The next afternoon, as he put the key into the lock, he could hear the telephone ringing. 1

“Are You A Doctor?”

In Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, Survivor, the narrator explains that people used

telephones “because they hated being close together and they were scared of being

alone.”2 Central to this beautifully succinct analysis is the conflict inherent in

telephone communication: union verses separation. While a telephone conversation

brings people together, it doesn’t change the fact that those people are physically

apart. Springing from this paradox, a strange sense of loneliness can arise. For if

someone is home alone, a phone call may deceive them into feeling they are not on

their own. Yet, upon finishing the call, all can fall silent, and suddenly that person

may recognise they are alone, that they are lonely.

In his study of the short story, Frank O’Connor spoke of “the lonely voice”

that permeates the form.3 In Raymond Carver’s short stories, however, this phrase is

imbued with an added poignancy. In a countless number of his stories, we as readers

encounter characters that are alone. Yet, even the characters who are not alone

frequently find themselves lonely. For such characters, the telephone provides the

means with which to escape the awareness of their own solitude. In, “Are You A

Doctor?” Clara Holt is not physically alone – she lives with her children – yet, she is

lonely and in need of company. In order to transcend her awareness of this loneliness,

she calls Arnold Breit, someone, we are told, she does not know nor has she ever met.

Yet, in order to fully escape her actual loneliness, a phone call is not enough, and

Clara feels she must meet Arnold in person. In other stories, the telephone provides a

key to the world outside of the home, as in “Blackbird Pie”, where the narrator’s wife

1 Carver, Raymond, “Are You A Doctor?” Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (London: Vintage, 2003) 252 Palahniuk, Chuck, Survivor (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999) 1173 O’Connor, Frank, The Lonely Voice (New Jersey: Melville House 2004) 3

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once had independence because “a taxi [was] no farther away than the telephone in

the hall.”4 In Carver’s stories, the figure of the telephone, therefore, goes hand in hand

with the theme of isolation, for without a telephone the characters would lose a vital

system with which they connect to other people and society.

To look at the relation between the figure of the telephone and the theme of

isolation it is necessary to consider the very thing that connects the two:

communication or the lack thereof. Carver’s stories are full of characters struggling to

communicate both verbally and emotionally. From the irate baker of “A Small Good

Thing” to Leo and Toni in “Are These Actual Miles?” Carver’s characters are ones

who find it difficult to say what they want to say. In “I Think I Need A New Heart”,

the poet and songwriter, Stephin Merrit, states: “I always say ‘I love you’ when I

mean turn off the light,”5 but while a character in a Carver story would make a similar

mistake, they would be far more likely to say ‘turn off the light’ than ‘I love you’, for

while William Stull is right to see the failure of communication as Carver’s “abiding

theme,”6 it is important to note that it is the failure to communicate emotionally that

haunts many of Carver’s characters.

Stull’s phrase “failure of communication” is full of ambiguities. Before

looking at it a little closer, it must first be recognised that communication isn’t

necessarily verbal. Sherwood Anderson’s short story “Hands” is a testament to this:

Wing Biddlebaum talked much with his hands. The slender expressive fingers, forever active, forever striving to conceal themselves in his pockets or behind his back, came forth and became the piston rods of his machinery of expression.7

4 Carver, Raymond, “Blackbird Pie”, Elephant (London: Harvill, 1998) 955 Merritt, Steven, “I Think I Need A New Heart”, The Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs (London: Domino 1999)6 Stull, William, Dictionary of Literary Biography: Yearbook 1984 (Detroit: Gate, 1988) 2427 Anderson, Sherwood, “Hands”, Winesburg, Ohio (London: Penguin, 1978) 28

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Yet, while this has significant implications for the understanding of Carver’s short

stories, and is something to which this study will later return, it does seem that by

‘communication’, Stull is referring to the verbal act of talking. In this case, in what

ways can, and does, communication fail? Firstly, failure of communication could be

understood as the failure to say anything, an almost Joycean paralysis of expression.

An example of this in Carver’s work is in “A Small Good Thing”, where upon

discovering the news of their son’s death, neither Howard nor Ann can say anything

to the doctor. Furthermore, it is as if in that moment, when all around her crumbles,

Ann is no longer able to participate in the act of communication: “Howard shook his

head. Ann stared at Dr Francis as if unable to comprehend his words.”8 Thus, in this

situation, the failure of communication lies not with the communicator but with the

receiver of the communication, or with the act of communication itself, as it seems

inadequately equipped to deal with such moments of sorrow and despair.

