'Do You See What I'm Saying?': The Inadequacy of Explanation and the Uses of Story in the Short Fiction of Raymond Carver

Abstract

Raymond Carver's distrust of explanation and his respect for the mysterious nature of story is firmly grounded in the tradition of short fiction from the cryptic oral folk tale to the perverse formal patterning of Poe and the stylized realism of Chekhov and Hemingway. An understanding of Carver's dependence on pure narrative, from his elliptical early stories in "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" through his more 'generous' stories in "Cathedral," provides a context for responding to the common criticism that his characters are inarticulate and insufficiently realized and for mediating the debate about the differences between the stories in his first two collections and those in his last two.