Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. | |||||
小瑞蒙·剋列維·卡佛 | |||||
閱讀雷蒙德·卡佛 Raymond Carver在诗海的作品!!! |
中文名: 雷蒙德·卡佛
外文名: Raymond Carver
國籍: 美國
出生地: 美國 俄勒岡州 剋拉茨卡尼
出生日期: 1938年5月25日
逝世日期: 1988年8月2日
職業: 小說傢,詩人
畢業院校: 愛荷華大學
代表作品: 《大教堂》,《請你安靜些,好嗎?》,《憤怒的季節》
人物介紹
雷蒙德·卡佛(Raymond Carver,1938—1988),美國當代著名短篇小說傢、詩人,1938年5月25日出生於俄勒岡州剋拉斯坎尼鎮,1988年8月2日因肺癌去世。高中畢業後,即養傢糊口,艱難謀生,業餘學習寫作。1966年,獲衣阿華大學文學碩士學位。1967年,作品第一次入選《美國年度最佳小說選》;70年代後寫作成就漸受矚目,1979年獲古根海姆奬金,並兩次獲國傢藝術基金奬金;1983年獲米爾德瑞──哈洛斯特勞斯終生成就奬;1985年獲《詩歌》雜志萊文森奬;1988年被提名為美國藝術文學院院士,並獲哈特弗大學榮譽文學博士學位,同時獲布蘭德斯小說奬。卡佛一生作品以短篇小說和詩為主,還有一部分散文。著作主要包括短篇小說集《請你安靜一下好不好?》(1976年)、《憤怒的季節》(1977年)、《當我們談論愛情時我們在談論什麽》(1981年)、《大教堂》(1983年)、《我打電話的地方》(1988年),詩集《鼕季失眠癥》(1970年)、《鮭魚夜溯》(1976年)《海水交匯的地方》(1985年),《海青色》(1986年),《通往瀑布的新路》(1989年)等。
社會評價
讀雷蒙德·卡佛作品的第一印象,是衆多美國夢的鼓吹者,定然不會喜歡他。在那些保守的批判者看來,他的小說“不夠樂觀”、“集中展現事物的陰暗面”、“寫的不是真正的美國人”,如此等等,一言以蔽之,“沒有給美國塗脂抹粉”。的確,他筆下的小人物能讓第 雷蒙德·卡佛
三世界國傢望“美”興嘆的人找到些許心理平衡:原來美國老百姓也是辛苦工作賺錢養傢,歇下來衹想看電視;他們也做着永遠實現不了的夢,湊合着度過平庸的每一天;他們也外表默不作聲,內心歇斯底裏。 卡佛的小說,乍一看像是流水賬,仔細一看,是寫得挺不錯的流水賬。但他在流水賬中傾註的情緒,是相當有特色的。卡佛與爵士時代的短篇作傢林·拉德納有一點很相似:他也看到平民日常生活的乏味、瑣碎、無聊,背後的愚昧、平庸、悲哀、無奈。衹是他不像拉德納那樣冷嘲熱諷、酣暢淋漓。他認認真真記流水賬,仿佛沒有情緒,內心壓抑的鬱悶不時通過主人公及其難聽的話或歹毒之至的小動作表現出來。 《大教堂》是他最著名的短篇之一。主人公的妻子多年來與一位盲人朋友保持聯繫。一次,盲人朋友終於要來拜訪這對夫婦,妻子興致勃勃,主人公卻非但不激動,反而竭力剋製自己毫無理由的敵意和鄙夷。和其他一些故事一樣,主人公對生活這種無所謂和厭棄相混合的態度,始終是個沒有提示的謎題。除了從卡佛自己的生活經歷入手,恐怕很難找到別的解釋。《大教堂》結尾,主人公在閉着眼睛和盲人一起畫畫的過程中,綳緊的神經終於放鬆下來。不是四兩撥千斤,而是花大量篇幅在天平一端放了過多鬱悶之後,在另一端放一茶匙淡淡的歡欣意思意思。然而,這便是雷蒙德·卡佛。
影響
“極簡主義”“骯髒現實主義”是評論傢給他的定義,反過來,他一點不喜歡這樣的標簽。但是他的確標志着“一種新的小說”、“一種新的語調和文學質地”在美國的出現。正是這種語調與文學質地,深刻影響了日本的村上春樹、中國的作傢王朔、蘇童、韓東、朱文、李洱等。
主要作品
短篇小說集
