Carver

• Les amis de Carver, trop nombreux pour qu’on puisse tous les citer, continuent de refléter son image dans leur travail et de raconter la légende de Ray l’espiègle. Certains d’entre eux sont devenus d’éminentes figures du monde des lettres, couverts des honneurs que Carver reçut lui-même à la fin de sa vie. La plupart, toutefois, sont demeurés dans l’ombre, penchés sur leur bureau, auteurs connus, inconnus, voire oubliés, qui tous croient avec ferveur que la littérature, la poésie sont assez puissantes pour animer nos vies solitaires, et qui poursuivent leur œuvre, sans se soucier des caprices de la fortune qui favorise si peu d’entre eux.

  — Carol Sklenicka, Raymond Carver. Une vie d’écrivain (trad. Carine Chichereau)

  26 mars 2022

• D.T. Max, “The Carver Chronicles”, The New York Times Magazine, 9 août 1998.

  7 janvier 2013

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  Raymond Carver, “Cathedral”, Cathedral

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  18 juillet 2012

• Did you ever have any time off from not having to earn a living?

  I had a year once. It was a very important year for me, too. I wrote most of the stories in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? in that year. It was back in 1970 or 1971. I was working for this textbook publishing firm in Palo Alto. It was my first white-collar job, right after the period when I’d been a janitor at the hospital in Sacramento. I’d been working away there quietly as an editor when the company, it was called SRA, decided to do a major reorganization. I planned to quit, I was writing my letter of resignation, but then suddenly—I was fired. It was just wonderful the way it turned out. We invited all of our friends that weekend and had a firing party! For a year I didn’t have to work. I drew unemployment and had my severance pay to live on. And that’s the period when my wife finished her college degree. That was a turning point, that time. It was a good period.

  — Raymond Carver, propos recueillis par Mona Simpson et Lewis Buzbee

  2 février 2012