r ay m o n d c a rv e r s

i n h e r i ta n c e f r om
e r n e s t h e m i n g way s
literary technique

a rt h u r f. b e t h e a
Freetown, Massachusetts

if raymond carver modeled hemingway at the outset of his careerhis

first published story, Pastoral, has been labeled a Hemingway imitation
(Stull, Remembered 466)he consciously resisted Papas gravitational
force early as well. The Aficionados, Carvers 1963 parody of Jake Barnes
and Brett Ashleys relationship, published in a collegiate magazine under
the pseudonym John Vale, mocks Hemingways deification of bullfighting
and his main characters quiet heroism. Carvers story concludes with the
Barnes substitute baring his chest in a public ritual so that the object of his
doomed love can literally cut out his heart.1 Carver again rejects Hemingwayesque heroes along the lines of bullfighter Pedro Romero or freedom
fighter Robert Jordan in a poem titled The Baker. When his wife gives sexual favors to Pancho Villa, Carvers baker crosses himself:
and left the house holding his boots
without so much as a sign
to his wife or Vronsky.
That anonymous husband, barefooted,
humiliated, trying to save his life, he
is the hero of this poem. (All 9)

T H E H E M I N G W A Y R E V I E W , V O L . 26, N O . 2, S P R I N G 2007. Copyright 2007

The Ernest Hemingway Foundation. Published by the University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho.

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As Tobias Wolff has observed, this escape goes to the heart of Carvers
sense of life, his rejection of the heroic and lofty; Carver honors the
virtue of endurance, just staying alive in the world (qtd. in Halpert 155).
While Robert Jordan sacrifices his life to allow his comrades and lover to escape from the advancing Fascists, Carver says bluntly in his essay Friendship: Would I give up my place on the lifeboat, that is to say, die, for any
one of my friends? I hesitate, but [. . .] the answer is an unheroic no (No
Heroics 221).
Yet, although Hemingway is best-known for his own larger-than-life adventures, as well as for his death-defying protagonists, another Hemingway,
the domestic Hemingway, the writer who subtly captured moments of marital relationships under stressthis Hemingway was much more useful to
Carver. And this is the Hemingway whom Carver followed technically and
echoed without derision.
While praising the short story collection In Our Time for its cadences
and clean, crisp writing, Carver singled out Cat in the Rain as one of his
favorite Hemingway tales. Nothing much happens, Carver said, but you
know that the relationship is going bad (qtd. in Pope and McElhinny 17).
This statement describes many Carver stories, including The Students
Wife, an apprentice delineation of marital malaise clearly echoing Cat in
the Rain. In Hemingways story, a young wife reveals her dissatisfaction by
childishly rattling off a series of desires: I want to pull my hair back tight
and smooth and make a big knot at the back that I can feel; I want to
have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her; And I want to
eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles. And I want it to be
spring and I want to brush my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a
kitty and I want some new clothes (SS 169170). The womans desire for a
cat suggests a greater yearning for a baby, yet she appears unaware of this
deeper desire,2 as does her husband, who snaps, Oh, shut up and get
something to read (170). In The Students Wife, an insomniac woman
creates an enormous catalog of pleasures and desires, trying to talk herself
into sleep:
I like good books and magazines, riding on trains at night, and
those times I flew in an airplane. [. . .] I like that, flying in airplanes. Theres a moment as you leave the ground you feel whatever happens is all right. [. . .] I like staying up late at night and

