Re: leaps of illogic, re. Carver and Kafka

AntiUtopia@aol.com
Sat, 28 Aug 1999 08:41:09 -0400 (EDT)

Wish I'd read more Kafka now :)  Good post, there...

I think Carver's minimalism was a bit more unique than you're giving him 
credit for, and I think your opinion of Carver should be based on more than 
one story.  But at the same time I know a lot of people had the same problems 
with Carver you did on the first read.  I first read Carver in an American 
Short Story class that focused on Carver and Flannery O'Connor.  What a pair 
:)  They had different styles and goals in their writing, both were 
consummate storytellers, and people had an equally difficult time "getting 
the point of the story."  After a couple years I finally figured out their 
short stories needed to be approached differently to get meaning out of them. 
 Once I started doing that many of the more cryptic stories became painfully 
obvious.  Course, some are still cryptic :)

Jim