that completely. I don't like careless writers whose words have no moorings, are too slippery. CG: But you, you talk a lot about secrets and you never say what they are. There's a certain frustration for the reader because of the abruptness, let's say the disconnection at the endings of your stories. You frustrate your readers. RC: I don't even know if I know how I write stories. I write. I don't have a program. There are people who are capable of saying a story has to progress, reach a high point, and so on. Myself, I don't know. I write the best kind of story I can write . . . The story ought to reveal something, but not everything. There should be a certain mystery in the story. No, I don't want the reader to be frustrated, but it's true I create an expectation and don't fulfill it. CG: Do you think there's voyeurism in your stories? There are often people who spy on other people, who are fascinated by the life of their neighbors, and so on. RC: That's true. But it can be said that all fiction is like that. To write is to say things one wouldn't normally say to people. (Laughs.) In "Neighbors" there's voyeurism, and in "The Idea," too, with the older couple, the sexual charge. Yes indeed. And in "Neighbors," after seeing the neighbors' apartment the couple is sexually excited. CG: The sex in your stories seems humdrum or aroused by observing the private life of others. For example, in "Feathers," in "Neighbors" . . . . RC: But there isn't a lot of it, of sex in my stories. The stories are pretty cool, and so is the sex. It's cool, not hot. It's true that the sex in my stories, when it's there, takes place offstage or mechanically . . . But I don't know. CG: In "The Idea" you put two things together that don't seem to go together: the couple who spy on their next-door neighbors and the ants under the sink. You put things together that don't appear to have any connection. RC: Yes. But the connection seems not only possible but inevitable. I don't know how to explain it. Once again, I don't have a program when I write these stories. I began the story without knowing I was going to put in the ants. When I begin I don't know where I'm going. But I have illustrious predecessors in this regard. When Hemingway was asked one day if he knew how he was going to end a story when he was starting it, he said, "No, I have no idea." Flannery O'Connor also said that, that writing is discovery. She didn't know what was going to happen from one sentence to another. But as I said, you don't miraculously arrive at the ending. You have to have a sense of drama. And you discover the ending in the writing, or rather in the rewriting, since I firmly believe in rewriting. In rewriting, the themeÑor rather, since the word theme makes me a little uncomfortable, let's say the sense of the storyÑin rewriting, the sense of the story, then, changes a little each time. CG: Are you at all current on what's being written in France? RC: Hmm, no . . . not since the "new novel." (That's good, isn't it?). But it looks like short stories aren't popular in France. I was told that last year there were barely ten books of stories published. What's going on? With an ancestor like Maupassant! Interview translated from "L'Histoire ne descend pas des nuages," Europe [Paris] 733 (May 1990): 72-79. Headnote translated from a shorter previously published version of the interview: "Raymond Carver qui écrit des histoires sur 'les gens qui ne réussissent pas'" La puinzaine littéraire [Paris] 485 (1-15 May 1987): 8.