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What It Used to Be Like: A Portrait of My Marriage to Raymond Carver
Maryann Burk Carver met Raymond Carver in 1955, when she was fifteen-years-old and he seventeen. In What It Used to be Like , Maryann Burk Carver recounts a tale of love at first sight in which the two teenagers got to know each other by sharing a two year long-distance correspondence that soon after found them married and with two small children. Over the next twenty-five years, as Carver's fame grew, the family led a nomadic life, moving from school to school, teaching post to teaching post. Finally, in 1972, they settled in Cupertino, California where Raymond Carver gave his wife one of his sharpened pencils and bade her to write an account of their history. The result is a breathtaking memoir of a marriage replete with the intimacy of detail that fully reveals the illnesses and talents of this larger than life man, his complicated relationships, and his profound loves and losses. What It Used to Be Like brings to light, for the first time, Raymond Carver's lost years and stories and the "stories behind the stories" of this most brilliant writer. MARYANN BURK CARVER married Raymond Carver when she was sixteen and he was nineteen. They were married for twenty-five years, and had two children, Christi and Vance. Maryann Burk Carver is a teacher living on Lummi Island in Washington State. "Maryann covers the tumultuous circumstances of her 18 years of marriage to Raymond Carver in page after page that may be easily construed as plot outlines for Carver's early short story masterpieces." —Sam Halpert, author of Raymond An Oral Biography and A Real Good War "Ray Carver had a brilliant and heartbreakingly brief career. Seventeen years after his death, we still miss him like crazy. Mary Ann Carver, his first wife, tells the story of how she and he fell through the ice with honesty and considerable courage." —William Kittredge, author of Hole in the Sky and The Best Short Stories of William Kittredge "The marriage between Ray carver and Maryann Burk which commenced when they were teenagers and lasted 25 years, was absurd, tenacious, and sometimes cruel. There was much partying and aimless wandering. Unfathomable decisions were made. Yet the marriage was also the bedrock beneath a small earthquake in the American short story A humble agent transubstantiational in its effect. This is a dear, sturdy, disarming memoir which proves, at the very least, that even dead 18 years, the masterful Ray Carver knows how to keep the love of a good woman. —Joy Williams, author of The Quick and the Dead and Honored Guest "A testimony of a marriage as well as a portrait of an artist before becoming 'The Author.' It is the story of the hunger for education, the necessity of art, in the lives of the working poor. I hope it helps dispel myths about working-class writers, about the creative/destructive spirit, about violence and love. For folks who live paycheck to paycheck, for readers whose books are all stamped 'Property of the Public Library,' this story is only too familiar." —Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street and Caramelo "Good writers write what they know, but great writers show us what they know to be true. Raymond and Maryann Burk Carver dared to be great in America and, in the end, both paid a terrible price. 'It's an amazing life, an amazing life,' Raymond Carver once said. Indeed it was. And it will break your heart because, like all great stories, it is true." —Diane Smith, author of Letters from Yellowstone and Pictures from an Expedition "Raymond Carver is one of the very best writer's of the late 20th century. He met his first wife, Maryann Burk, when he was sixteen and she was fourteen. Her memoir of their nearly twenty-five years together is an incredible account not only of their relationship, but also of Carver's development as a writer. It is indispensable to anyone who cares about Carver's work." —Stephen Dobyns
368 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
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127 people want to read
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April 25, 2022
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There are a couple reasons why I am reading, for a second time, this memoir. I was unfortunately impelled to abandon my first attempt. I thought Maryann Burk Carver’s writing was pretty bad, and unfortunately it still isn’t the best. But I needed to get another fresh look with a different mindset, perhaps gain a closer insight into the working process of Raymond Carver. As in what exactly, in her opinion, made him tick. Maybe I also needed a voyeuristic peek into the insides and out of their difficult marriage. And I wanted to see if I had perhaps missed something my first go around.