The second way in which communication fails is when it fails to say anything

significant. In Carver’s stories, one finds many couples who talk a lot, but don’t really

say anything. In “Blackbird Pie” the narrator receives a letter from his wife, within

which, this very idea is alluded to: “It’s been a long time since we’ve talked. I mean,

really talked.”9 In contrast to the kind of failure of communication seen previously in

“A Small Good Thing”, here, the blame lies with the communicators, for it is they

who, for whatever reason, do not say anything of worth.

The other kind of failure of communication found in Carver’s stories is the

type to which T.S. Eliot refers when he states in “The Love Song of J. Alfred

Prufrock”, “It is impossible to just say what I mean!”10 The ending of “Cathedral”

8 Carver, Raymond, “A Small Good Thing”, Cathedral (London: Harvill, 1999) 769 Carver, Raymond, “Blackbird Pie,” Elephant (London: Harvill, 1998) 9310 Eliot, T.S., “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, The Wasteland and other Poems, (London: Faber and Faber, 1999) 6

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displays something similar to this, as the narrator guides the hand of a blind man in a

drawing of a cathedral, before saying, “It’s really something.”11 However, the

narrator of “Cathedral” and his struggle, is perhaps less like Eliot and more like the

narrator of O’Connor’s short story “Guests of the Nation” who, when recollecting the

murder of two British soldiers, says “it is so strange what you feel at times like that

that you can’t describe it.”12 For characters like the narrator of “Cathedral” some

events are just indescribable, incommunicable, and lie beyond the realm of

articulation. Yet, some of Carver’s characters, like the baker at the beginning of “A

Small Good Thing”, don’t just find it difficult to “say what [they] mean” but find it

impossible to say things that make sense. When attempting to remind Ann about the

birthday cake she ordered for her son, Scotty, this is what unfolds: “‘Scotty,’” the

man’s voice said. “‘It’s about Scotty, yes. It has to do with Scotty, that problem.

Have you forgotten about Scotty?’” the man said. Then he hung up.” With such a

complete failure to communicate the “necessary information,”13one may wonder how

the baker was able to confirm the booking of the cake in the first place, let alone, how

he is able to run a business.

O’Connor saw the short story as a form that dealt with “submerged

population” 14 groups – those characters alienated in society by a material or spiritual

poverty. And similarly, it must be said, Carver’s characters are poor. Sometimes

spiritually, often financially, but almost always, they are impoverished in terms of the

ability to communicate experiences verbally. It is this deprivation of communicative

competency that makes the telephone such an intriguing figure in Carver’s stories.

For the telephone is a device designed to aid verbal communication, yet so often it

11 Carver, Raymond, “Cathedral”, Cathedral (London: Harvill, 1999) 21412 O’Connor, Frank “Guests of the Nation”, Classic Irish Short Stories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985) 18713 Carver, Raymond, “A Small Good Thing”, Cathedral (London: Harvill, 1999) 5514 O’Connor, Frank, The Lonely Voice (New Jersey: Melville House 2004) 21

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fails to help those who need to talk, and who need someone to talk to. It offers the

illusion of company and contact while failing to offer those things corporeally. It also

deprives the characters of the chance to clarify their speech through physical actions –

something common to almost all of Carver’s short stories.

“Answer it, answer it!” my wife cries. “My God, who is it? Answer it!”15

15 Carver, Raymond, “Whoever Was Using This Bed”, Elephant, (London: Harvill, 1998) 27

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“Whoever Was Using This Bed”

An exploration into the meaning of a particular image or object used by an

author can, as exemplified in Donald Barthelme’s short story “The Glass Mountain”,

be an engagement fraught with danger. Again, as in “The Glass Mountain”, it may

also prove to be an exercise which yields little in terms of understanding: “I

approached the symbol, with its layers of meaning, but when I touched it, it changed

into only a beautiful princess.”16 This study of the telephone, therefore, will not be a

“Figure in the Carpet-esque” treasure hunt for the definitive meaning of the use of

telephones in Carver’s work. For it quickly becomes obvious that the telephone as a

sign carries different signifiers depending on the context in which it is used.

In some stories, the telephone is used primarily as a prop around which plot is

wound. The most obvious examples of such usage is within the stories which one

could describe as the “intrusive phone-call stories” – stories such as “The Bath”, “A

Small Good Thing”, “Are You A Doctor?” and “Whoever Was Using This Bed”. In

stories such as these, a significant amount of the plot revolves around characters

receiving phone calls from people unknown to them. Yet, in these stories, the

telephone isn’t only used as a catalyst for the plot, but is also used in an innumerable

amount of other ways, from being a metaphor of life and death (“Whoever Was Using

This Bed”) to being an emblem of the way in which people can become alienated and

disconnected from others (“A Small Good Thing”). In other stories, such as “Are

These Actual Miles?” the telephone seems to be used primarily as something more

symbolic, representing the breaking down in lines of communication, while in stories

like “Call Me If You Need Me” and “A Serious Talk” Carver uses the telephone as an

object that has both physically and symbolically come between a couple.