《請你安靜些,好嗎?》(1976); 《憤怒的季節》(1977); 《當我們談論愛情時,我們在談論什麽》(1981); 《大教堂》(1983); 《何方來電》(1988); 《大象》(1988)。
詩集
《離剋拉馬斯河很近》(1968); 《鼕季失眠癥》(1970); 《鮭魚夜溯》(1976); 《海水交匯的地方》(1985); 《海青色》(1986); 《通往瀑布的新路》(1989)。
卡佛自話
“用普通但準確的語言,去寫普通的事物,並賦予這些普通的事物,以廣阔而驚人的力量,這是可以做到的。寫一句表面上看起來無傷大雅的寒暄,並隨之傳遞給讀者冷徹骨髓的寒意,這是可以做到的。”卡佛這樣寫道,並且身體力行。 “我開始寫東西的時候,期望值很低。在這個國傢裏,選擇當一個短篇小說傢或一個詩人,基本就等於讓自己生活在陰影裏,不會有人註意。” “孩子很小的時候,我們沒錢。我們工作纍得吐了血,我和我愛人都使盡了全力,但生活也沒有任何進展。那時,我一直是幹着一個接一個的狗屁工作。我愛人也一樣。她當招待員或是挨傢挨戶地推銷東西。很多年以後,她終於在高中裏教書了,但那是很多年以後。我則在鋸木廠,加油站,倉庫裏幹過,也當過看門人,送貨員——你隨便說吧,我什麽都幹過。有一年夏天,在加州,我為了養傢,白天給人傢采鬱金香,晚上飯店打烊之後,我給一傢‘免下車餐廳’做清潔,還要清掃停車場。有比寫小說和寫首詩更重要的事情,明白這一點對我來說是很痛苦的,但我衹能接受。要把牛奶和食物放在餐桌上,要交房租,要是非得做出選擇的話,我衹能選擇放棄寫作。” “亨利·米勒四十多歲寫《北回歸綫》的時候,曾經談到,他要在一個藉來的房間裏寫作,隨時他都可能不得不停下手中的筆,因為他坐着的椅子可能要被別人拿走。直到最近為止,這種事態一直是我生活的常態。從我有記憶開始,從我還是個十幾歲的小孩開始,我就要無時無刻不擔心自己身下的椅子隨時都會被人移走。一年又一年,我愛人和我整日奔波,努力保住自己頭頂上的屋頂。我們曾有過夢想,我和我愛人。我們以為我們可以彎下脖子,盡力工作,做所有我們想做的事。但我們想錯了。”
他人評價
李敬澤
(文學評論傢) 卡佛重塑了中國作傢的價值觀 卡佛到底對中國作傢有什麽影響?第一個或者是首要的影響,可能是影響了他們的文學價值觀。關於文學、小說的寫作,什麽值得我們作傢提筆觀察或者是表達,過去的中國作傢受一種潛在的價值觀影響,通常認為是要有希望的,要在他的生活和命運中表達了充分意義的,即使是個倒黴蛋,最後也一定表達了一種希望的姿態,總而言之一定是要有充分意義的東西纔值得寫。 但是到了卡佛這裏,我們看到了另外一種寫作的可能性,或者是看世界的可能性。有些東西實際上是過去我們沒有看到的,有些東西過去被我們原來的價值觀屏蔽掉了。而他提出的是,沒希望的人生是不是就不值得寫?卡佛筆下都是些倒黴的人、失意的人、潦倒的人、不成功的人或者是軟弱的人,醉酒者,通過這些,卡佛為中國作傢打開了眼前一座屏障,讓我們看到了生活、看到了人,或者說我們看到了生活或者人另外一種希望。在這個意義來說,卡佛對中國文學的氣質,或者是看人、看物的廣度上特別的重要。特別對中國上世紀90年代的一些年輕的作傢都有影響,像韓東、蘇童、李洱。 有意思的是卡佛在美國也不被右翼、保守派喜歡,美國的右翼跟我們中國一些人的邏輯是一樣的:難道我們美國人是這樣的,我們美國人天天過着快樂幸福的生活,大傢都很昂揚嚮上,怎麽像你卡佛寫的這樣的。但是正如卡佛所做的那樣,也正如我們很多中國作傢在卡佛的潛在影響下,在80年代末和90年代初期和中期做的那樣,他讓我們看到在我們給定的意義之下,真實的人生,真實的人的痛苦、人的絶望、人的那些在微笑尺度上的掙紮。說到卡佛的極簡主義,很容易被理解為一個修辭手段的問題,事實上,卡佛說到的簡化,絶不僅僅是一個修辭上的簡化。而是一種世界觀,是一個表達對他自身和他所寫那個世界的一些根本看法。意思是說,在人的生命中,在真實的生活處境中,是存在着巨大的沉默的。一種無法用言語表達的傷痛,衹好放到沉默裏。