What I immediately, and subsequently, sadly realized again and again was how much Maryann desired herself to be seen and noticed. How important it was for her to be given just due for her husband’s early success. She did work hard to support him and there is no doubt she sacrificed plenty to help him succeed. I am sure their life was often painful and involved years of angst and suffering. Excessive drinking rarely solves anything. And friends you drink with generally fall by the wayside when you stop imbibing with them and sharing your troubles.
What is also apparent early on was Maryann’s need to set herself above her peers, especially those she worked beside. It was common to read descriptions of her “fat” co-workers or how good she herself looked in her snappy and sexy outfits. She for some reason also considered herself an intellectual, and may have been, but she had this incessant need to let us know this as well. So these irritating self-aggrandizing remarks peppered throughout her memoir first made me abandon her work and caused me some consternation in moving forward again. But this time I needed to know which stories of Ray’s were actually a part of their lives, or those of people they both knew.
…Everything we write is, in some way, autobiographical […] Of course, you have to know what you're doing when you turn your life's stories into fiction. You have to be immensely daring, very skilled and imaginative and willing to tell everything on yourself. You're told time and again when you're young to write about what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets? But unless you're a special kind of writer, and a very talented one, it's dangerous to try and write volume after volume on The Story of My Life. A great danger, or at least a great temptation, for many writers is to become too autobiographical in their approach to their fiction. A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best…__Raymond Carver
Tobias Wolff has adamantly defended Ray Carver in interviews and essays he has written and goes to great length to claim in no uncertain terms that the Carver stories were all generally made-up, and certainly not at all autobiographical as most of us would want to believe after reading them. But that isn’t true either, and my interior bullshit meter seemed to be aggressively acting out while reading Mr. Wolff’s remarks in one of his prior interviews. Even Tobias Wolff instinctively knows that everything we write about has some semblance to something we have personally heard, talked about, experienced for ourselves, or fantasized over. There is nothing of any worth truly “made-up.” Of course a writer will claim his or her fiction is not autobiographical. It is part of the ruse. Good fiction comes off as true, feels authentic, and the mystery needed to keep the wheels in motion is the intuitive thought that the author is, or was involved, in some way or another. Gordon Lish is not only a good example of how this occurs in writing, but being Carver’s early editor and friend for many years adds additional moxy to this premise.
In his fiction-writing classes Gordon Lish espoused how important it is to not belittle someone on the page unless it is yourself. He demanded you not put yourself above another. I witnessed him in action attacking a student in class for making herself appear more favorable than one of her fictional characters, and I also received the disdain of Lish when I once stated I wasn’t a big fan of one of his favorite writers. Ray Carver, to my knowledge, never made himself appear better than another. He was a poster boy for humility. Today I am not sure who learned more from the other, Gordon or Ray? Lish is credited with making Carver famous but while re-reading the collected stories of Raymond Carver I can see how Lish may have benefited as much from Carver’s honesty on the page and his engagement with the terms of living an everyday life. Gordon’s own fiction reads as memoir too. Autobiographical. And no matter how absurd or salacious the story is, the reader wants to believe it is true, that Gordon did have these experiences he deftly relates on the page. But he isn’t any better at transcribing them than Raymond Carver was. And the breadth and depth of Carver’s writing encompasses much more of “real life” than Gordon could ever attempt to achieve himself. Not that Lish and Carver did not both live their life experiences, they did. But Carver’s life was in many ways naturally fuller, more culturally real and authentic, and definitely more painful than the famously privileged New York lifestyle generally expounded on in the Lish oeuvre. Epigraph is the one Lish title bereft of ensconced privilege, and instead exemplifies how painful even a New Yorker’s life can be when faced with the onset and finality of a loved one’s disease. I believe it to be his masterpiece.
