To complicate matters, however, in a 2009 interview, Carver's widow Tess Gallagher asserts that "A Small, Good Thing" is actually the earlier version of the story. "The Bath" is in fact a version heavily edited by the famous Gordon Lish--the interviewer writes that "[Carver's] editor and mentor Gordon Lish revised every story, in some cases rewriting or deleting more than half the original text." Tess Gallagher is trying to publish an entirely new version of Carver's 1981 book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love to be titled Beginners.
On other topics, here's a brief and interesting personal essay discussing Carver and the "dirty realists" and comparing Carver with some of his contemporaries (Richard Ford, Richard Bausch, Tobias Wolff, Jayne Anne Phillips).
After reading Carver's pair of stories, I found it most interesting to view them as a case study in the evolution of a writing style. Considering the stories in the order that they were published (according to the author introduction), I thought in terms of a broad outline of a story ("The Bath") being remolded in order to provide a great deal of depth ("A Small, Good Thing"), with additions to make for a more complete, and certainly less open-ended, story. Interestingly, the only thing I really enjoyed about "The Bath" was its open ending, with no actual confirmation that the mysterious caller was the baker (keeping it creepy even as the reader thinks, "I'm pretty sure I know who that is"). Everything else about the story, though, seemed cosmetic. The writing style was short and clipped, almost juvenile, while the story itself only described surface actions and broad outlines, ignoring any depth. Overall, I found it very uninteresting, except for the ending as I already mentioned.
ReplyDelete"A Small, Good Thing" was a vast improvement in my opinion, mainly for the obvious reasons. The story was more deeply written, with detail that the other version lacked. Of course, the open ending was removed in order to bring the baker into the story again, but that served its own purposes of bringing closure to a grieving family and a man who had to relearn kindness. The only complaint I would put forward about this version is that it seemed to give away too much information early on. "The Bath" seemed to revel in keeping information from the reader, especially names. In "A Small, Good Thing," it seemed like the author was trying to push out the characters' names as soon as he could safely do so. While there wasn't necessarily a reason to remain mysterious, I'd thought it added a (small) bit of interest to an otherwise very forgettable story, and wondered why "A Small, Good Thing" hadn't done the same thing.
As for Ms. Gallagher's revelation about Mr. Lish, I believe the latter should be very happy about the fact that we do not know each other. If he produced "The Bath" from "A Small, Good Thing," he has more than earned some serious punishment.
I read through the bath and at the end just felt sad. It left so much up to the reader to decide but I never doubted that Scott was going to die. I found it interesting that the real work of writing The Bath didn't happen until it was finished and that the author wasn't really responsible for the end result. I was trying to figure out how he had achieved such a stable story yet had so little for the reader to go off of. I think this may be the very thing I adopt to my own writing. Finishing an entire story, editing it, then stripping it of everything that it is to leave it with just it's bones for people to flesh out themselves.
ReplyDeleteI thought as I read A small, Good Thing that there would be no way that it could be better than The Bath. As I finished the last line on the page I just sat there and said "shit." The content was just so heavy. Although it is hopeful it still feels so precarious like at any moment Ann could kill the baker and lose herself to despair instead of eating cinnamon rolls with him. It reminded me of how real life is. Sometimes it's easier to forget that.
To relate this to Burroway there is a lot of action going on. Even though they are not actually doing much physically. You see a lot of "chance and choice" as Burroway calls it, chance being Scotty getting hit by a car and then the choices they make about how to react to his death and what to do about it. It continues through the story propelling us to the end, the chance of meeting the family waiting for Franklin, their cut son or the choice of what to do with the baker. It all revolves around this process until you come to the end of the story with them eating and choosing to continue on with their lives.
