A Reader-response Analysis of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love 从读者反应批评理论解读《当我们在谈论爱情时我们在谈论什么》文献综述

 2021-12-30 08:12

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文献综述

Raymond Carver (1938-1988), best known for his short stories and poems, is one of the most influential writers in American history. Focusing on the life of working class, depicting isolated people suffering from financial quagmire and psychological problems, being pushed beyond the edge of dismay, his works revitalized the short-story genre. The typical Carver character is a down-and-out blue-collar type familiar with trauma of martial infidelity, alcoholism, and financial hardship (Gearhart, 439). The recurring topics are in alignment with Carvers own life experience.Carver was born in 1938 in Oregon to a working class family. His father was a sawmill worker and and his mother worked on and off as a waitress and a retail clerk. The family moved a lot, the father drank heavily and the mother took nerve medicine every day. Carver was prematurely exposed to the strained family relationship and financial constraints. In his Paris Review interview, Carver recalled the sense of doom and hopelessness that hung over the supper table when his father drank with other workers outside. In 1957, at age 19, Carver married Maryann Burk and became the father of two within one year. Carver held a number of low-paying jobs to support the family, the difficult years provided him a distinct vision of the working class. The couple worked as hard as they could but things did not turn out as they wished. Carver said in an interview, There was never enough money to go around at the end of the month. And, finally, that kind of wild endeavor and effort began to wear us down. While attending Chico State College, Carver became interested in writing, later he went on to attend the Iowa Writers Workshop. He worked nights and went to school and published his first short-story Pastoral and poem The Brass Ring while at Humboldt State. Carvers wife, Maryann Burk, also held a series of jobs to support Carver. Long-term poverty and depression lead to alcoholism. Taking after his father, Carver began an alcoholic and was repeatedly hospitalized for alcoholism in the 1970s. Carvers first two short story collections Will you please be quiet, please? And Furious Seasons and other stories were published during this period which Carver termed his first life or Bad Raymond days.After quitting drinking in 1977, Carver made progress in his writing. His third short story collection What we talk about when we talk about love published in 1981, featuring an intensely minimalist style. His characters were lost or diminished in their own different ways. The 17 stories make up a more concentrated volume, less a collection than a set of variations on the themes of marriage, infidelity and the disquieting tricks of human affection. noted critic Michael Wood. The publication of Cathedral in 1983 was the turn of Carvers writing career. This fourth collection received overwhelmingly positive response. It was nominated for both a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and a National Book Critics Circle Award. Critics acknowledged an unmistakable loosening of Carvers stark minimalist prose style, and noted the development of human potential in his characters (Gearhart, 439)Carver also wrote extensively as a poet. He published five books of poetry, Near 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). The poems in the last collection are characterized by a reliance on sentence-sounds and a structure steeped in storytelling. Carver died of lung cancer in his home in 1988. Irving Howe claimed that Carvers stories evoke strong American literary traditions. Formally, they summon remembrances of Hemingway and perhaps Stephen Crane, masters of tightly packed fiction. In subject matter they draw upon the American voice of loneliness and stoicism, the native soul locked in this continents space.

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