Gregory P. Lainsbury M.A., The University of Calgary, 1988 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of ENGLISH @ Gregory P. Lainsbury 1996 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY April 1996 All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. Nationai library Bibliothtque nationale 1*1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Direction des acquisitions et Bibliographic Services Branch des services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottav~a,Ontario Ottawa (Ontario) KIA OF44 KIA ON4 Your 11le Votre rhference Our file Nofre r&f&reoce The author has granted an L'auteur a accorde une licence irrevocable non-exclusive licence irrbvocable et non exclusive allowing the National Library of permettant a la Bibliothhque Canada to reproduce, loan, nationale du Canada de distribute or sell copies of reproduire, pr&er, distribuer ou his/her thesis by any means and vendre des copies de sa these in any form or format, making de quelque maniere et sous this thesis available to interested quelque forme que ce soit pour persons. mettre des exemplaires de cette these a la disposition des personnes intbressees. The author retains ownership of L'auteur conserve la propriete du the copyright in hislher thesis. droit d'auteur qui protege sa Neither the thesis nor substantial these. Ni la these ni des extraits extracts from it may be printed or substantiels de celle-ci ne otherwise reproduced without doivent Etre imprimes ou his/her permission. autrement reproduits sans son autsrisation. ISBN 0-612-16961-8 PARTIAL COPYRIGHT LICENSE I hereby grant to Simon Fraser Universitv the right to lend illy thesis, pro'ect or extended essay (the title ofmhich is shown below) to users of' the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. I further agree that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by me or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Title u+f Tffesis isject/%xtendeb Essay Author: (signature) (date) APPROVAL NAME: Gregory P. Lainsbury DEGREE: Doctor of Philosophy (English) TITLE OF THESIS: The Carver Chronotope: Contextualizing Raymond Carver Examining Committee: Chair: June Sturrock Peter Buitenhuis Senior Supervisor Professor Emeritus of English Jerald Zaslove Professor of English -- Tam Grieve Assistavzl Professor of English M.D. Fellman internal External Examiner Professor of History - Michael Zeitlin Efierna! Examiner Associate Professor of English University of BritishColumbia Date Approved: April 4, 199 6 ABSTRACT Raymond Carver's fiction is a literary representation of the middle-:lass consciousness of diminishment in the late capitalist America of the 1970s and 1980s. "The Carver Chronotope" uses a central concept of Bakhtin's novelistics to formulate a new;y coherent context for understanding the minimalist fiction of Raymond Carver. I begin by briefly describing the critical reception of Carver's work, and then stake out my own intellectual and imaginative territory by asserting that Carver's fiction can be understood as constituting, in its totality, a kind of diffuse, fragmentary, randomly-ordered novel. I reconstruct the figure of the writer who would be capable of producing such a complex text from the few writer-characters who are presented in the work itself, and from elements of the Carver biography. "The Carver Chronotope" traces literary influences and explores the world which the writer wants to tell about; thus, the "Carver Chronotope" is about communication. I show the connections between various levels of territorialization within the chronotope, focusing on the relationships between characters and the kinds of physical environments they inhabit, the relationships between characters and their own bodily existences, and the relationships between characters and the kinds of families in which they are raised. DEDICATION This work is dedicated to Christine Frederick, who first suggested that I should write on Carver, and who has stuck with me through the whole thing. The chronotope is "a formally constitutive category of literature . [within which] spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history." -M.M. Bakhtin, "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel. " "The short story writer's task is to invest the glimpse with all that is in his power. He'll bring his intelligence and literary skill to bear (his talent), his sense of proportion and, sense of the fitness of things: of how things out there really are and how he sees those things--like no one else sees them. And this is done through the use of clear and specific language, language used so as to bring to life the details that will light up the story for the reader. For the details to be concrete and convey meaning, the language must be accurate and precisely given. The words can be so precise they may even sound flat; but they can still carry; if used right, they can hit all the notes." -Raymond Carver, "On Writing" TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page ....................... .... .................................................................................. i .. Approval Page.. ...................................................................................................... -11 ... Abstract.. ................................................................................................................. .ni Dedication ...............................................................................................................iv Quotations................................................................................................................ .v Table of Contents .................................................................................................. vi I. Introduction to the Carver Chronotope: Critical Context.. .............,.l II. The Cultural and Aesthetic Construction of the Writer in a Depressed America.. ............................................................................... -21 A. The Figure of the Writer in the Carver Chronotope........... 21 B. The Writer as Apprentice. ............................................................29 111. Wilderness and the Natural in Hemingway and Carver: Degradation of the Idyll........................................................ 48 A. Wilderness and the Natural ......................................................... 48 B. The Wilderness Idyll in Herningway's Stories .....................52 C. Carver Rewriting Herningway : Idyllic Wilderness in "PastoralIt I 11The Cabin"............................................................ 72 D. Treatment of the Wilderness Idyll in Other Stories by Raymond Carver.. ....................................................-9 I E. Supplement: A Brief Consideration of the - - Wilderness Idyll in Raymond Carver's Poetry ..................125 IV. Alienation and the Grotesque Body in the Fiction of FI anz Kafka and Raymond Carver.... .. .I 32 V. The Function of Family in the Carver Chronotope ...................... 193 A. Introduction: Family Life .,...............................-......................... 193 B. Relations Between Children and Parents... .204 C. Relations Between Parents and Children .............................249 D. Coda: Writer and Wife .................................................................. -390 . VI. Bibliography..... ...... ..... ... ... ... ...... .. ..... ... ... .. .. ... ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .39:).., 1 I. Introduction to the Carver Chronotope: Critical Context To begin a project such as this--an extended meditation on the significance of a contemporary writer--requires something like a leap of faith, a sincere belief that the object of study merits the work involved in the construction of a point of view regarding this writer's contribution to his or her national, and perhaps world, literature. The study of contemporary writers is especially perilous to the scholar who would like to think that one's work has some lasting contribution to make to the understanding of a certain moment in history, since there is no guarantee that future readers will consider the contribution of a particular writer, within the context of a future which one cannot possibly predict or anticipate with any certainty, to be as significant as one does in the discrete historical moment of the contemporary scholar. So this is where one must begin--asserting a belief that the writer one has chosen to study is indeed worthy of that study Raymond Carver (1938-88) is oftet credited with single- handedly inspiring a renaissance of the short story in America, and with giving voice to a submerged population, who before his time had not been adequately recognized In the cultural space of American literature. Carver devoted his whole career as a writer to working within two genres--the short story and the lyric poem --both of which are, within the context of late twentieth century literature and culture, assuredly minor artistic genres.