"A Small, Good Thing" feels like "The Bath" version 2.0. I actually accidentally read "A Small, Good Thing" first, thinking it was the first out of the two Carver stories. So then reading "The Bath" felt kind of like an afterthought -- not as important. Like Gary said, it seemed like a "broad outline," a shell of a story. I don't know what I would've thought of it if I hadn't read "A Small, Good Thing" first. In fact, I kind of wish I had read "The Bath" first. It was very underwhelming to me, reading it second. While I knew they were the same characters, I didn't feel nearly as attached to them as I did with "A Small, Good Thing." But even the latter fell a little flat for me. I usually love Carver -- I love his ability to write a completely "normal" story (if that makes sense), but to assign such great meaning to the normalcy. The Weiss family is pretty basic, particularly in "A Small, Good Thing:" loving husband, loving wife, they both love their son, and something weird happens to their son and then he dies. And they're heart-broken, as any loving parents would be. The thing that makes it good for me is the baker -- like Catherine, I absolutely loved the line: "Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this." And those hot rolls, and the mother eating three of them; the comfort in talking to a complete stranger who honestly and truly listens to you, commiserates with you, shows compassion for you.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read a ton by Carver, but the things I have read, I love because they are not good because they are about sad things. They are good because they often take a sad thing and show it differently, make it okay, somehow. (i.e.: Cathedrals)
Most short stories are often really fucked up (excuse my language) or really sad. I think I'll take from Carver the fact that short stories don't have to necessarily be either fucked up or sad. Maybe they just have to show you something you didn't expect.
I have to say it was hard choosing which author to write about since I felt that the stories of both writers were compelling. But the one that kept me glued to the page was Raymond Carver. Even though the stories were essential the same, they both have a different feeling and sort of tell different stories in a way. In the story “The Bath” the reader doesn’t really know if Scotty dies or not which makes the reader interpret on his or her own what happens next. I thought when reading this that Scotty was going to be all right and that there was going to be a happy ending. In “A Small, Good Thing” when I read the ending, it hit me harder because it wasn’t what I expected. In addition I also liked was how relatable the characters were in both stories, but more so in “The Bath”. In “The Bath,” Carver reframed from using names and races to make it look like it could happen anybody, which made the story extremely realistic. When I saw that “A Small Good thing” was essentially the same story but longer it peaked my interest to see who the characters really are and what really happens.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I liked most about these two stories was how “A Small, Good Thing” took everything from “The Bath” and expanded it. I was glad that he did it because it answered many of my questions I had when I read “The Bath”. With that being said, I kind of like the ambiguity of the piece “The Bath” much better. Although I didn’t know who the characters are or what happens in the end, the piece works well just as the way it is. I think this technique of being able to evolve a story through detail is something I would take from Carver because he showed me that a story could be told in many different ways depending on the detail. In “The Bath” the mother’s character wasn’t fully expressed yet in the “A Small, Good Thing,” Carver uses more description for the character the mother even giving her an age and some character traits. This helps the reader pinpoint the story closely to a family and their interactions with other people as they experience the loss of an child. Ann is shown to be very caring and friendly even towards other people such as the Negro family and the baker. The reader couldn’t tell that the mother in “The Bath” was friendly and caring to other people. In that story there was a small hint but nothing too expanded upon. I also liked how in “A Small, Good Thing” the baker plays a bigger part and is shown from the beginning to the end. In “The Bath”, the baker was just one of the characters that the mother interacted and was created just to show how much the mother cared for her son which further impacted Scotty’s hospitalization. Overall I really enjoyed reading Carver’s pieces and I would use his technique of revising a story making it almost completely different based on the significant details.
After reading these two stories, one would think that "The Bath" was written first, because it is obviously the shorter of the two, and just seems less thought out than "A Small, Good Thing." I kind of like that it's the other way around. I think it's so easy to add in more details to fully characterize and set the scene and emotion, but to take away whole parts of the story, and still leave a complete, though bare, story is a skill worth having. I did prefer "A Small, Good Thing" better because it feels more complete, but I thought "The Bath" was well written too, especially the ending. We want to believe that it's the baker calling, but we really have no idea, and it could have been the hospital, or the person who hit him with the car.