Every experience Gordon Lish privately related to me in conversation, no matter how elaborate the affair, or outlandish the story, turned out to be true even though I initially always wanted to doubt his word. Even his oft-related and dangerous sexual encounters appeared to be true, and it seemed to me that Gordon needed to purposely cuckold almost every man he came in contact with, even myself. So it would come as no surprise to me that Raymond Carver was taking real life experiences and liberally transferring them onto the page as a fictional account that happened to his narrator or other suitable protagonist. Often his narrator remains the victim. I believe Raymond Carver maintained his stories were made up in order for him to remain an enigma for us. We can certainly imagine these stories as being true, they feel like honest accounts, but in no way would they be proven except in interviews conducted by others who were there, or in a tell-all memoir written by a close confidant such as his ex-wife. Same goes for Lish. Writers are basically liars, but their words on the page are not. The words must ring true or else they will be intuitively discounted.
Of late I have been reading several reams of writing by the brilliant neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris. Most notably his book titled Free Will. But another title of his called Lying is adamantly opposed to such behavior for telling untruths, and I basically agree with his premise. But as a writer, and as explained above, we, by definition, must lie to survive, otherwise we could be judged unfairly and our work despised, especially if it purports certain despicable behaviors such as having an illicit adulterous affair, committing murder or robbery, imbibing in alcoholic drinking and illegal drugs, or a host of other unsavory acts. If what we authors wrote about was admittedly true about ourselves we could very well be disdained and blacklisted by the very people we want involved in our literary undertakings, expressly and pointedly our now-informed consumer. So as much as I believe in personal claims made by this memoirist Maryann Burk Carver, and as much as I need to compare her personal truths to the fiction composed in her ex-husband’s books, I remain skeptical as to whether or not Raymond indulged himself in these salacious matters beyond the page. By not admitting to them, and having surrogates defend his honor, Raymond Carver remains a literary enigma and his work extremely attractive to those of us needing to dig and play in the dirt of societal sleaze that is often, and skillfully, exemplified brilliantly in his work.
Maryann Burk Carver suffered immensely. Her husband became quite sick and diseased from alcoholism. He conducted affairs of the heart while married. He was sexually dishonest and often unreliable as a parenting spouse. He was also dangerously abusive. But Maryann obviously wanted to be married to a famous writer and was willing to abide by this unsavory life they had created. That is, until she couldn’t. It is quite sad that she did not get the final prize and that Tess Gallagher was the eventual recipient of this new and reformed Ray Carver. But Maryann did help to create an astounding masterpiece, flawed as a man, but now our long-standing and infamous king of American literature.
…But I’m the “Maryann” you find in Ray’s poetry. I’m also in some of the women in his short stories. I was a source of inspiration for Ray as he imaginatively recast incidents from our lives into his poetry and fiction. I was the sounding board who knew his friends, his whole family, and the brilliance of the man long before he was anybody’s bootable author…
I was wrong about Maryann Burk Carver. What she was attempting to achieve in this book was saving herself for posterity, possessing herself as Gordon Lish himself once told me to do, or die. The problem, as I see it now, is that Raymond Carver failed to honor on the page his wife’s sacrifice for him, failed to acknowledge her worth and beauty in his fiction and essays. He did speak of her often in his poems and that matters, but he failed miserably in giving her the attention she deserved. So she did what Raymond Carver for some reason couldn’t. The horror behind my earlier reaction to what appeared as a somewhat braggadocious Maryann noting what was important to both of them, that being her looks and body, their sexcapades and adventures, her hard work to support the family, and their mutual need for literary fame, it was Raymond Carver who was remiss and selfishly irresponsible. So I forgive her indulgences in making herself appear important, because she was. And let’s honor and allow her long and living art to stand as she undoubtedly was the person most responsible for molding perhaps the greatest American writer who ever walked this earth.
There are a couple reasons why I am reading, for a second time, this memoir. I was unfortunately impelled to abandon my first attempt. I thought Maryann Burk Carver’s writing was pretty bad, and unfortunately it still isn’t the best. But I needed to get another fresh look with a different mindset, perhaps gain a closer insight into the working process of Raymond Carver. As in what exactly, in her opinion, made him tick. Maybe I also needed a voyeuristic peek into the insides and out of their difficult marriage. And I wanted to see if I had perhaps missed something my first go around.
