Raymond Carver

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Raymond Carver


An American short-story writer and poet, Raymond Carver’s style of writing was called minimalism. Carver himself did not like the label, “because it ‘smacks of smallness of vision and execution.’” (Stull 8) Raymond Clevie Carver, nicknamed Junior, Frog, and Doc, was born on May 25, 1938, in Clatskanie, a mill town on the Columbia River in Oregon. His father, Clevie Raymond Carver (“C.R.”), rode the rails from Arkansas to Washington state during the dust-bowl days of the 1930’s. C.R., a sawmill worker, was an alcoholic who died at fifty-three. Growing up at home, Carver’s father used to tell him stories about his own hunting and fishing exploits, and about his grandfather, who had fought in the Civil War for both sides. His mother, Ella Casey Carver, supplemented the family income by working as a waitress and retail clerk. When Raymond was three, the family moved to Yakima, Washington, a town of twenty thousand near the Cascades, where he grew up.
Carver went to a local school in Yakima, and graduated in 1956. He was a fan of Mickey Spillane novels and Sports Afield and Outdoor Life. Soon after graduating, Carver married his pregnant, sixteen-year-old girlfriend named Maryann Burk. During the early years of their marriage, Carver worked as a janitor, a laborer at a sawmill, and as a salesman. Maryann worked as a waitress, a salesperson, and an administrative assistant and teacher. The Carver’s had two children who, although having a rough childhood, eventually both graduated from college. In 1958, Carver moved his family to Paradise, California and enrolled in Chico State College as a part-time student. Here he takes a creative writing course taught by John Gardner. This is where he first becomes interested in writing. In 1960 Carver transfers to Humboldt State College and published his first story, 'Pastoral,' in the Western Humanites Review, and his first poem, 'The Brass ...