蘇童
(作傢) 卡佛留下的是文字鍛造的一把匕首 美國作傢中我個人最傾心的是雷蒙德·卡佛,為此,評論傢李陀還曾跟我急,他說,你的短篇不比他差啊。為什麽崇拜他?其實我不是崇拜,而是從中發現了一種自由精神。它吸引我,是因為他在我所有閱讀範疇中,帶給我一種嶄新目光,一個新的切入點。所有雷蒙德·卡佛的小說,你都覺得在記流水賬。照理,記流水賬,水是往低處流的,但他這樣的小說筆法,水是往高處流。我覺得它非常好地解决了我在小說創作中的問題,如何把日常生活與我們所探討的關於人的處境問題、人與人、人與世界不可調和的關係處理好。流水賬也是一個非常好的切入點,這是我從他的小說中得到的啓發。因為他切入得很成功。對於我,這等於打開一個新窗口。一開始我說很喜歡他時,還是猶豫的。是不是顯得……後來我發現,有好多外國作傢也喜歡他。喜歡的力量是無窮的。我英語不好,但因為太喜歡雷蒙德·卡佛了,所以就找過他的原作小說來讀,那纔叫死磕。最初我是從《外國文藝》刊物上發現他的《大教堂》、《馬轡頭》。我以為他是個冷門作傢,結果有一次在意大利,翻譯我《妻妾成群》的譯者,他傢書架上就有《雷蒙德·卡佛小說全集》(英文版),他看我喜歡,就送給了我。而我真就啃了原作。雷蒙德·卡佛是喝酒喝死的,我對這種喝酒喝死的人,天生有一種愛。 卡佛小說裏的一切尖銳得令人生畏,如果說他“殺人不見血”有點誇大他對讀者的精神壓迫的話,說他拿着颳鬍子刀片專挑人們的痛處可能比較被人贊同。有批評傢論及卡佛的世界觀,說是黑色的。怎麽會呢?那是把追求簡單敘述的卡佛一起簡單化了,我反而覺得卡佛是個很復雜的作傢,衹有復雜的作傢會對語言有超常的狠心腸,殺的殺,剮的剮,留下的反而是文字鍛造的一把匕首。
肖復興
(作傢) 卡佛的小說為心想事不成的人而寫 我是通過蘇童的文章瞭解卡佛的。那一年暑假肖鐵(即本書譯者)回來探親,帶來卡佛的幾本書,一個是《大教堂》,一個是《請你安靜些好嗎》。像我這樣的英語水平藉助字典完全可以看懂,我印象當中他寫的東西跟我們的不一樣,表現方法不一樣。 從小說而言,卡佛的小說很大程度上是為心想事不成寫的,哪怕現在事業成功了,內心也一定有這樣的成分躁動。讀卡佛的時候我想到另外一個美國的小說傢庫佛,應該說庫佛是卡佛的前輩。他們的小說有很多相似的東西,但是也有很大的不同。庫佛小說可能更多是寫那些美國的知識分子、中産階級,也寫下層人士。比如說他的一篇小說《重逢》,而卡佛有一個《軟座包廂》,寫的是父子。而前者也是把這一對父子矛盾放在火車站重逢,衹是重逢結果不一樣。後來我想他們的差異在哪裏,並不在於他們寫的對象不一樣,也不在於他們的手法不一樣。而在於一個作傢藝術的積纍和生活積纍的背後,內心潛伏的對文學的認知、立場、情感以及最終抵達的地方差異很大。 我還想補充一句話。其實卡佛的詩特別好,我不懂詩也不看詩,但是看了他的詩後很被觸動。他的詩不像詩,就是大白話,但是可以打動你。所以從本質而言,我覺得卡佛是一個詩人,否則不會這樣對待生活。他的生活不如意,說老實話比我們的打工者混得還慘。但是他有這樣文學的追求,這種反差我找不到一個確切的答案。
更多信息
極簡主義