What I immediately, and subsequently, sadly realized again and again was how much Maryann desired herself to be seen and noticed. How important it was for her to be given just due for her husband’s early success. She did work hard to support him and there is no doubt she sacrificed plenty to help him succeed. I am sure their life was often painful and involved years of angst and suffering. Excessive drinking rarely solves anything. And friends you drink with generally fall by the wayside when you stop imbibing with them and sharing your troubles.
What is also apparent early on was Maryann’s need to set herself above her peers, especially those she worked beside. It was common to read descriptions of her “fat” co-workers or how good she herself looked in her snappy and sexy outfits. She for some reason also considered herself an intellectual, and may have been, but she had this incessant need to let us know this as well. So these irritating self-aggrandizing remarks peppered throughout her memoir first made me abandon her work and caused me some consternation in moving forward again. But this time I needed to know which stories of Ray’s were actually a part of their lives, or those of people they both knew.
…Everything we write is, in some way, autobiographical […] Of course, you have to know what you're doing when you turn your life's stories into fiction. You have to be immensely daring, very skilled and imaginative and willing to tell everything on yourself. You're told time and again when you're young to write about what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets? But unless you're a special kind of writer, and a very talented one, it's dangerous to try and write volume after volume on The Story of My Life. A great danger, or at least a great temptation, for many writers is to become too autobiographical in their approach to their fiction. A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best…__Raymond Carver
Tobias Wolff has adamantly defended Ray Carver in interviews and essays he has written and goes to great length to claim in no uncertain terms that the Carver stories were all generally made-up, and certainly not at all autobiographical as most of us would want to believe after reading them. But that isn’t true either, and my interior bullshit meter seemed to be aggressively acting out while reading Mr. Wolff’s remarks in one of his prior interviews. Even Tobias Wolff instinctively knows that everything we write about has some semblance to something we have personally heard, talked about, experienced for ourselves, or fantasized over. There is nothing of any worth truly “made-up.” Of course a writer will claim his or her fiction is not autobiographical. It is part of the ruse. Good fiction comes off as true, feels authentic, and the mystery needed to keep the wheels in motion is the intuitive thought that the author is, or was involved, in some way or another. Gordon Lish is not only a good example of how this occurs in writing, but being Carver’s early editor and friend for many years adds additional moxy to this premise.
In his fiction-writing classes Gordon Lish espoused how important it is to not belittle someone on the page unless it is yourself. He demanded you not put yourself above another. I witnessed him in action attacking a student in class for making herself appear more favorable than one of her fictional characters, and I also received the disdain of Lish when I once stated I wasn’t a big fan of one of his favorite writers. Ray Carver, to my knowledge, never made himself appear better than another. He was a poster boy for humility. Today I am not sure who learned more from the other, Gordon or Ray? Lish is credited with making Carver famous but while re-reading the collected stories of Raymond Carver I can see how Lish may have benefited as much from Carver’s honesty on the page and his engagement with the terms of living an everyday life. Gordon’s own fiction reads as memoir too. Autobiographical. And no matter how absurd or salacious the story is, the reader wants to believe it is true, that Gordon did have these experiences he deftly relates on the page. But he isn’t any better at transcribing them than Raymond Carver was. And the breadth and depth of Carver’s writing encompasses much more of “real life” than Gordon could ever attempt to achieve himself. Not that Lish and Carver did not both live their life experiences, they did. But Carver’s life was in many ways naturally fuller, more culturally real and authentic, and definitely more painful than the famously privileged New York lifestyle generally expounded on in the Lish oeuvre. Epigraph is the one Lish title bereft of ensconced privilege, and instead exemplifies how painful even a New Yorker’s life can be when faced with the onset and finality of a loved one’s disease. I believe it to be his masterpiece.