16 Barthelme, Donald, “The Glass Mountain,” Sixty Stories, (Penguin: London, 2003) 176

6

The most intriguing use of the telephone, however, arises in the

aforementioned group of “intrusive phone call stories.” “Are You A Doctor?” is such

a story, within which, the central character Arnold Breit expects a phone call from his

wife, but instead receives a phone call from a woman named Clara Holt. Seemingly,

neither knows one another, and how Clara came to acquire Arnold’s number is

somewhat of a mystery. They have a brief conversation and the call ends. The next

day, however, Clara phones again, pleading for Arnold to visit her home. Although

Arnold is at first annoyed by Clara’s phone call, it becomes obvious that he is grateful

for the company it offers:

“You sound like a nice man,” the woman said.“Do I? Well, that’s nice of you to say.” He knew he should hang up now, but it was good to hear a voice, even his own, in the quiet room.17

The telephone and the conversation with Clara provides Arnold with an escape from

his own loneliness. But it seems that the phone call does more than this. Indeed, later

in the conversation, the importance of the call to Arnold is further emphasised:

“Will you hold the phone a minute?” he said. “I have to check on something.” He went into the study for a cigar, took a minute lighting it up with the desk lighter, then removed his glasses and looked at himself in the mirror over the fireplace. When he returned to the telephone, he was half afraid she might be off the line.18 (my italics)

Here, we can see how it is a fear of loneliness that drives Arnold to continue the

conversation with Clara. Yet, it is his unease at the strange circumstances

surrounding the call that leave him only “half” afraid that Clara has hung up. But

more intriguingly we can see the way in which the phone call has instilled in Arnold a

heightened awareness of Self. Clara repeatedly says his name, something which

makes his heart move,19 while he, himself, repeats his own name. Furthermore, he

17 Carver, Raymond, “Are You A Doctor?” Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (London: Vintage, 2003) 2418 ibid19 Carver, Raymond, “Are You A Doctor?” Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (London: Vintage, 2003) 25

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becomes aware of his own voice (“it was good to hear a voice, even his own, in the

quiet room,”) and he even has a brief Lacanian mirror-stage episode, where he

removes his glasses and stares at himself in the mirror. Jean Paul Sartre once spoke

of “the Look”, where upon looking at another person we become aware of the Other

as another similar consciousness, and this reveals to ourselves our own status as an

Object in the eyes of the Other.20 Arnold, it seems, undergoes an experience akin to

“the Look”, a sort of “verbal-look”, “a hearing” of the Self. To hear his own name on

the lips of another woman pricks his consciousness and makes him aware of himself,

which in turn, leads to him removing his glasses and taking a look at himself in the

mirror. As when one hears their own heartbeat, as Arnold in fact does, and is

reminded of their own existence, in such a way, Arnold is now self-aware, because

Clara’s phone call has “defamiliarized”21 his conception of himself. It is, therefore, no

surprise that the story ends with Arnold’s wife’s words: “‘Are you there, Arnold?’

[…] “‘You don’t sound like yourself.’”22

“Are You A Doctor?” is, therefore, a testament to the power of

communication. It shows the potential that a few words have in unlocking one’s idea

of their self. Up until Clara’s phone call, Arnold’s evening is one of routine. He

changes into his slippers, pyjamas and robe, and waits for his wife’s daily phone call.

Not for one instant does he imagine the phone call will be from anybody else: “Since

it was past ten, the call would be his wife. She phoned – late like this, after a few

drinks – each night when she was out of town.”23 On the other side of the phone call,

however, is Clara, who is a strange character with an even stranger conception of

communication. This itself seems like a common feature of those who make the

20 Sartre, J.P., Being and Nothingness, translated by Banes, H., (London: Methuen, 1977) 56521 Shklovsky, Viktor, “Art as Technique”, reprinted in Literary Theory: An Anthology, (London: Blackwell, 2003) 1522 Carver, Raymond, “Are You A Doctor?” Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (London: Vintage, 2003) 3023 ibid 23

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“intrusive” phone calls in Carver’s stories. They are the most desperate of his

characters, the most unreasonable, and the ones with the most limited conversational

skills. Like the caller in “Whoever Was Using This Bed”, who won’t accept that Bud

does not live at that address, Clara does not listen to Arnold, even when they finally

do meet face to face: “‘I’ll put on tea water,’” he heard her say, as if she hadn’t been

listening.”24 When Arnold leaves, Clara says “we had a good talk,”25 but in reality,

nothing much was said.

