Blackbird Pie by Raymond Carver, 1986
The magic trick:
A narrator who won’t shut up
Yesterday we looked at Raymond Carver’s 1973 gem “They’re Not Your Husband.” Today, we move forward 13 years to one of Carver’s final stories, “Blackbird Pie.”
It wasn’t edited by Gordon Lish, and, not surprisingly, it’s a very different story from the Lish-shorn “They’re Not Your Husband.” It’s much wordier. It’s much longer. There are a lot more sentences here describing (gasp!) emotions. The narrator is not only aware of his feelings, he is anxious to talk about them in a way that would shock a 1979 Carver protagonist.
It even becomes a joke in the story. The narrator spends many pages talking about himself, his feelings, and the mess of things that is now his life. We don’t have a choice but to keep reading. But when the police arrive, they do have a choice. Exasperated, they essentially tell the narrator to please just shut up. Twice, the police officer in his yard cuts him off when it’s clear he’s about to launch into another rant. It’s interesting – and amusing – to have these two audiences to contrast, us the reader and the people in the actual story, in the way the narrator annoys them.
But when you look at it then – maybe this story isn’t all that different from the sparse “They’re Not Your Husband” after all. Both stories are exploring a male protagonist’s point of view as small and comically pathetic, while also engendering reader sympathy at the same time.
And that’s quite a trick on Carver’s part.
The selection:
Dear,
Things are not good. Things, in fact, are bad. Things have gone from bad to worse. And you know what I’m talking about. We’ve come to the end of the line. It’s over with us. Still, I find myself wishing we could have talked about it.
It’s been such a long time now since we’ve talked. I mean really talked. Even after we were married we used to talk and talk, exchanging news and ideas. When the children were little, or even after they were more grown-up, we still found time to talk. It was more difficult then, naturally, but we managed, we found time. We made time. We’d have to wait until after they were asleep, or else when they were playing outside, or with a sitter. But we managed.
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