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then staying in bed the next morning. I wish we could do that all
the time, not just once in a while. [. . .] Id like to go dancing at
least once a week. Id like to have nice clothes all the time. Id like
to be able to buy the kids nice clothes every time they need it
without having to wait. [. . .] And Id like us to have a place of
our own. Id like to stop moving around every year, or every
other year. [. . .] (Where Im Calling From 39)
This womans husband is insensitive, too, snapping: I wish youd leave me
alone [. . .] (40). Carvers Nan is more aware of her oppression than Hemingways American girl, and the ending of The Students Wife finds her
desperately asking for divine assistance.
Only a few years after ridiculing Hemingway in The Aficionados,
Carver published one of his best stories, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?,
both a clear acknowledgment of its precursor and a sharp thematic departure. In Hills Like White Elephants, exasperated by her lovers dishonest
attempt to pressure her into an abortion, Hemingways Jig cries out:
Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?
(SS 277). In Carvers story, Ralph Wyman, desiring silence, tells his adulterous wife: Will you please be quiet, please? (Will You Please 250). While little happens in Hills Like White Elephantsthe characters drink and talk
around their problems at a train stationCarvers story is atypically action-packed. Ralph argues with his wife, storms out and gets drunk, gambles, gets mugged and beaten, and then, returning home, has sex. While
silence speaks to the emotional impoverishment of Hemingways couple, at
the conclusion of Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, silence involves lovemaking, reconciliation, and evolution.
Asked to name his favorite story, Carver said that a writer could learn a
lot from Hills Like White Elephants (Halpert 126). Although we cannot
determine exactly what he learned from Hemingway, Carvers method in
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and in many stories to follow is quite
comparable to the minimalist or precisionist technique of Hills Like White
Elephants.3 Both stories share minimalist traits such as simple diction, direct syntax, and the absence of an omniscient narrator to clarify thematic
meaning. Moreover, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and many other
Carver stories, as well as Hemingways Hills Like White Elephants, employ
what Adam Meyer considers the salient feature of minimalism, omission

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(2930). Hemingway famously described his theory of omission in Death in

the Afternoon:
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.4 (182)
In Hills Like White Elephants, the story hinges on an unspoken word,
abortion, with Jig and the American discussing their situation without
using either this word or the word baby. The elisions suggest their poor
communication and anxiety about the awfully simple operation neither
can name as well as about marriage and parenthood.
Offering his own theory of omission in On Writing, Carver claims that
tension or menace can be created by things [. . .] left out but implied
(Fires 17). The titular story of the collection Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
offers a significant omissionRalph Wymans fear that he is not the biological father of his children5while ambiguous pronoun usage, a Hemingwayesque technique, is central to developing this aspect of the story. On a
Sunday evening in a seemingly happy home, Marian Wyman asks her husband offhandedly, Do you ever think about that party? (Will 231). After she
lapses into silence, Ralph inquires, What about it? Now that you brought it
up, what about it? [. . .] He kissed you, after all, that night, didnt he? The
first it refers to that party, but the referents of the second and third its are
more vague. Ralphs repeated use of the indefinite pronoun intimates that he
attaches an additional meaning to the wordan interpretation supported by
the narratives previous association of it with Ralphs fear of being a cuckold: For he had taken it into his head that his wife had once betrayed him
with a man named Mitchell Anderson (230). Marian responds: I was just
thinking about it and I asked you, thats all. [. . .] Sometimes I think about it
(231). Is she thinking about the party, about another man kissing her, or about
something else, guilt perhaps? The conversation becomes increasingly tense.
Marian admits that Anderson kissed her a few times, which Ralph says contradicts what she said in the past (232), and then the text becomes menacing,
a flashback or fantasy scene delineating spousal abuse:

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What did you do that for? she was saying dreamily. Where were
you all night? he was screaming, standing over her, legs watery,
fist drawn back to hit again. Then she said, I didnt do anything.
Why did you hit me? she said. (232, Carvers emphasis)
Marian apologizes for ever having said anything about it (233), it
threateningly unclear to Ralph, who struggles to remain calm: Look,
honey, it has been brought up now [. . .] and it was four years ago, so theres
no reason at all I can think of that we cant talk about it now if we want to.
Is there? (233, Carvers emphasis). Obviously Ralph would not be upset if
it referred merely to a long ago party. When Marian declines to provide
more details, he explodes: For Christs sake, Marian! Now I mean it
(234). After she admits that Anderson propositioned herHe said shall
we have a go at it? (237)Ralph is devastated, and not just because he is
sure that his wife committed adultery. Before Marian details what happened, Ralph suddenly has a great desire to see the children (236)
the children, not his childrenand then, after her admission of
Andersons sexual advances, Ralph screams: Did he come in you? Did you
let him come in you when you were having your go at it? (238). Later that
evening, a drunken Ralph thinks desperately: Marian! Dorothea! Robert!
It was impossible (240), the indefinite it encompassing not only the adultery Marian essentially confirmed, but also the paternity of his children. If
Marians encounter with Anderson occurred two to four years earlierthe
story equivocates on the exact timethis adultery could not have produced
either of Ralphs children, who are aged four and five. Yet, if Marian could
have a drunken, sordid tryst with Anderson in a car, perhaps there were
adulteries before that with Anderson or another man. It is impossible to
know for sure.
The technique of omitting clear antecedents for pronouns and locating
important meaning in indefinite words is certainly a lesson Carver could
have learned from passages such as the following in Hills Like White Elephants:
[The man says,] We can have the whole world.
[Jig replies,] No, we cant.
We can go everywhere.
No, we cant. It isnt ours anymore.