As Arnold reaches the door, Clara poignantly picks “at something, a hair, a

thread, on his suit collar,”26 the same way a doting wife would do as her husband

leaves for work. In this one physical act, Clara seems to say more than she has in the

entire time she has spoken with Arnold. As she touches his collar, the closest she

comes to touching him, we see how Clara all along has yearned for contact. The

action, however, triggers something inside her. For she now no longer looks at

Arnold, but stares “past him – as if she were trying to remember something.”27 The

physical action of touching his collar then transforms Clara’s speech. She becomes

abrupt as she takes control of the situation and says “Now – good night, Arnold,”

before closing the door and almost catching his overcoat.28 It is at moments like these

that Carver displays his mastery control over a story. Because through detailed

descriptions of their physical actions, Carver allows us to hear what characters are

saying when their words run out. When language has failed to convey their emotions,

when the right words can not be found, Carver finds a detail that is so precise, so

clear, that is strikes the heart of the character’s emotion. Be it Clara picking at

Arnold’s collar, or in “Cathedral” with the image of the narrator’s hand guiding the

24 ibid 2725 ibid 2926 ibid 27 Carver, Raymond, “Are You A Doctor?” Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (London: Vintage, 2003) 2928 ibid

9

blind man’s hand as they draw a picture of a Cathedral, these physical actions seem to

say far more than words ever could. The sum of the images become larger than their

parts, and the air is filled with meaning. It is probably for this reason that Carver is

seen by Charles E. May as “the spokesman for those who cannot articulate their own

dilemmas.”29

The second of the “intrusive phone call stories” to be examined is “Whoever

Was Using This Bed.” In this story, a married couple, Jack and Iris, are in bed when

they receive a series of phone calls from a drunken woman asking for a man named

Bud. The phone calls keep them from sleeping and they spend the night awake

discussing Iris’ dreams, Jack’s health and whether or not they’d want the “plug

pulled” were they to fall seriously ill.30 It is soon revealed how much they keep from

one another, and despite Iris’ claim that she “knows” Jack, how little she does know

about him and his wishes becomes quite obvious as the story progresses.

The interesting aspect of this story is how the phone call seems to have little

affect on the couple’s topic of conversation. Despite a few heated words in regards to

keeping the phone plugged in during the night, the majority of the conversation is

about everything but the phone call. Yet, despite the couple not talking about it,

Carver carefully aligns the figure of the phone symbolically and thematically with Iris

and Jack’s conversation. Because at the heart of their conversation is the fact that

although the two are physically together, they are in many ways, separate and apart.

Nowhere is this more obvious than when Iris recounts a dream she had in which her

former husband appeared, but Jack did not. Like Gabriel in Joyce’s “The Dead”, Jack

realises that his partner’s mental space is one area of his wife’s life in which he can

never tread. Furthermore, Iris then reveals that she’s been suffering from headaches

29 May, Charles E., The Short Story: The Reality of Artifice (New York: Twayne, 1995) 9730Carver, Raymond, “Whoever Was Using This Bed”, Elephant (London: Harvill, 1998) 40

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but has willingly kept this information from him. The more they talk, the more Jack

realises that he and his wife are different, separate, and in some ways, alone. Like the

woman who repeatedly calls asking for Bud to only hear that he doesn’t live there, the

couple themselves begin to realise that who they thought each other were isn’t

actually who they are. And as the telephone plug is pulled out the first time, the

connection and lines of communication between Jack and Iris are shown to be equally

fragile as the conversation turns to the topic of Iris’ dream and Jack’s exclusion from

its dramatis personae.

In addition to this, the couple are also divided on the issue of their own deaths.

Iris, if the situation arises, wants to have the plug pulled on her life: “I want you to

promise you’ll pull the plug on me, if and when it’s necessary. If it ever comes to

that, I mean. Do you hear what I’m saying? I’m serious, about this, Jack. I want you

to pull the plug on me if you ever have to. Will you promise?”31 Conversely, Jack

doesn’t wish to have the plug pulled, and wants to “keep going […] right to the bitter

end.”32 These opposing attitudes are then exemplified in their dealings with the caller

asking for Bud. While Iris wants to just pull the plug on the call, Jack wants to

persevere, continue to answer the phone, and continue to tell the caller that Bud does

not live there. The couple’s conflicting attitudes towards the phone reflect and

underline how deep seeded their differences lie. But the telephone, however, is also

symbolic of something further. For as in all of Carver’s stories, there is no prior

warning of the phone call, and so the couple are thrust into a situation where they

must decide in that moment what it is they are going to do: should they pull the plug?