Every experience Gordon Lish privately related to me in conversation, no matter how elaborate the affair, or outlandish the story, turned out to be true even though I initially always wanted to doubt his word. Even his oft-related and dangerous sexual encounters appeared to be true, and it seemed to me that Gordon needed to purposely cuckold almost every man he came in contact with, even myself. So it would come as no surprise to me that Raymond Carver was taking real life experiences and liberally transferring them onto the page as a fictional account that happened to his narrator or other suitable protagonist. Often his narrator remains the victim. I believe Raymond Carver maintained his stories were made up in order for him to remain an enigma for us. We can certainly imagine these stories as being true, they feel like honest accounts, but in no way would they be proven except in interviews conducted by others who were there, or in a tell-all memoir written by a close confidant such as his ex-wife. Same goes for Lish. Writers are basically liars, but their words on the page are not. The words must ring true or else they will be intuitively discounted.
Of late I have been reading several reams of writing by the brilliant neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris. Most notably his book titled Free Will. But another title of his called Lying is adamantly opposed to such behavior for telling untruths, and I basically agree with his premise. But as a writer, and as explained above, we, by definition, must lie to survive, otherwise we could be judged unfairly and our work despised, especially if it purports certain despicable behaviors such as having an illicit adulterous affair, committing murder or robbery, imbibing in alcoholic drinking and illegal drugs, or a host of other unsavory acts. If what we authors wrote about was admittedly true about ourselves we could very well be disdained and blacklisted by the very people we want involved in our literary undertakings, expressly and pointedly our now-informed consumer. So as much as I believe in personal claims made by this memoirist Maryann Burk Carver, and as much as I need to compare her personal truths to the fiction composed in her ex-husband’s books, I remain skeptical as to whether or not Raymond indulged himself in these salacious matters beyond the page. By not admitting to them, and having surrogates defend his honor, Raymond Carver remains a literary enigma and his work extremely attractive to those of us needing to dig and play in the dirt of societal sleaze that is often, and skillfully, exemplified brilliantly in his work.
Maryann Burk Carver suffered immensely. Her husband became quite sick and diseased from alcoholism. He conducted affairs of the heart while married. He was sexually dishonest and often unreliable as a parenting spouse. He was also dangerously abusive. But Maryann obviously wanted to be married to a famous writer and was willing to abide by this unsavory life they had created. That is, until she couldn’t. It is quite sad that she did not get the final prize and that Tess Gallagher was the eventual recipient of this new and reformed Ray Carver. But Maryann did help to create an astounding masterpiece, flawed as a man, but now our long-standing and infamous king of American literature.
…But I’m the “Maryann” you find in Ray’s poetry. I’m also in some of the women in his short stories. I was a source of inspiration for Ray as he imaginatively recast incidents from our lives into his poetry and fiction. I was the sounding board who knew his friends, his whole family, and the brilliance of the man long before he was anybody’s bootable author…
I was wrong about Maryann Burk Carver. What she was attempting to achieve in this book was saving herself for posterity, possessing herself as Gordon Lish himself once told me to do, or die. The problem, as I see it now, is that Raymond Carver failed to honor on the page his wife’s sacrifice for him, failed to acknowledge her worth and beauty in his fiction and essays. He did speak of her often in his poems and that matters, but he failed miserably in giving her the attention she deserved. So she did what Raymond Carver for some reason couldn’t. The horror behind my earlier reaction to what appeared as a somewhat braggadocious Maryann noting what was important to both of them, that being her looks and body, their sexcapades and adventures, her hard work to support the family, and their mutual need for literary fame, it was Raymond Carver who was remiss and selfishly irresponsible. So I forgive her indulgences in making herself appear important, because she was. And let’s honor and allow her long and living art to stand as she undoubtedly was the person most responsible for molding perhaps the greatest American writer who ever walked this earth.
