American Literature

Raymond Carver is one of Americas most important writers during the latter part of the twentieth century. A minimalist, he was considered influential in the genres of short story and poetry. This can be attributed to the fact that Carver was mentored by John Gardner when he enrolled in one of the creative-writing courses that the former taught. Gardner instilled him to use fifteen words instead of twenty-five. Later in his writing career, his editor at Esquire Magazine, Gordon Lish, instructed him to reduce the fifteen words to five. In fact, most of the works he has written while he was under him were heavily edited by Lish, which eventually led to Carvers resignation.
   
Together with Jayne Anne Phillips, Richard Ford, Anne Beattie, and Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver was also identified to be a writer of Dirty Realism. A form of Minimalism, Dirty Realism is a literary movement in which the literary piece is bared to its most basic elements. 
   
Carver describes his style of writing in Fires. He said I like it when there is some sense of menace in short stori. There has to be tension, a sense that something is imminent. And a close inspection of most of his works shows just that.
   
According to Arthur Bethea, who explored the similarities between Raymond Carvers work and Ernest Hemingways, the latters domestic stories became templates for Carver. Carver used Hemingways works as models in his own narratives, which is not something to be marveled at since it is quite obvious that Carver is fond of Hemingways work. When he was asked as to what his favorite story is, he answered that as a writer much can be learned from Hills Like White Elephants. Setting off from that answer, it is not too much to infer that he had studied the work from a writers perspective, and so, subsequently, he was able to adopt Hemingways style and theme in writing in his own works. As William Stull puts it, Carvers first ever published story entitled.
   
In fact, not going far from his favorite story, the Hills Like White Elephants can be paralleled to Carvers short story Will You Please Be Quiet, Please.  His writing style in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please has several similarities to Hemingways Hills Like White Elephants. For a start, the minimalist or the precisionist style that Hemingway employed can also be noticed in the particular Carvers short story in discussion. These were apparent in the story which was characterized as having direct syntax and simple diction. It also adopted the formers lack of an omniscient narrator that identifies the thematic meaning. Hemingway describes this writing style as follows
If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only, one-eighth of it being above water.

  
Similarly, Carver explains that tension or menace can be created by things ... left out but implied.   
In Hemingways Hills Like White Elephants, the narrative revolves and takes anchor unto an unspoken word --- abortion. Although it was never ever mentioned in the story, not even once, the readers well know that it is a central force where the story is woven around. The female character, frustrated at her lovers insistent attempt into making her abort the baby, says Would you please please please please please please please stop talking. And this is the most obvious similarity that Will You Please Be Quiet, Please has with Hemingways story. Just from the title itself, the parallelism is already crying out loud. In the narrative, we find Ralph Wyman saying that exact line towards his adulterous wife.
   
As previously mentioned, in the Hemingway story, the term abortion is omitted from the couples conversation, but is nonetheless clear to the reading audience. In the same manner, in Carvers narrative, a central issue is also omitted from the dialogues but still plays a central concern in the story. The significant omission is the fear that Ralph Wyman feels towards the true paternity of his children which is revealed to us when we read For he had taken it into his head that his wife had once betrayed him with a man named Mitchell Anderson. This was successfully achieved (the significant omission) by using Hemingways technique of making pronouns seem ambiguous or vague.
   
Take for example the scene when the wife, Marian, asks her husband about a party that has happened four years ago. During the conversation on the topic she brought up, it is easy to see how the word it has been used quite often. Ralph said What about it Now that you brought it up, what about it ... He kissed you, after all, that night, didnt he. Although the first it no doubt refers to the party, the succeeding ones are in question. We can feel that he is implying on something else, something he cannot say outright. But the use of it does not end there. Marian replies by saying I was just thinking about it and I asked you, thats all. ... Sometimes I think about it. Here, we notice that there is still the feeling that something else is being discussed other than the party. The vagueness and the ambiguity in the pronoun it creates way for the readers to think of what might have been really referred to everytime it was used. If it was all just about the party, Ralph would not have felt so strongly and so tensed about the conversation. Obviously, the idea that he was cuckolded made him feel upset towards the discussion.It could refer to Marians adultery, or to the fact that Ralph may not be the real father of their children.
   
This style of omitting solid referents to pronouns was adopted by Carver from Hemingways Hills.... Consider the following conversation between Jig and her partner
Man We can have the whole world.
Jig No, we cant.
Man We can go everywhere.
Jig No, we cant. It isnt ours anymore.
Man Its ours.
Jig No, it isnt. And once they take it away, you never get it back.
  
We can see through the trail of conversation, how the it shifts its meaning from the whole world to the baby that is impending to be aborted. Although it is not directly stated, we get to know what the it refers towards the end of that dialogue based on context.
   
Although there are considerable parallels between Ernest Hemingways Hills Like White Elephants and Raymond Carvers Will You Please Be Quiet, Please, they gear towards different endings. Hemingways story shows how poor communication, the fear of stating the issue at hand exhibits emotional hollowness and miscommunication. And since the story is open-ended, we do not know for sure if they will be able to resolve their issue later on. But offhand, we get the feeling that theres already invisible distance, a barrier between the couple. On the other hand, Will You Please... by Carver concludes with the husband and wife making love, giving way to possible reconciliation. If silence in Hemingways story means a possible misunderstanding between the couple, in Carvers, silence gave way to a relationship invigoration.