In this regard, and in the context of the couple’s discussion about death, the

telephone takes on a much broader significance, as it represents a life, the control of

31 Carver, Raymond, “Whoever Was Using This Bed”, Elephant (London: Harvill, 1998) 4032 ibid 41

11

which can be placed in anyone’s hands at any given moment. The caller’s

desperation, the way in which she is at the mercy of Jack and Iris, and the way in

which they can just ‘cut her off’ at will is a reminder of how fragile life is. At the

story’s close, the woman calls again, but as Jack repeatedly tells her to stop calling,

the lines goes dead. Iris has pulled the plug. Ending in such a way, the story affirms

that as people, Jack and Iris will always differ in their attitudes, and they will always

be separate. For even if they shared the same opinions, in order for them to have a

relationship, a distance between them must necessarily exist, for as R.D. Laing

argues:

Each and every man is at the same time separate from his fellows and related to them. Such separateness and relatedness are mutually necessary postulates. Personal relatedness can exist only between beings who are separate but who are not isolates. We are not isolates and we are not parts of the same physical body. Here we have the paradox […] that our relatedness to others is an essential aspect of our being, as is our separateness.33

Unlike the caller on the phone who appears as an “isolate” striving to find Bud

in order to engage in relatedness, Jack and Iris are already in a relationship, and so

they face the paradoxical realisation that their separateness is an essential element of

their being together. In this way, the woman’s phone calls, like all telephone

conversations, mimic the union and separation inherent in all human relations. But

this particular phone call is extraordinarily poignant. The caller is looking for a man

named Bud. She is looking for a “buddy” – a friend – with whom she can relate.

Despite being repeatedly told that Bud does not live there, she continues to keep

calling. Because, like so many of Carver’s characters, she is striving for human

contact, but lacks the communicative skills necessary to find this through the

telephone.

33 Laing, R.D., The Divided Self, (London: Penguin, 1960) 32

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The ending of the story also reaffirms the connection between the telephone

and Jack and Iris’ lives. In that one moment, as Iris pull the plug on the phone, Jack

sees how Iris responds to having a responsibility towards others. Her impatience and

willingness to pull the plug on the phone gives pause for thought and leaves one

wondering whether she would actually respect Jack’s wishes and allow him to “keep

going […] right to the bitter end.” In this respect, therefore, the telephone is used by

Carver as both a catalyst for plot and as a metaphor for the way we relate to others. In

other stories, however, Carver uses the telephone, not as a metaphor, but as it is, in

and of itself, as a device which we use to actually relate to one another.

“The Bath” and “A Small Good Thing” are two stories which touch upon this

idea, and in both of the stories we encounter the figure of the baker, a character whose

communication skills seem most affected by a lack of relatedness with others. Much

has been made of Carver’s development as a writer between “The Bath” and its

rewrite “A Small Good Thing.” For many critics, the latter story with its resolution is

emblematic of Carver’s later work which moved towards hope and closure. While the

current debate surrounding the role of Carver’s editor Gordon Lish34 in the

development of this style continues, it is certainly worthwhile to consider how the

telephone and the role of communication figure in both stories, and the way in which

these roles differ from one story to the other.

Both stories are about a couple whose son is knocked over by a car on his

birthday. Yet, the stories’ main contrasts hinge on the development of the baker who

continually rings the family because they haven’t picked up their son’s birthday cake.

In “The Bath” it seems as if the telephone is just a means by which the baker can

subjugate an innocent family to abuse, but in “A Small Good Thing”, it is the

telephone that ultimately provides the chance for these divided people to

34 The Guardian, October 22, 2007

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communicate. Tellingly, however, resolution can only be sought face to face,

affirming the sentiment in Carver’s short story “Intimacy” that “you can tell a lot

about the person you’re talking to from his eyes.”35

As a theme, communication is more obvious in “A Small Good Thing” than in

“The Bath.” A lucid example of Carver’s development of this theme is when two

orderlies move Scotty’s bed. In “A Small Good Thing”, these men speak a “foreign

tongue,” 36 whereas in “The Bath” they do not speak at all. While having the hospital

staff speak a foreign language highlights a socio-demographic feature, it also further

serves to alienate Ann from the situation in hand. It highlights how little she

understands about Scotty’s condition, while it also shows how communication and

miscommunication can be something divisive – a theme evident in the fact that the

baker’s telephone calls make Ann tell him: “I wanted to kill you […] I wanted you

dead.”37

Yet, one of the key differences between the two stories is the increased focus

on people and the way in which they are connected. In “A Small Good Thing” the

parents of “The Bath” are given names – Ann and Howard. “A Small Good Thing” is

thus, more ‘fleshed out’ than “The Bath” and subsequently, Carver draws a more

complex picture of the inner psyches of its central characters. Unlike in “The Bath”,

in “A Small Good Thing” Carver emphasises how Ann wants to connect and identify

with others, such as the baker:

