Re: Carver and Dancing :)
Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Sat, 28 Aug 1999 15:09:34 -0400
On Fri, Aug 27, 1999 at 10:39:23AM -0400, AntiUtopia@aol.com wrote:
> My favorite Carver story is the piece on the death of Chekov.
Yes, "Errand" -- that was a masterpiece of emotion, written about a
dying Chekhov (of TB, I think) while Carver was dying of lung cancer.
In all this talk of Carver and minimalism and so forth, I feel COMPELLED
(in the manner of Buddy Glass) to point to an article on the subject,
which mentions Carver and his followers, and other writers of short
stories, and essentially skewers minimalism (though the author generally
omits Carver from the skewer). It's a bit old, but not as old and
hard to find as "Hapworth." It's rather a polemic -- so much that one
writer I knew, who was singled out for praise for work in the
minimalist form, was insanely fuming about it years after its
publication:
"Less Is Less: The Dwindling American Short Story"
Madison Smartt Bell
Harper's Magazine: April 1986
(That's Harper's, and not, as people often ask, Harper's Bazaar, the
fashion magazine. Also, unfortunately, it's not available online. The
author, Madison Smartt Bell, is one of my personal favorite contemporary
writers. I'd probably delight in reading his grocery lists.)
--tim o'connor