最早來自評論傢赫金格對卡佛作品的定義,“表面的平靜,主題的普通,僵硬的敘述者和面無表情的敘事,故事的無足輕重以及想不清楚的人物。” 小說傢傑弗裏·伍爾夫更幹脆地把卡佛及他的追隨者命名為“減法者”。而頗具號召力的“加法者”約翰·巴斯,則以一種喜恨交加的語態,為“極簡主義”文學做出了最令人信服的定義:“極簡主義美學的樞紐準則是:藝術手段的極端簡約可以增強作品的藝術效果——即回到了羅伯特·勃朗寧的名言‘少就是多’──即使這種節儉吝嗇會威脅到其他的文藝價值,比如說完整性,或陳述的豐富性和精確性。” 窮睏 寫作從來就沒有帶給他生活中的改變,這是卡佛成名後接受訪談時常常提到的。他多次宣告經濟破産,曾經靠失業救濟金活了一年。 酒 父親是酒鬼,卡佛也一喝就是十幾年。但是,一直把戒酒看做自己最大成就的卡佛,最後卻是死於吸煙。 職業 卡佛高中畢業後輟學,當過鋸木廠工人、清潔工、在醫院當過守門人兼擦地板,在好萊塢賣過電影票。
《大教堂》
卡佛公認的成熟之作,曾被選入《1982年美國最佳短篇小說選》。 作品改編 《大教堂》小說集中的《好事一小件》與《維他命》曾一起被改編進了美國導演奧特曼的電影《浮世男女》(又名《銀色性男女》。《羽毛》也被改編成電影。
Early life
Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, a mill town on the Columbia River, and grew up in Yakima, Washington. His father, a skilled sawmill worker from Arkansas, was a fisherman and a heavy drinker. Carver's mother worked on and off as a waitress and a retail clerk. His one brother, James Franklin Carver, was born in 1943.
Carver was educated at local schools in Yakima, Washington. In his spare time he read mostly novels by Mickey Spillane or publications such as Sports Afield and Outdoor Life and hunted and fished with friends and family. After graduating from Yakima High School in 1956, Carver worked with his father at a sawmill in California. In June 1957, aged 19, he married 16-year-old Maryann Burk, who had just graduated from a private Episcopal school for girls. Their daughter, Christine La Rae, was born in December 1957. When their second child, a boy named Vance Lindsay, was born the next year, Carver was 20. Carver supported his family by working as a janitor, sawmill laborer, delivery man, and library assistant. During their marriage, Maryann worked as a waitress, salesperson, administrative assistant, and high school English teacher.
