Minimalism
A comprehensive career-spanning collection of one writer’s works such as Collected Stories offers readers the uncommon opportunity to see how for some writers theme is inextricably related to method. Carver was a master of the minimalist approach to short fiction; writing stories in which paring away any extraneous details, background and information became increasingly easier as he perfected his forte: detailing the lives of the dispossessed in a way where the specific details which separated them from the reader’s own experience was far less essential than the palpable sense of comfort and familiarity. Most of Carver’s short fiction—and surely his best—are stories that could be retold a million different ways changing only those slight details without harming the larger and more pervasive sense of déjà vu. A chronological reading will inevitably divulge process: Carver improved his minimalist technique as he recognized the decreasing need to tell readers anything about his characters that they didn’t already know.
Repetition and Monotony
Carver’s characters tend toward the monosyllabic and with a tendency to repeat words or phrases or ideas. This is another example how form and function go hand in hand. Most of the people living in the conditions of Carver’s world are normal, everyday kind of people not exactly given to florid speeches or even the much of an ability to give expression to the confusion and anxiety shaping whatever worldview they may have. Life is series of repetitions and the monotony is on infrequently broken by either things taking a turn for the worst or a wildly unexpected turn for the better. The irony, of course, is that the author can maintain his grip on brevity in the face of such repetition.
Love and Marriage
Especially in the stories taking from his early collections and published early on his career, the corrosive effects of the institution of marriage on the ability of couples to remain in love is a dominant theme. It should come as little surprise that most of the stories that here were that originally collected in a volume titled What We Talk About When We Talk About Love are glimpses into this seemingly inevitable ordeal of domesticity. The real issue at the heart of this thematic exploration is the seemingly natural tendency for couples to grow part and lose the ability to communicate those issues are often stimulated by what is another pervasive theme running through much of Carver’s fiction.
The Influence of Alcohol
To his credit, Carver’s own struggle with alcoholism did not turn him into one of those writers who turn to the effects of drink as an easy way into or out of a story. Abject abuse of liquor to the point of depressing alcoholism is not the thematic engine at work among Carver’s admittedly extensive cast of a characters with a penchant for spirits. In many of these stories, an increase or reduction in the actual amount of alcohol imbibed would have little impact on the fundamental and underlying issues of an inarticulate generation so marginalized by the ability of society to adequately recognize or respond to their despair that the spiral into full-blown alcoholism is portrayed far less as a flaw of personal character than as flaw in the support system surrounding all those characters.