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Its ours.
No, it isnt. And once they take it away, you never get it back.
(SS 276)
At least the first it in this passage, spoken by Jig, refers to her lovers whole
world, something she perceives as already lost: It isnt ours any more. For
the man, the whole world seems only to mean a life of travel and pleasure:
We can go everywhere. Jigs indeterminate pronouns, however, along with
her use of the present tense, imply her belief that his asking her to have an
abortion has already diminished their lives. She insists over his protests that
the world is no longer theirs. He says Its ours, and she counters No, it isnt.
Her final two its in this passage encourage us to identify what has already
been lostlove, integrity, and trustwith what may be lost, the baby. The
last-quoted lineAnd once they take it away, you never get it backalso
uses another indeterminate pronoun,they, familiar to Hemingways readers
from A Farewell to Arms. Catherine Barkley, another woman facing a dangerous operation and the possible loss of her life, love, and unborn child, uses
they to implicate nebulous, though menacing forces: Theyve broken me. .
. . They just keep it up until they break you; Frederic Henry, the father of her
child, likewise complains, They threw you in and told you the rules and the
first time they caught you off base they killed you (FTA 323, 327). Altogether,
this brief passage highlighted by indeterminate pronouns distinguishes Hemingways characters: Jig understands that the relationship has passed a point
of no return. A moral and emotional catastrophe has already begun and is
deepening, but her boyfriend does not understand.
Another very conspicuous kind of omission, central to Hills Like White
Elephants and much of Carvers fiction, is the open ending. Many of my students are convinced that Jig will ride to Madrid and have an abortion, while
others are certain that she will keep the child. In fact, the story does not determine the babys fate.6 In my earlier writings on the ending of Will You
Please Be Quiet, Please?, I saw a strong affirmation of the Wyman marriage.
But although considerable evidence supports this view, I failed to account for
a potentially threatening undercurrent. In the sentences that conclude the
story, Ralph tensed as Marian touched him and then let go a little:
It was easier to let go a little. Her hands moved over his hip and
over his stomach and she was pressing her body over his now

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and moving over him and back and forth over him. He held himself, he later considered, as long as he could. And then he turned
to her. He turned and turned in what might have been a stupendous sleep, and he was still turning, marveling at the impossible changes he felt moving over him. (Will You Please 251;
emphasis added)
This ending seems extremely positive: the Wymans engage in reconciliatory
sexual relations, a reunion given greater significance if one sees a subtle allusion to the text of Genesis through the proses quasi-biblical rhythms and
its echoes of the Spirit of God mov[ing] upon the face of the waters (1:2).
Ralph, who is described with the word lifeless both on his honeymoon and
during his argument with Marian (Will 235), appears symbolically reborn
as a new man, more at ease with the flesh, embracing, not running from,
carnal knowledge. We can argue, however, that one of the impossible
changes Ralph feels is his willingness to accept that another man fathered
his children. Such willingness would give Marian an unhealthy superiority
in their relationship. Despite the allusion to Genesis, the conclusion relentlessly reminds readers that Marian is physically on top of Ralph, while the
word over, frequently associated with the end of relationships, is repeated
six times.
Ultimately, Jonathan Ecks term, semiopen, might best apply to the
ending of Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?. The text indicates physical
and emotional connection between Marian and Ralph. Ralphs changes,
moreover, while not explicitly defined, are described by words conveying
powerfully positive connotations: stupendous and marveling (251).
While in Hills Like White Elephants the couples relationship seems to be
over, the Wymans dont appear headed for divorce court anytime soon.
Nevertheless, it is arbitrary or reductive to ignore the negative or menacing
implications of the word over and Carvers emphasis on Ralphs subordinate position. These undercurrents form a subtle caveat or warning entirely
consistent with the sensibility of a writer who, like Hemingway, posited
happiness as tenuous at best.
Emphasizing Carvers reliance on indeterminacy, Marc Chnetier observes, In all typographical justice, Carvers stories should open and close
with question marks [. . .], his endings always whisper[ing], in the words
of Samuel Beckett, Make sense who may. I switch off (Chnetier 176,

