“Put yourself in my shoes”: The cultural geography of Raymond Carver's America

Vanessa Hall, Purdue University

Abstract

There is considerable tension between narratives comprising Carver's biography—the stories constructed about his growth, transformations, and motives and shaped by narratives about authorship and American success—his stories, and his social and cultural context. The tensions between these narratives reflect wider fractures and tensions in American social and cultural spheres during the 1970s and 1980s: the familiar American dream narrative competing with and uneasily sitting alongside more subversive, fragmented, and postmodern narratives that gained cultural currency and efficacy during these decades. These narratives, like those found in Carver's fiction, are complex, reflecting widespread cultural and economic anxiety surrounding issues of class, whiteness, and gender. Providing a complexity that mainstream cultural texts often elide, Carver's stories were nevertheless in tune with the cultural logic of his period, providing a valuable window through which we can view the cultural upheavals of the 1970s and 1980s. The key components of my dissertation involve approaching Carver in a way that situates him as part of the culture and social movements and crises of the 1970s and 1980s; this approach will demonstrate his stories' implicit, complicated engagement with social, political, economic and cultural issues of the times. Reciprocally, I will analyze Carver's stories to better understand the moments of progress and regress of these decades. Close readings of selected stories will tease out these complexities and suggest an effective method of reading literary and social texts together. Reading America through the social and cultural texts comprising Carver's life and work will result in a deeper understanding of formative events, crises, and cleavages of the times. Closer attention to the historical and cultural particulars of Carver's stories than generally found in Carver criticism also provides a more balanced understanding of these stories, and their appeal to readers, who were captivated by Carver's style and artistry, but also by the content and tenor of his stories.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Peteson, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American studies|American history|American literature

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