October 6, 2008
i once had an affair with a writer who was obsessed with raymond carver. i was happy to be introduced to carver's work, but i wasn't so obsessed. i did wonder how he made his stories so perfect.
this memoir is written by carver's first wife. they married young. she makes it clear that her job as his wife was to support him as he became a writer. this totally sucked for her. they moved across the country numerous times, she put off her education, had kids and then he cheated on her.
then he started drinking and hit her over the head with a vodka bottle.
what a jerk. she finally left him in the end, but she makes it clear that they still loved each other up to his passing of cancer.
the only thing i learned about carver as a writer is that he agonized over every word. that's probably how his stories got to be so word for word perfect. i'm always amazed at writers who can be sparse and cut out all the fat from their writing. i respect it more than spastic outbursts, but i like reading spastic outbursts more than well crafted stories. or maybe i like them both equally.
point being, don't marry a starving writer who has a drinking problem if you want to live your own life.
also, go pick up some raymond carver.
this memoir is written by carver's first wife. they married young. she makes it clear that her job as his wife was to support him as he became a writer. this totally sucked for her. they moved across the country numerous times, she put off her education, had kids and then he cheated on her.
then he started drinking and hit her over the head with a vodka bottle.
what a jerk. she finally left him in the end, but she makes it clear that they still loved each other up to his passing of cancer.
the only thing i learned about carver as a writer is that he agonized over every word. that's probably how his stories got to be so word for word perfect. i'm always amazed at writers who can be sparse and cut out all the fat from their writing. i respect it more than spastic outbursts, but i like reading spastic outbursts more than well crafted stories. or maybe i like them both equally.
point being, don't marry a starving writer who has a drinking problem if you want to live your own life.
also, go pick up some raymond carver.
December 30, 2011
LOVE THIS BOOK!!! SHE DID AN EXCELLENT JOB OF SHOWING A SIDE OF CARVER THAT IS NOT TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION IN OTHER BIOGRAPHICAL WORKS! Compare it to Carolyn Cassidy's "Off the Road."
June 29, 2012
It's clear that Maryann Carver is not as prolific a writer as her husband. However, this does not discount her story. What begins as a trite, and almost nostalgic retelling of young love becomes warped into a simply-stated battle between the conventions of the 70s (and 80s) and her happiness. It's a touching book, and definitely one to read if you're a Carver fan, she makes a lot of remarks about the similarities of Carver's writing in relation to their life. But I have to say I was disappointed that there is very little on Gordon Lish. This may be because the book came out before the scandal came out about Lish, but it would have been nice.
July 1, 2023
I did not think I would finish this after taking a break from it ages ago but am so glad I returned to it yesterday. Naturally, it's a fascinating insight into their relationship and I struggled to like Ray Carver as his addiction to alcohol corroded everything in his life, an addiction he ultimately did beat but not before beating his wife up, from time to time, which was hard to stomach. Although I did experience annoyance at her tone, particularly in the first half of the book, when she was so reverential about him until I realised that what she did was successfully capture what it was to be a teenager in love. Her tone becomes more sophisticated - if that's the right word - as the story continues. I marvelled at her energy to keep going, I felt tired just from reading about their umpteen new beginnings and, lordy, I felt sorry for their children. She prioritised an unfaithful, unreliable husband over their children who were left, albeit temporarily, to deal with the consequences of a chaotic home life. I wished that she had filled in more about her later life, I would have liked to know if she was happy, and if she met anyone else etc but I suppose she believed the purpose of her book was to solely detail the life of their relationship.
November 3, 2023
Having read my way through the works of Raymond Carver, I was looking forward to reading this account of his life written by his ex-wife, but the focus of this book was not what I was looking for, and it was very tedious to get through. I had expected to get to know Raymond Carver better, but insted I was served endless descriptions of events in the lives of a number of other family members, descriptions of the Carver family moving house quite a few times, descriptions of their furniture, how many miles they travelled from A to B, what clothes the kids were wearing etc.
If you're interested in Raymond Carver, I recommend that you give this book a miss and pick up "Raymond Carver: A Oral Biography" by Sam Halpert instead.
If you're interested in Raymond Carver, I recommend that you give this book a miss and pick up "Raymond Carver: A Oral Biography" by Sam Halpert instead.
July 31, 2019
This book was so bad. The tone is colloquial in a really off-putting way. But, like some reality television, it drew me in as I read the words and then tried to read the book beneath the words. What is really going on here? What are the motivations of this author? Whew. Turns out Raymond Carver was a real asshole. Big surprise.