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180). In truth, while complex, the conclusion of Will You Please Be Quiet,
Please? is not impenetrable; nevertheless, many Carver stories raise questions left unresolved by their endings. Consider, for instance, the conclusion
of Gazebo:
Duane, Holly goes.
In this, too, she was right. (What We Talk About 29)
Earlier in the story, the reader learns that Duane has committed adultery,
damaging his marriage to Holly, and it is very plausible, though not certain,
that the two divorce after the storys conclusion. But what additional thing
was Holly right about? Because the antecedent of this is locked away in
Duanes alcohol-clouded mind, we can only guess at the meaning of the
storys final and presumably important sentence. The ending of Sacks is
similarly opaque. Having left his fathers sack of gifts in an airport bar, Les
Palmer opines:
Just as well. Mary didnt need candy, Almond Roca or anything else.
That was last year. She needs it now even less. (What We Talk
About 45)
Randolph Runyon speculates that Mary, Less wife, is ill or dying (107108).
Runyon acknowledges, however, that the narrators family might be suffering the trauma of divorce (108); perhaps Mary has no need for candy or
anything else because, in divorce proceedings, she has seized Less house
and a sizable portion of his pay for alimony. The omission behind the final
line of Sacks cannot be confidently filled in nor is the conclusion of
Carvers late gem, Blackbird Pie, much clearer: Thats when it dawns on
me that autobiography is the poor mans history, the narrator-college professor(?)-crazy man (?) opines. And that I am saying good-bye to history.
Good-bye, my darling (Where Im Calling From 511). Having earlier made
an equation between his wife and history, the narrator says farewell to her
and to his autobiography with apparent equanimity. However, a writers acceptance of silence is easily perceived as an acceptance of death, hence
Naomi Matsuokas claim that the narrator discusses the end of his marriage as though it were the end of his life and that Blackbird Pie concludes
with the narrators imminent death or blackout of consciousness (432, 436).

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Although Adam Meyer rightly notes a sense of equilibrium in the narrator

(159), this same figure has shown many signs of mental instability, so we cannot
know what is truly happening as Blackbird Pie concludes.7
Influenced by T. S. Eliots theory of the objective correlative and Ezra
Pounds ideas about Imagism, sensing the power in the direct treatment of
things, Hemingway created a journalistic-symbolic language in which external reality resonates with symbolic meaning. In Cat in the Rain, for instance, a cat crouches under a table outside the American couples window,
trying to make herself so compact that she would not be dripped on (SS
167). The animals cramped position relates symbolically to that of Hemingways protagonists, especially the position of the overtly dissatisfied wife.
Hills Like White Elephants is also replete with symbolic language, much
of it traditional. The dry, barren land near Jig and the American echoes
their relationships emotional sterility. When Jig speaks indirectly about the
enormity of abortionAnd we could have everything and every day we
make it more impossibleshe stands in the sunlight, while her morally
obtuse partner beckons her to return to the shade and moral darkness (SS
276). Although Carver has been accused of being a simplistic realist,8 he too
employs a sophisticated mimetic symbolism, language functioning referentially to describe an event or object with symbolic implications. In Will
You Please Be Quiet, Please?, a huge neon-lighted clam shell with a mans
legs sticking out adorning the exterior of a restaurant and bar is an objective correlative of Ralphs fear of women (Will You Please 242), while a rack
of antlers inside the establishment is a traditional symbolic emblem for the
cuckold (243). In Careful, the roof slant[s] down sharply and Lloyd
must duck his head when walking in his apartment (Where Im Calling
From 264), the physical space creating an objective correlative of his imprisonment inside alcoholism. Employing a technique found in Hills Like
White Elephants as well as in Cat in the Rain, Carvers Little Things
foreshadows a babys injury or death from child abuse with traditional symbolism: outside it was getting dark. But it was getting dark on the inside
too (Where Im Calling From 152).9
In Technique and Sensibility in the Fiction and Poetry of Raymond Carver,
I argue that Carver differs from Hemingway in the degree that the word, as
opposed to the object denoted by the word, can acquire astonishing meaning-creating power. A realist such as Hemingway might transform the object chair into a powerful symbol; if it suited his purposes, Carver would