She was a mother and thirty-three years old, and it seemed to her that everyone, especially someone the baker’s age - a man old enough to be her father – must have children who’d gone through this special time of cakes and birthdays. There must have been that between them, she thought.38 (my italics)

35 Carver, Raymond, “Intimacy”, Elephant (London: Harvill, 1998) 5036 Carver, Raymond, “A Small Good Thing”, Cathedral (London: Harvill, 1999) 6437 Carver, Raymond, “A Small Good Thing”, Cathedral (London: Harvill, 1999) 8238 ibid 56

14

Ann also aligns herself with the mother of Franklin, a boy at the hospital who has

been stabbed: “She was afraid, and they were afraid. They had that in common.”39 In

addition to this, Ann sees herself as connected with her husband, because “for the first

time, she felt they were together in it, this trouble.”40 Through highlighting the ways

in which Ann wants to bond with other people, and the ways in which she is

connected to others, the solitude of the lonely baker who spends his days at the bakery

with only the radio for company is further emphasised. When Ann and Howard

finally meet the baker, there is a suggestion that his phone calls have been his way of

attempting to connect with others. But because he has spent so much time on his

own, he is now a “different kind of human being”41 – one that is alienated and does

not how to communicate, nor how to relate with others. One of the most poignant

details about the baker’s life and relations is revealed when he offers Ann and Howard

a seat:

He pulled a chair out from under the card table that help papers and receipts, an adding machine and a telephone directory […] The baker cleared a space for them at the table. He shoved the adding machine to one side, along with the stacks of notepaper and receipts. He pushed the telephone directory onto the floor, where it landed with a thud. Howard and Ann sat down and pulled their chairs up to the table. The baker sat down, too.42 (my italics)

For the baker, communication has become something to do with his business, for the

telephone directory – a book that contains the potential for so many communicative

connections – is sat next to receipts and an adding machine. Through revealing these

very small details, Carver shows how, for the baker, communication has been up until

now something that he does for business reasons alone. Yet, as he “shoves” the

adding machine aside, and pushes the telephone directory onto the floor, we see how

the baker just wants to put his business to one side. He no longer wants to be defined

39 ibid 7040 ibid 6341 ibid 8242 Carver, Raymond, “A Small Good Thing”, Cathedral (London: Harvill, 1999) 82

15

by his job, nor does he want to talk to people for the purpose of making money. But

rather, in that moment, he wants to be a person making a connection with other

people:

They nodded when the baker began to speak of loneliness and of the sense of doubt and limitation that had come to him in his middle years. He told them what it was like to be childless all these years. To repeat the days with the oven endlessly full and endlessly empty […] They talked on into the early morning, the high, pale cast of light in the windows, and they did not think of leaving.43

Throughout the story, Carver hints that there is a connection between the

couple and the baker. Sometimes, through using only one word, Carver succeeds to

draw this bond, as evident in the wonderful sentence: “Howard’s grip tightened on

[Ann’s] shoulder, and then his hand moved to her neck, where his fingers began to

knead the muscle there.” 44 (my italics) This one word – and one image of Howard

kneading Ann’s neck – not only reminds the reader of the baker’s presence, but also

evokes an image of the baker, working alone throughout the night, kneading his

dough. It captures Howard’s tension, but also the fact that Ann and Howard are not

alone for they have each other. On the other hand, all the baker has is his baking, a

radio, and a telephone. But while the baker only calls Ann and Howard, the three can

never connect.

It is indeed the baker’s lack of communication and interpersonal skills that

hinders his ability to connect with others. When Ann first orders the cake, it is said

that “there were no pleasantries between them, just the minimum exchange of words,

the necessary information. He made [Ann] feel uncomfortable.”45 And likewise,

when he first calls the family, he is similarly uncommunicative. He does not

43 ibid 8444 Carver, Raymond, “A Small Good Thing”, Cathedral (London: Harvill, 1999) 6045 ibid 55