Writing careerCarver became interested in writing in California, where he had moved with his family because his mother-in-law had a home in Paradise. Carver attended a creative-writing course taught by the novelist John Gardner, who became a mentor and had a major influence on Carver's life and career. Carver continued his studies first at Chico State University and then at Humboldt State College in Arcata, California, where he studied with Richard Cortez Day and received his B.A. in 1963. During this period he was first published and served as editor for Toyon, the university literary magazine, in which he included several of his own pieces under pseudonyms. He later attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, for one year. Maryann graduated from San Jose State College in 1970 and taught English at Los Altos High School until 1977.
His first published story appeared in 1960, titled "The Furious Seasons." More florid than his later work, the story strongly bore the influence of William Faulkner. "Furious Seasons" was later used as a title for a collection of stories published by Capra Press, and can now be found in recent collections No Heroics, Please and Call If You Need Me.
In the mid-1960s Carver and his family lived in Sacramento, where he worked as a night custodian at Mercy Hospital. He would do all of the janitorial work in the first hour and then write at the hospital through the rest of the night. He sat in on classes at what was then Sacramento State College, including workshops with poet Dennis Schmitz. Carver and Schmitz soon became friends, and Carver's first book of poems, Near Klamath, was later written and published under Schmitz's guidance.
With his appearance in the respected "Foley collection," the impending publication of Near Klamath by the English Club of Sacramento State College, and the death of his father, 1967 was a landmark year for Carver. That was also the year that he moved his family to Palo Alto, California, so that he could take a job as a textbook editor for Science Research Associates. He worked there until he was fired in 1970 for his inappropriate writing style.
His first collection, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, was first published in 1976; the title story had appeared in the Best American Short Stories 1976 collection. The collection itself was shortlisted for the National Book Award, though it sold fewer than 5,000 copies that year.
In the 1970s and 1980s as his writing career began to take off, Carver taught for several years at universities throughout the United States.
During his years of working different jobs, rearing children, and trying to write, Carver started to drink heavily. By his own admission, eventually he more or less gave up writing and took to full-time drinking. In the fall semester of 1973, Carver was a teacher in the Iowa Writers' Workshop with John Cheever, but Carver stated that they did less teaching than drinking and almost no writing. The next year, after leaving Iowa City, Cheever went to a treatment center to attempt to overcome his alcoholism, but Carver continued drinking for three years. After being hospitalized three times (between June 1976 and February or March 1977), Carver began his 'second life' and stopped drinking on June 2, 1977, with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. Carver believed he would have died of alcoholism at the age of 40 if he hadn't found a way to stop drinking. When he knew the cancer would kill him, he wrote a poem about that bonus of 10 years, called "Gravy."
Carver was nominated again in 1984 for his third major-press collection, Cathedral, the volume generally perceived as his best. Included in the collection are the award-winning stories "A Small, Good Thing", and "Where I'm Calling From." John Updike selected the latter for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century. For his part, Carver saw Cathedral as a watershed in his career, in its shift towards a more optimistic and confidently poetic style
Personal life and deathCarver met the poet Tess Gallagher at a writers' conference in Dallas, Texas in November, 1977. Beginning in January, 1979, Carver and Gallagher lived together in El Paso, Texas, in a borrowed cabin near Port Angeles, in western Washington state, and in Tucson, Arizona. In 1980, the two moved to Syracuse, where Gallagher had been appointed the coordinator of the creative writing program at Syracuse University; Carver taught as a professor in the English department. He and Gallagher jointly purchased a house in Syracuse, at 832 Maryland Avenue. In ensuing years, the house became so popular that the couple had to hang a sign outside that read "Writers At Work" in order to be left alone. In 1982, Carver and first wife, Maryann, were divorced. He married Gallagher in 1988 in Reno, Nevada. Six weeks later, on August 2, 1988, Carver died in Port Angeles, Washington, from lung cancer at the age of 50. In the same year, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Carver is buried at Ocean View Cemetery in Port Angeles. The inscription on his tombstone reads:
LATE FRAGMENT
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
His poem Gravy is also inscribed.