I would have liked to know a little more about Maryann's life after Carver. Did she get to finally pursue her own academics and interests? Did she get some stability for herself? Did she learn to love herself outside of the most defining relationship of her life? I hope so.
I would have liked to know a little more about Maryann's life after Carver. Did she get to finally pursue her own academics and interests? Did she get some stability for herself? Did she learn to love herself outside of the most defining relationship of her life? I hope so.
December 18, 2024
Maryann Carver is not the level of writer that her former husband Ray was, but her memoir charts a vivid portrait of their lives together. The cycles of ego, poverty, desperation and abuse are like watching a slow motion car crash. The miracle of this book is how the members of this family were able to continue to have a relationship afterwards.
January 24, 2025
Después de muuuchos años este memoir regresó a mi y por fin lo terminé. Regresaré a dejar un review más completo.
August 3, 2018
Lo malo de las biografías escritas por parientes es que el resentimiento hace difusos todos los hechos que se cuentan. Y por qué nunca hablan del proceso de escritura? Ya sabiamos que carver era alcohólico está en wikipedia.
April 26, 2016
The laissez-faire narrative voice feels like Maryann, but occasionally stretches into a kind of self-serving preciosity. I could also do without the overblown, contextual references to popular culture, especially since she too often gets them wrong. For example she puts Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement in 1963 (instead 64-65) and while I too remember listening to the Doors in 1967 Santa Cruz, Dancing In the Moonlight was by the Harvest Kings (in 1972) and never recorded by Van Morison. Nit-picking aside, which wouldn’t have been evoked if she had been Buddy Holly’s ex, this is an important book, if only for its insight into the She-said part of Ray’s literary motif. Here’s my Maryann story:
I was spending the weekend with them and Cupertino in June of 1973. I had met her earlier, but most of the other people were new to me. There was a blur of parties—I remember floating naked in a Jacuzzi with Ray, a few other people, and a half-gallon of vodka. This was at Amy’s apartment complex, and the lady-manager chased us out of the Jacuzzi and threatened to evict Amy (Ray told me later that summer that the manager had been fired and they gave her job to Amy). Anyway, at one of the parties, I was sitting across a picnic table from Ray and he seemed almost on the verge of tears.
Michael Rogers was there. He had just graduated from Stanford (these parties were amalgams of Berkeley, Stanford, and Santa Cruz students and faculty, with a smattering of miscellaneous, Bay Area writers) and had placed his story Skin’s Art in Playboy, the holy grail for anyone wanting to be paid for a short story. At this point, Ray was beginning to get anthologized, but had only placed a couple stories in the slicks (Esquire and Harper’s Bazaar) and had been experiencing a writer’s block for about a year (he blamed it on his teaching load, but I‘m sure the drinking didn’t help). I’d read the Rogers story, thought that it was good but only on the order of the better student work I was seeing, and there were rumors that Rogers was being courted by Playboy simply because of his connection to Rolling Stone. Maryann sat beside Ray, put her arm around him, stroked his shoulder, and looked into his face. She said something like “People will be reading your stories long after you’re gone, and none of them will even remember who Michael Rogers was.”
For all of his good-old-boy posturing, Ray was a very sensitive man. I never doubted that he and Maryann loved each other, but that’s a long ways from meaning that they were always good together, or that they were meant to be together forever. I think it was Alice Roosevelt who said that the trick to understanding her father (Teddy Roosevelt) was to remember that in his heart he was a nine-year-old. In some ways—in spite of his deeply nurtured insight—there always seemed to be a little of the seventeen-year-old in Ray.
I was spending the weekend with them and Cupertino in June of 1973. I had met her earlier, but most of the other people were new to me. There was a blur of parties—I remember floating naked in a Jacuzzi with Ray, a few other people, and a half-gallon of vodka. This was at Amy’s apartment complex, and the lady-manager chased us out of the Jacuzzi and threatened to evict Amy (Ray told me later that summer that the manager had been fired and they gave her job to Amy). Anyway, at one of the parties, I was sitting across a picnic table from Ray and he seemed almost on the verge of tears.