16

introduce himself, but merely states: “There’s a cake here that wasn’t picked up.”46 It

is this failure to initially identify himself to others that begins the whole series of

intrusive phone calls. In “Are You A Doctor?” Clara Holt initiates the conversation

through asking Arnold for his name. And through continually repeating Arnold’s

name she succeeds to keep him on the line. But the baker does not introduce himself,

he does not ask Howard for his name, and neither does Howard for the baker’s. It is

this lack of identity that enables the baker to keep calling, and it is this lack of identity

which makes him keep calling. Unlike Arnold Breit, the telephone conversation gives

the baker no heightened sense of Self, and it is only through meeting Ann and Howard

in the flesh that the baker encounters the Sartrean “Look” of the Other and the anger

that the couple have towards him. Through seeing how the couple see himself, the

baker has an epiphany of sorts. He puts the rolling pin down and removes his apron,

and in doing so, he stops being the irate baker, and becomes a compassionate human

being:

Let me say I how sorry I am […] God alone knows how sorry […] I’m deeply sorry, I’m sorry for your son, and sorry for my part in this […] I’m not an evil man, I don’t think. Not evil, like you said on the phone. You got to understand what it comes down to is I don’t know how to act anymore, it would seem.47 (my italics)

Those final words – “it would seem” – show how crucial it is for people to spend time

in the company of others. For it is only when face to face with Ann and Howard that

the baker can see, retrospectively, the consequences of his actions. While he is only

speaking to the couple of the phone, he will always be apart and separate from them,

but in the bakery, face to face with the couple, they are all together. In imagery

reminiscent of the Eucharist, the baker passes to the couple loaves of his own bread

and, perhaps in doing so, symbolically, indicates his newfound union with the couple.

46 ibid 5847 Carver, Raymond, “A Small Good Thing”, Cathedral (London: Harvill, 1999) 82

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Their taking of the bread signifies their acceptance of his apologies, is a sign that a

resolution has at last been sought, and in that instant, shows that all three characters

have finally made a connection with each other.

“Don’t answer it,” he says“It might be your mother,” I say.“Watch and see,” he says.

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I pick up the receiver and listen. 48 “So Much Water So Close To Home”

What is so appealing about an “intrusive phone call story” is the idea that one

character knows something that another doesn’t. In “Are You A Doctor?” one can

not help feel that Clara is less than forthcoming with the truth as to how she acquired

Arnold’s number, while in “The Bath” and “A Small Good Thing” the baker knows

who is he calling and why, while Howard and Ann have no idea who he is. In

“Whoever Was Using This Bed”, the caller has a reason for thinking Bud lives at that

address, but neither Jack nor Iris is privy to this. The idea of one side knowing

something that another side doesn’t is a theme evident throughout Carver’s work. In

particular, the theme is often played out in relation to couples, as in “Feathers” for

example, where Jack has knowledge that he can not, nor does not express to his wife:

Fran would look back on that evening at Bud’s as the beginning of the change. But she’s wrong. The change came later – and when it came, it was like something that happened to other people, not something that could have happened to us […] We don’t talk about it. What’s to say?49

In Carver’s stories, men and women are, as George Bernard Shaw is said to have once

described the relation between Britain and the USA, “divided by a common

language”. The “intrusive phone call story” mimics this theme and underlines the

divisions that are between people, be they in a relationship or merely just

acquaintances. Furthermore, the “intrusive phone call story” is specifically apt for the

form of the short story as it is the form best equipped to deal with one event, or one

moment in which a character undergoes a change. For Carver, a phone call is a

perfect catalyst for this change, because it is something sudden, something

unexpected, which invariably happens as something else is taking place.

48 Carver, Raymond, “So Much Water So Close To Home”, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (London: Vintage, 2003) 6749 Carver, Raymond, “Feathers”, Cathedral (London: Harvill, 1999) 23

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In his essay “On Writing”, Carver describes how he always wanted to begin a

story with the words “He was running the vacuum cleaner when the telephone rang.”50

This idea of conflicting technologies, and the way in which some events cut across

our lives, seems, for some reason, to be very attractive to Carver. So many of his

stories have a scene in which the telephone rings as something else is happening:

“As he put the key into the lock, he could hear the telephone ringing.”51 (“Are You A Doctor?”)

“The water on the stove began to bubble just as the phone began to ring”52 (“A Serious Talk”)

“As she sat down on the sofa with her tea, the telephone rang.”53 (“A Small Good Thing”)

At the heart of this, is the suggestion that because of the telephone, people can never

just relax. Even in one’s home, one is potentially a few seconds away from having to

talk with someone they do not know. Yet, far from finding this a comforting antidote

to loneliness, Carver sees it as something frightening, as he explains in his poem

“Fear”:

Fear of falling asleep at night.Fear of not falling asleep.Fear of the past rising up.Fear of the present taking flight.Fear of the telephone that rings in the dead of night.54