As Carver's will directed, Tess Gallagher assumed the management of his literary estate.
(In Carver's birth town of Clatskanie, Oregon a memorial park and statue was constructed in the late 2000s spearheaded by the local Friends of the Library, using mostly local donations. Tess Gallagher was present at the dedication. It is located in the old town on the corner of Lillich and Nehalem Streets, across from the library. A block away, the building where Raymond Carver was born still stands. There is a plaque of Carver in the foyer).
Raymond Carver Memorial in Clatskanie, Oregon. Located at Nehalem and Lillich Streets in old town...
Legacy and posthumous publicationsIn 2001 the novelist Chuck Kinder published Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale, a roman à clef of his friendship with Carver in the 1970s. In 2006 Maryann Burk Carver wrote a memoir of her years with Carver: What It Used To Be Like: A Portrait of My Marriage to Raymond Carver. An unauthorized biography, Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life by Carol Sklenicka, published by Scribner in 2009, was named one of the Best Ten Books of that year by The New York Times Book Review. Carver's widow refused to cooperate with Sklenica.
His final (incomplete) collection of seven stories, titled Elephant in Britain (included in "Where I'm Calling From") was composed in the five years before his death. The nature of these stories, especially "Errand", have led to some speculation that Carver was preparing to write a novel. Only one piece of this work has survived - the unpromising fragment "The Augustine Notebooks," printed in No Heroics, Please.
Tess Gallagher published five Carver stories posthumously in Call If You Need Me; one of the stories ("Kindling") won an O. Henry Award in 1999. In his lifetime Carver won five O. Henry Awards; these winning stories were "Are These Actual Miles" (originally titled "What is it?") (1972), "Put Yourself in My Shoes" (1974), "Are You A Doctor?" (1975), "A Small, Good Thing" (1983), and "Errand" (1988).
Tess Gallagher fought with Knopf for permission to republish the stories in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love as they were originally written by Carver, as opposed to the heavily-edited and altered versions that appeared in 1981 under the editorship of Gordon Lish. The book, entitled 'Beginners', was released in hardback on October 1, 2009 in Great Britain. 'Beginners' also appears in a new Library of America edition collecting all of Carver's short fiction.
Literary characteristicsCarver's career was dedicated to short stories and poetry. He described himself as "inclined toward brevity and intensity" and "hooked on writing short stories" (in the foreword of Where I'm Calling From, a collection published in 1988 and a recipient of an honorable mention in the 2006 New York Times article citing the best works of fiction of the previous 25 years). Another stated reason for his brevity was "that the story [or poem] can be written and read in one sitting." This was not simply a preference but, particularly at the beginning of his career, a practical consideration as he juggled writing with work. His subject matter was often focused on blue-collar experience, and was clearly reflective of his own life.
Minimalism is generally seen as one of the hallmarks of Carver's work. His editor at Esquire magazine, Gordon Lish, was instrumental in shaping Carver's prose in this direction - where his earlier tutor John Gardner had advised Carver to use fifteen words instead of twenty-five, Gordon Lish instructed Carver to use five in place of fifteen. Objecting to the "surgical amputation and transplantation" of Lish's heavy editing, Carver eventually broke with him. During this time, Carver also submitted poetry to James Dickey, then poetry editor of Esquire. His style has also been described as Dirty realism, which connected him with a group of writers in the 1970s and 1980s that included Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff -- two writers Carver was closely acquainted with—as well as Ann Beattie and Jayne Anne Phillips. With the exception of Beattie, who wrote about upper-middle class people, these were writers who focused on sadness and loss in the everyday lives of ordinary people—often lower-middle class or isolated and marginalized people—who represent Henry David Thoreau's idea of living lives of "quiet desperation."
