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