It is enough to make one wonder what kind of stories Carver would have written were

he alive today in the age of mobile phones. Perhaps he would have written a series of

stories involving a mysterious text message, or stories about messages being sent to

the wrong phone. Yet, perhaps there isn’t much use in speculating on ‘What Carver

50 Carver, Raymond, “On Writing”, Call Me If You Need Me, (London: Harvill Press, 2001) 1251 Carver, Raymond, “Are You A Doctor?” Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (London: Vintage, 2003) 2552 Carver, Raymond, “A Serious Talk”, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (London: Vintage, 2003) 9153 Carver, Raymond, “A Small Good Thing”, Cathedral (London: Harvill, 1999) 7054 Carver, Raymond, “Fear”, All of us: The Collected Poems (London: Harvill Press, 1996) 17

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Might Have Done Next’ for there seems to be enough debate surrounding the stories

he has left us.

He wiped the blade on his sleeve. He moved to the phone, doubled the cord and sawed through without any trouble at all. He examined the ends

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of the cord. Then he shoved the phone back into its corner behind the roasting pan. 55

“A Serious Talk”

Spearheading the attack on Carver’s work is the critic John Aldridge who

states that in “Carver’s fiction, the real story such as it is, appears to be what is on the

page […] no evidence suggests that the minimalist language implies more.”56 For

Aldridge, people are mistaken in considering Carver as a kind of Midas figure, with

each “commonplace object” he touches being, like in Larry McCaffery’s view,

“transformed […] from realistic props in stories to powerful, emotionally charged

signifiers in and of themselves.”57 In light of the recent debate surrounding Carver’s

minimalist style and the role that his editor played in shaping it, Aldridge’s attack is

an intriguing one for it likewise seeks to reduce Carver’s intentionality in regards to

his work’s powerfully stark symbolism. But for Charles E. May, Carver’s fiction

sought to “embody inner reality by means of simple description of outer reality.”58

And unless one truly agrees with May, then there is no way that one can hear the

“lonely voices” that appear in Carver’s work. The voices that speak, not through

words, but through actions: Clara Holt picking at a hair on Arnold Breit’s collar, Iris

pulling out the phone line, Howard giving the wheel of his Scotty’s bike a turn, the

narrator and the blind man, hand in hand, drawing a cathedral. If one does not believe

that people communicate in non-verbal ways, then one can never believe that Carver’s

stories do say anything other than what is said on the page. One can never believe

that his characters say something important about the way we are. Of course, when

55 Carver, Raymond, “A Serious Talk”, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (London: Vintage, 2003) 9556Aldridge, John, quoted in The Carver chronotope, ed., Cain, William (London: Routledge, 2004)57 McCaffery, Larry and Gregory, Sinda “An Interview with Raymond Carver,” reprinted in Conversations with Raymond Carver ed., Bruce & Stull (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990) 9858 May, Charles E., The Short Story: The Reality of Artifice (New York: Twayne, 1995) 94

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the critic attempts to translate these actions and objects into words, then there is every

chance that they may be wrong in how they translate them, but that does not deny that

these actions or objects “imply more.”

It has been said that on some level all stories are stories of search. And in the

work of Raymond Carver, characters can be found searching for such things as a job,

an alternative to alcoholism, or just a better life. Yet, fundamentally, almost every

character is searching for a means of communicating. However, we, ourselves, must

recognise that when going in pursuit of a story’s meaning, we too are searching for

something. When attempting to understand the role of telephones and communication

in Carver’s work, we are engaged in a search for meaning. And in Carver’s short

stories, because so many characters communicate non-verbally through their actions,

it is difficult to state categorically what significance a particular object or action has.

There is no doubting, however, that for Carver, the telephone is a very powerful thing.

It gives one the opportunity to make connections in the world that one wouldn’t

ordinarily make, as he explains in his essay “Fires”:

I was in the middle of writing a short story when my telephone rang. I answered it. On the other end of the line was the voice of a man who was obviously a black man, someone asking for a party named Nelson. It was a wrong number and I said so and hung up. I went back to my short story. But pretty soon I found myself writing a black character into my story.59

In the same way that the caller on the other side of the line made his way into

Carver’s story, in his work, characters are forever making entrances and exits into

people’s lives through the telephone. With that in mind, it is perhaps fitting, if not

poignant, to read Tess Gallagher, Carver’s wife, describe discovering a drawer of his

59 Carver, Raymond, “Fires”, Fires, (London: Harvill Press, 1985) 28

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unpublished stories only to find they had not been finished, but rather, left as “as one

leaves a meal when the telephone rings.”60

60 Gallagher, Tess, “Introduction”, Carver, Raymond, Call Me If You Need Me (London: Harvill Press, 2001) xii

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