WorksSee also: Raymond Carver bibliography
Fiction
CollectionsWill You Please Be Quiet, Please? (first published 1976)
Furious Seasons (1977)
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981)
Cathedral (1983)
Elephant (1988)
CompilationsWhere I'm Calling From (1988)
Short Cuts: Selected Stories (1993) - published to accompany Robert Altman film Short Cut
Collected Stories (2009) - complete short fiction including Beginner
Poetry
CollectionsNear Klamath (1968)
Winter Insomnia (1970)
At Night The Salmon Move (1976)
Fires (1983)
Where Water Comes Together With Other Water (1985)
Ultramarine (1986)
A New Path To The Waterfall (1989)
CompilationsIn a Marine Light: Selected Poems (1988)
All of Us: The Collected Poems (1996)
ScreenplaysDostoevsky (1985, with Tess Gallagher)
Films and theatre adaptationsShort Cuts directed by Robert Altman
Everything Goes directed by Andrew Kotatko and starring Hugo Weaving and Abbie Cornish
Jindabyne (based on So Much Water So Close to Home) directed by Ray Lawrence
Everything Must Go directed by Dan Rush and starring Will Ferrell based on Carver's short story "Why Don't You Dance?"
What's in Alaska? directed by Jim Field
Carver a production directed by William Gaskill at London's Arcola Theatre in 1995, adapted from five Carver short stories including What's in Alaska, Put Yourself in My Shoes and Intimacy
Studentova žena (Croatian) directed by Goran Kovač based on "The Student's Wife"
After the Denim directed by Gregory D. Goyin
Carousel (Croatian) directed by Toma Zidić inspired by "Ashtray"
MusicThe 1989 album So Much Water So Close to Home by Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly, includes a track "Everything's Turning to White" which is a re-telling of Carver's story So Much Water So Close to Home.
The 2004 EP by Owen includes a song titled Gazebo, named after Carver's short story. The song mentions Carver's name, and also quotes the final line of Gazebo; "In this too, she was right."
The 2005 album Pocket Revolution by dEUS includes a song titled "What We Talk About (When We Talk About Love)".
The 2011 album Summer of Lust by Library Voices includes a song titled "If Raymond Carver Were Born in the 90's".
Books and articles about CarverCarver, Maryann Burk (2006). What It Used to Be Like; A Portrait of My Marriage to Raymond Carver. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-33258-0.
Nesset, Kirk (1995). Stories Of Raymond Carver: A Critical Study. Ohio University Press. ISBN 0-8214-1100-4.
Charles McGrath (October 28, 2007). "I, Editor Author". Week in Review, New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/weekinreview/28mcgrath.html. Retrieved 2007-10-28.
Pieters, Jesús (2004). El silencio de lo real: sentido, comprensión e interpretación en la narrativa de Raymond Carver. Monte Ávila Editores Latinoamericana. ISBN 978-980-01-1219-9.
Stull, William L. and Gentry, Marshall Bruce (editors) (1990). Conversations With Raymond Carver (Literary Conversations Series). University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 0-87805-449-9.
Stull, William L. and Carroll, Maureen P. (editors) (1993). Remembering Ray: A Composite Biography of Raymond Carver. Capra Press. ISBN 0-88496-370-5.
Runyon, Randolph Paul (1994). Reading Raymond Carver. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-2631-2.
Kleppe, Sandra Lee and Miltner, Robert (editors) (2008). New Paths to Raymond Carver; Critical Essays on His Life, Fiction, and Poetry. University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-57003-724-5.
Halpert, Sam (1995). Raymond Carver. An Oral Biography. University of Iowa Press. ISBN 0-87745-502-3.
Sklenicka, Carol (Nov 2009). Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life. Scribner. ISBN 978-0-7432-6245-3.
Ródenas, Gabri (2009), “Jarmusch y Carver: Se ha roto el frigorífico” in Fernández, P. (Ed.), Rompiendo moldes: Discursos, género e hibridación en el siglo XXI. Zamora/Sevilla: Editorial Comunicación Social. ISBN 978-84-96082-88-5. Available at Google Books.