This post is the work of Daniel Torday, a Creative Writing Lecturer at Bryn Mawr College.–TM
The recent flap over Tess Gallager’s desire to publish Raymond Carver’s original draft of What We Talk about When We Talk About Love has come gradually, and then suddenly. Ten years ago there was an enthralling piece of literary detective-work by D.T. Max in the New York Times Magazine that got everyone talking about Gordon Lish; then in October, this time in the Times Arts section, we learned that it was Gallager’s intention to publish a restored version of the collection, with all of the stories reproduced as Carver first sent them to his editor, entitled Beginners. Then last month the New Yorker published “Beginners,” Carver’s original version of the title story of that collection, along with a selection of the letters Max had previously unearthed.
But it doesn’t stop there. Much commentary has followed in newspapers and on the web, and the armchair detective may even have looked into superagent Andrew Wylie’s comments on the matter in an upcoming issue of Conde Nast’s new business magazine, Portfolio, in which he tells us: “When you look at the original versions, you see that the progression from Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? [1976] to Cathedral [1984] is a more natural progression than reviewers believed when they all said, around the publication of Cathedral, ???My God, what a deepening of the work!’“ In the same way you have Coppola wanting to release a full, unedited version of Apocalypse Now, and you have unedited versions of Faulkner and Hemingway being brought to light, I think this needs to be brought to light.”
It’s hard to argue with this last bit of reasoning. But it’s equally hard to see it as much more than a common instance of literary marginalia. A trip to most bookstores will easily bring us to evidence of Elizabeth Bishop’s full drafting process in Edgar Allen Poe & the Juke Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments (over the clamorous objections of our foremost poetry critic, Helen Vendler), or wildly unrevised endings to Kafka’s posthumously published novels; a little searching in your university library will bring access to the draft of The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald wanted called Trimalchio, and the subtle edits Maxwell Perkins famously suggested to that earlier draft are about as valuable a lesson as an aspiring novelist might hope for.
So what is at stake in this conversation? The wrenching earnestness of Carver’s epistolary objections has certainly raised the drama on the issue. But strangely absent from conversation is another relevant question, pertaining to the fact that Lish brought Carver’s stories to a wide audience at all. Today we encounter a din of voices when we learn some kind of personal connection has led to any publication–internet sites have been devoted to rooting out such purported venality. And yet it’s been left uncommented that Carver’s old buddy from his Palo Alto days got a job at a glossy and then got him read by the enormous readership legendary editor Harold Hayes had built for Esquire in the late ???60’s and early ???70’s. (Incidentally, for the best piece on Lish, see Amy Hempel’s great collection of anecdotes and commentary in “Captain Fiction,” Vanity Fair, December 1984).
But it’s telling as we consider what’s problematic, if anything, in the Carver-Lish relationship, that we hear little concern over this issue. Telling, and instructive. What writer has been free of such influences? Certainly some of our most treasured writers have been the beneficiaries of such help, and it’s far from us to fault them–or to think of this kind of midwifery as somehow improper, as so many often tend to want to deem it now. Consider this anecdote Faulkner relates in the recently published Paris Review Interviews, Vol. II, about the publication of his first novel:
I was living in New Orleans, doing whatever kind of work was necessary to earn a little money now and then. I met Sherwood Anderson. We would walk about the city in the afternoon and talk to people. In the evenings we would meet again and sit over a bottle or two while he talked and I listened“. I began to write my first book. At once I found that writing was fun. I even forgot that I hadn’t seen Mr. Anderson for three weeks until he walked in my door, the first time he ever came to see me, and said, What’s wrong? Are you mad at me? I told him I was writing a book. He said, My God, and walked out. When I finished the book–it was Soldier’s Pay–I met Mrs. Anderson on the street. She asked how the book was going, and I said I’d finished it. She said, Sherwood says that he will make a trade with you. If he doesn’t have to read your manuscript he will tell his publisher to accept it. I said, Done, and that’s how I became a writer.
Would we toss Faulkner back for having received this favor–probably not quite as grudging a favor as Faulkner would like us to have it–from another of the greatest writers of the 20th century? We can learn from the fact that, lost in the undertow of the current conversation about Carver’s publication history, here we have a history that suggests we could stand to ease up on some of our clamor over the way work comes to publication.
Incidentally, Faulker himself grew up in a Mississippi house where, according to biographer David Minter, his mother had a mantra tacked to the wall: “Don’t Complain, Don’t Explain.” Carver seems to have had this aphorism in the back of his mind while composing his indispensable essay, “On Writing,” a piece that might stand as a nice opportunity to imagine what Carver himself might have to say about this recent dust-up. Late in the essay, Carver relates an anecdote about a writer friend of his who claimed to have “hurried a book” of his into print. “But if the writing can’t be made as good as it is within us to make it,” Carver writes, “then why do it?”
In the end, the satisfaction of having done our best, and the proof of that labor, is the one thing we can take into our grave. I wanted to say to my friend, for heaven’s sake go do something else. There have to be easier and maybe more honest ways to try and earn a living. Or else just do it to the best your abilities, your talents, and then don’t justify or make excuses. Don’t complain, don’t explain.
Torday’s short stories, criticism, and non-fiction have appeared in Esquire, The Kenyon Review, The New York Times and Interview Magazine, among other publications. His story “Bubi Grynszpan Dreams Assassination Dreams” was the winner of the 2006 Peter Neagoe Award, and he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has recently completed his first novel, the research for which took him to Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania. He holds a B.A. from Kenyon College and an M.F.A. from Syracuse University, where he taught literature and writing.