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turn the word into a key signifier (269). Given that many serious writers in
the 1960s and 1970s emphasized turning language away from the external
world and inward towards itself or other texts, it makes sense that Carver,
who developed during this period, would rely more heavily on nonmimetic
technique.10 Maybe he does; nevertheless, I clearly underestimated the importance of the nonmimetic in Hemingways work, especially in Hills Like
White Elephants, where the status of the hills as an object is much less important than the titular simile like white elephants. Through this simile,
Hemingway subtly suggests his protagonists differing views on abortion:
the American regards the fetus as expensive and unwanted, while Jig senses
the sacredness that Indians associate with white elephants.11
The threat implicit in the repetition of over at the end of Will You
Please Be Quiet, Please? illustrates a nonmimetic technique. A more striking example of the nonmimetic in Carvers work occurs in Whats in
Alaska?, where cream soda, as an object understood literally, has nothing to
do with sexuality, but the slang meaning of cream(semen; to have orgasm) places cream soda within a textual pattern that defines a sexual affairs existence and triviality. The nonmimetic importance of cream soda,
then, lies not in its reference to objective reality but in how its connotations
relate to other parts of Carvers text.12 Menudo, one of Carvers final stories, uses a different form of the nonmimetic. Although the narrators life is
in disarray, Menudo suggests, through its use of names, that unlike the
typical Carver character, he may be able to order his life. The story hints at
the importance of names early on: When Amandas name came up, I insisted it wasnt her. Vicky suspects, but I wouldnt name names (Where Im
Calling From 455). The narrator conspicuously avoids mentioning his own
name; more than half of the story passes before he indirectly reveals his
identity by stating his wifes name--Vicky Kraft-Hughes (466). Hughess
second and final act of self-identification is more direct, and occurs at a
particularly vital moment. He is raking his neighbors lawn when Mrs. Baxter greets him with Good morning, Mr. Hughes (470). This seemingly
insignificant referencenames are typically used in greetingshas a
unique importance within the text, an importance created by the fact that
the name is used only once and placed at the storys conclusion. Because
Carver typically aligns the nameless with the powerless,13 Hughess final assertion of his name implies that he has the strength to confront his paramour Amanda and reorder his life. Here Carvers nonmimetic technique is

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to supercharge the banal utteranceGood morning, Mr. Hugheswith

a single use and strategic placement of the remark.
Symbolic resonance is also found in both Hemingways and Carvers use
of numbers. The key number in Hills Like White Elephants is two, used
twice in the opening paragraph and ten times overall. The text refers to two
lines of rails; the couples next train is scheduled to stop for two minutes;
they order two beers which are placed on two felt pads, and then later two
glasses of Anis del Toro; Jig holds two strings of beads; the American carries
two heavy bags (SS 273275, 277). Some of these objects are symbolically
suggestive. For instance, the heavy bags suggest the weariness the American
feels about his relationship with Jig, while the bitter taste of Anis del Toro
underscores the acrimony implicit in their conversation. In addition to
these possible meanings, however, Hemingway clearly wanted to evoke the
idea of two-ness,14 the repetition of two helping to explain why many readers feel that Jig will abort her child despite her qualms. Life with the American is a rootless, peripatetic existence of two with no room for a baby.
If Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? has a key number, it is three. The
story has three numbered sections and references, and when Ralph gambles, he spends three dollars for three poker chips. As I argue in Technique
and Sensibility, Carver sometimes uses three as a subtle allusion to the
Christian tradition. At times, the tension between religious allusion and the
banalas in the story Vitamins, when we compare the Trinity to [t]hree
spades [. . .] against an old Chrysler that had a cracked windshield fits a
pattern denying the possibility of any kind of redemption (Where Im Calling From 255; my emphasis). In other works such as Wes Hardin: From a
Photograph and A Small, Good Thing, references to three, while not related to Christian redemptive theology, are nonetheless used by Carver to
affirm a greater sense of human worth. In Will You Please Be Quiet,
Please?, the poker chips link the number three to chance, perhaps to reinforce the idea that the text has a nonteleological vision. In keeping with
such a vision, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? concludes by invoking not
the possibility of eternal life but the more limited rebirth of Ralph Wyman
as a man more at ease with his own and his wifes carnality.
In 1987, having established himself as one of the more important American writers of the 1970s and 1980s, Carver reportedly said that Hemingway
was not much of an influence because he, Carver, did not write fishing stories (qtd. in Durante 195). Notwithstanding this ironical jab and his parody,

