Good people don't have good luck, and other people should do what they do

"But there are too many contradictions in life. ”

This sentence in "Where Have Everyone Gone" can be regarded as the core of Carver's literary anthology. From essays to poems to short stories, the works in this anthology are all about the contradictions of life that belong to ordinary people. Reading his work is like looking through the window of the apartment building across the street and watching the people inside go about their lives day after day.

Carver writes about the so-called "mundane" things in life, the things that are not glamorous or rosy—the breakdown of parenthood, the marriage on the verge of collapse, the pheasant that was hit and killed by his car...... Carver, who writes mundane things into poems, contradictions into stories, and lives an ordinary life, writes such words.

He is good at sweeping out the trivial things that have accumulated dust in the dead corners of life, and discovering those emotions that we have not or do not want to discover. A neighbor, a glass of wine, a fish – these are the supporting characters in life who will become the protagonists of Carver's writing.

A reader on Douban said: "I was trapped outside the station for 4 hours last night, during which a woman not far away kept screaming and cursing, attracting onlookers and ridicule. It dawned on me that Carver was writing about these people. ”

Yes, Carver writes about these ordinary people and the trivialities of their lives. Is life difficult? For ordinary people, it is too difficult, there are too many contradictions, and there are endless ends. But who says it's not worth living like this?

In this issue:

Raymond Carver