ReplyDeleteIn "A Small, Good Thing," Carver does a much better job of letting the reader know who the characters are. We actually learn the names of the parents, and get to know the other family waiting in the hospital to hear of their son. That scene was my favorite. Ann finds a connection with these people whom she's never met, even though she only talks to them for maybe five minutes. Not only that, but none of the family members even seem to care about Ann. The teenager just smokes a cigarette, and the "Negro woman let her head fall on her shoulder and looked away from Ann, no longer interested." This family could have just been minor characters, but I feel that they take on a bigger role than it seems. Ann even looks for them when she comes back to the hospital, asking about their son at the desk. This family is only supposed to be a small bump in the story, but this is the part I remember the most out of the story.
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ReplyDelete“The Bath” and “A Small, Good Thing” – these two stories, I thought were highly fascinating. For one, they’re both the same story, only with varying degrees of details. One goes into in depth details, while the other just covers the main idea. Yet, after reading the first post of this blog, I wasn’t aware that “A Small, Good Thing” was the first of the two. It was my assumption that “The Bath,” being shorter than the second story and with fair less detail, would have been first in line. Regardless, I’m fascinated about the very idea of publishing two stories that are the same (regarding the character’s emotions, storyline, etc., while adding more detail in the second copy).
ReplyDeleteHowever, looking back at “The Bath,” I felt the title didn’t necessarily fit the story. The very idea of the parents taking baths were only mentioned twice, and the settings had little, if any, purpose. Furthermore, the settings were very brief – only a few sentences, and that’s it. Quick word to the author: focus! Then, there was the ending; we don’t have any information regarding whether Scotty lives. Yet, some stories, including this one, are probably better off ending in such a way that the human imagination has to determine what happens next. And those stories are the kind, to me at least, that spark the interest of readers to request for potential sequels.
“A Small, Good Thing” – very detailed in comparison to “The Bath.” In all honesty, I find that more details provided give a better illustration to the setting, characters, their emotions, etc. Although the enhanced details are given in this story, it is my belief that perhaps the author has gone a little too far with the description. This story was written in the 80s, yet the author has provided some descriptions that would be considered politically incorrect, even for that time. He resorts to using a racist description to provide us with some details concerning an African American family waiting in the hospital (page 135):
“At the end of the corridor, she turned to her right and entered a little waiting room where a Negro family sat in wicker chairs. There was a middle-aged man in a khaki shirt and pants, a baseball cap pushed back on his head. A large woman wearing a housedress and slippers was slumped in one of the chairs. A teenaged girl in jeans, hair done in dozens of little braids, lay stretched out in one of the chairs smoking a cigarette …”
Shouldn’t writers be concerned about offending people of different races?
Beyond that, I find the ending to this story to be depressing, given that it is revealed Scotty dies. Yet, at the same time, the ending is interesting as it expands from where “The Bath” leaves off. We’re given the reactions of the parents – they felt the need to track the baker and kill him, all because of his constant calls: “Your Scotty, I got him ready for you. Did you forget him?” Reading this quote, I thought the baker struck Scotty with the car. Much to my surprise, however, he didn’t. Who struck Scotty? WE DON’T KNOW! And it’s most likely that we’ll never know who struck him. The answer isn’t revealed in this story, or the former (“The Bath”).
Given the nature of these two stories, being the same, except for the degree of details, I can rightfully say that this author, Raymond Carver, can be added to my “writer’s family tree.” This technique has grabbed so much of my interest that I’m considering taking similar steps – writing a short story, or a collection of short stories, and then adding the story/stories into a potential novel. Expect one of my workshop stories to be one of those!
I'm fascinated by the idea that "A Small Good Thing" was written before "The Bath." As stated before, it's so easy to add detail to a piece and enrich it, which is something I find that comes up in workshop often. We (or at least I) are constantly told to expand on parts of our story to make it better. I think it could be a really interesting exercise for an author to take a finished story and strip it down to its bones. It's a study in significant detail- what do we really need in a story?
ReplyDeleteI really loved reading "The Bath," but I don't know if I could emulate that bare style successfully. "A Small, Good Thing" is a little more of what I expect from a short story, but that's a perception that's quickly being changed in this class.