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The Aficionados, written almost thirty years earlier, Carver typically

lauded his precursors work, even acknowledging: I suppose the influence
on my fiction would be the early stories by Hemingway (qtd. in Schumacher 222). While Carver may have sought to distance himself from Hemingway in the 1987 interview,15 his work continued to reveal a debt. Of Cat
in the Rain, Carver observed: [T]heres a detail that sticks in my head
[the husband is] lying on a bed reading a book, but his heads at the foot of
the bed, and his feet are at the headboard (qtd. in Pope and McElhinny
17). The detail stuck in Carvers head until he echoed it in one of his final
stories, Whoever Was Using This Bed, positioning a husband and wife
sitting on the part of the bed where they keep their feet when they
sleep (Where Im Calling From 439) to suggest that their marriage, like the
relationship in Cat in the Rain, is out of sorts. However much Carver may
have distanced himself from Hemingway thematically or ideologically, he
rarely strayed far from Hemingways techniques.

n ote s
Portions of this essay have appeared previously in my book, Technique and Sensibility in the Fiction
and Poetry of Raymond Carver.
1. Because the story was published shortly after Hemingways suicide, The Aficionados can be
seen as very mean-spirited. However, Maryann Carvers recent biography, What It Used to Be
Like: A Portrait of My Marriage to Raymond Carver, suggests that the story was written in 1958,
almost three years before Hemingway died (84). Carver can be fairly accused of some hypocrisy,
nevertheless, for The Aficionados also parodies Hills Like White Elephants, a story containing much of the minimalist technique that he employed. Transforming Hemingways titular
simile, the upstart Carver describes hills that are like great-breasted reclining women (Stull,
Remembered 467).
The satire of The Aficionados prefigured Carvers general disassociation from Hemingways sensibility, a phenomenon often observed by critics. Carvers student at Syracuse, the contemporary novelist Jay McInerney, sees a rejection of Hemingways romantic egoism (120).
Contrasting Hemingways After the Storm and Carvers After the Denim, James Plath infers
a subtle undercutting [of] Hemingways essential machismo and romanticism (38). Referring
to Big Two-Hearted River, Graham Clarke argues that every act by Nick reinscribes his part
within the larger unity [of nature]: an ideal purity of being in which American man is wholly
free from social, historical, and political complications (109110). In stories such as The
Cabin, however, Carver deconstructs the codifying myths and exposes their pretensions to
significance (Clarke 110).
2. The issue of the American girls longings is, Edwin Barton would argue, deeper than my gloss
suggests: Are readers meant to consider the possibility that the American wife/girl had been

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pregnant before [?] Are we meant to understand that she is incapable of bearing children, either because she (or her husband) has proved infertile or because of complications owing to a
miscarriage or abortion[?] Biographer Peter Griffin notes that Hemingway worked on the
story after he stopped having sex with his pregnant wife. Griffin argues that the American girls
desire for a wet pussy, the cat in the rain, is an ironic, scatological representation of Hemingways sexual frustrations.
I define minimalism as a style privileging economy, simple diction, clear syntax, and omission, making no attemptsuch as commentary from an omniscient narratorto provide an
authoritative meaning for the presented experience. In his theory of minimalism, Kirk Curnutt
links Carvers fiction to an additional technique, the manipulation of tense (233244). Curnutt
emphasizes, moreover, minimalisms connection to a basic theme: the failure of the spoken
word (246). Many other definitions of minimalism go beyond technique: for instance, Michael
Trusslers description of minimalism as a postmodern tributary of metawriting, Barbara Hennings association of the concept with the working class and the repudiation of the American
dream, and Sven Birkertss subsequent linking of minimalism to uneasy portraits of American
middle-class domesticity. Believing that minimalist smacks of smallness of vision and execution, Carver preferred the term precisionist (qtd. in Simpson and Buzbee 44). Most Carver
scholars reject either the term minimalism or its application to Carver. For instance, Kirk Nesset observes that minimalism functions as a tenacious, flypaper trap ensnaring scores of writers, writers as like unto each other as airplanes and sparrows and gnats (30). For the most
vigorous defense of the term, see Cynthia Halletts Minimalism and the Short StoryRaymond
Carver, Amy Hempel, and Mary Robison (741).
According to Curnutt, Hemingway offered several versions of his theory of omission, but this
theorizing rarely determined how he actually shortened his stories (6, 7).
Jon Powell first raised the issue of Ralphs anxiety over the paternity of his children (648650).
As Nilofer Hashmi observes, scholars have disagreed about the babys future: Three different scenarios have been seriously considered: the girl will have the abortion (albeit reluctantly) and stay
with the man; the girl will have the abortion and leave the man; or, the girl will not have the abortion, having won the man over to her point of view. Hashmi subsequently argues for a fourth result:the girl will indeed have the abortion, expecting in this way to stay on with the man, but after
the operation has been performed, he will abandon her. I agree with David Wyche, who holds
that any definitive interpretation regarding the fate of Jigs baby is unlikely.
The concept of omission has been applied to Hills White Elephants in ways beyond the
texts open ending, its deliberate indeterminate pronouns, and the omission of central terms
like baby or abortion. An excellent case in point is Margaret Bauers analysis setting the story in
the context of Hemingways earlier writing and the devastation of World War i. Bauer postulates that the American, like Krebs in Soldiers Home, is suffering from post-traumatic stress
syndrome and thus is not emotionally ready for marriage and fatherhood. Viewed in this light,
the American is a far more sympathetic character.
The open ending of The Bath, the most famous in Carvers short fiction, is a poor example to
cite to illustrate Carvers technique. Although the story labors to create a menacing ambiguityis Ann Weiss being called by the hospital with the dreadful news that her son has died, or
is she being tormented once again by a crank caller?Carvers editor Gordon Lish wrote the

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ending, and Carver subsequently repudiated The Bath, calling it a minor league effort (qtd.
in Boddy, Conversation 200).
See Charles Newman, for instance, who crowns Carver King of New Realism, a realm described in exceedingly disparaging terms (9394).
In Cat in the Rain, It [is] getting dark before the wife lists her desires and her husband tells
her to shut up (SS 169).
Mimetic meaning springs from language representing physical and mental realities. I use nonmimetic to encompass alternate strategies of creating meaning, including the use of connotation rather than denotation in deploying vocabulary, the strategic placement of elements
within a text, the reference of elements to other parts of the same text, and allusions to other
works by the same or different authors.
The reference to white elephants has been interpreted in various ways, Paul Rankin arguing,
for instance, that Jig sees the American as the white elephant to be discarded. In Hashmis interpretation, viewed from the Americans perspective, Jig and the baby she carries are the white
elephants to be thrown away.
For more analysis of the unusual sexual symbolism in Whats in Alaska? related to cream
soda, see Bethea, Technique and Sensibility 4448.
Fat, Night School, and Collectors are some of the Carver stories illustrating this phenomenon.
Hemingway uses this technique in A Farewell to Arms. Catherines doctor instructs Frederic
Henry to turn the gas machine to numeral two, and when she asks for pain relief, Henry
turned the dial to number two (317). Later, as her pain increases, he turns the dial to three
and then four, wishing the doctor would come back because Henry is afraid of the numbers
above two (323). Henrys remark reflects his fear of the babys arrival.
Carvers remarks to Francesco Durante may reflect his desire to be viewed as the heir of
Chekhov, his favorite writer. Kasia Boddy (Companion-Souls), Genevieve Later (4348), Lionel Kelly, and William Stull (Raymond Carver) have described Carvers literary debt here,
citing, among other things, comparable proletarian sympathies. Chekhovs influence on Carver
is undeniable; the posthumously published A New Path to the Waterfall integrates many passages of Chekhovs prose with Carvers poetry. Nevertheless, Hemingway had a greater influence on Carvers fiction, and certainly on his technique.

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