Michael Rogers was there. He had just graduated from Stanford (these parties were amalgams of Berkeley, Stanford, and Santa Cruz students and faculty, with a smattering of miscellaneous, Bay Area writers) and had placed his story Skin’s Art in Playboy, the holy grail for anyone wanting to be paid for a short story. At this point, Ray was beginning to get anthologized, but had only placed a couple stories in the slicks (Esquire and Harper’s Bazaar) and had been experiencing a writer’s block for about a year (he blamed it on his teaching load, but I‘m sure the drinking didn’t help). I’d read the Rogers story, thought that it was good but only on the order of the better student work I was seeing, and there were rumors that Rogers was being courted by Playboy simply because of his connection to Rolling Stone. Maryann sat beside Ray, put her arm around him, stroked his shoulder, and looked into his face. She said something like “People will be reading your stories long after you’re gone, and none of them will even remember who Michael Rogers was.”
For all of his good-old-boy posturing, Ray was a very sensitive man. I never doubted that he and Maryann loved each other, but that’s a long ways from meaning that they were always good together, or that they were meant to be together forever. I think it was Alice Roosevelt who said that the trick to understanding her father (Teddy Roosevelt) was to remember that in his heart he was a nine-year-old. In some ways—in spite of his deeply nurtured insight—there always seemed to be a little of the seventeen-year-old in Ray.
March 26, 2017
Late Fragment
"And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth".
-Raymond Carver
This book, written by the ex-wife of the late, part-time poet and full-time short story writer, Raymond Carver, paints a compelling portrait, not only of the artist rising from abject poverty, but also of the woman, no slouch of an artist herself, as this revealing volume displays, who essentially let's him climb up on her back, and carries him arduously over the long course of years, to safety, where he within a few weeks of attaining that "freedom" in a new marriage, proceeds to die of grief and guilt disguised as cancer, and rightly so, if you ask me.
For he can never repay the gift of her unrequited protection, and nurturance, not a scintilla of it. And therefore, cannot relish, or glory in his freedom, or his fame, or the love of others, (especially other women), which he has not himself won.
He asked her to write this book, because it needed to be written, and because he could not write it himself. She does not have to say any of the above, nor that she is the ground of his success, nor the force that kept him from spinning off to madness and wreckage, and instead allowed him to be stable, to come home, to practice his craft in peace despite the violence of his early life, and the hardship and poverty of their early marriage. The reader simply becomes aware as the story progresses that in her, and her extended family, he found a safety net that carried him.
If he felt himself "beloved on the earth" it was through this woman who would not leave, until he wanted her to leave, and knew the very moment to go, like a mother who knows her child better than he knows himself.
A quintessential story of a teenage friendship, that became a love affair, and a quarter-century long, sacrificial marriage, 20th century style.
"And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth".
-Raymond Carver
This book, written by the ex-wife of the late, part-time poet and full-time short story writer, Raymond Carver, paints a compelling portrait, not only of the artist rising from abject poverty, but also of the woman, no slouch of an artist herself, as this revealing volume displays, who essentially let's him climb up on her back, and carries him arduously over the long course of years, to safety, where he within a few weeks of attaining that "freedom" in a new marriage, proceeds to die of grief and guilt disguised as cancer, and rightly so, if you ask me.
For he can never repay the gift of her unrequited protection, and nurturance, not a scintilla of it. And therefore, cannot relish, or glory in his freedom, or his fame, or the love of others, (especially other women), which he has not himself won.
He asked her to write this book, because it needed to be written, and because he could not write it himself. She does not have to say any of the above, nor that she is the ground of his success, nor the force that kept him from spinning off to madness and wreckage, and instead allowed him to be stable, to come home, to practice his craft in peace despite the violence of his early life, and the hardship and poverty of their early marriage. The reader simply becomes aware as the story progresses that in her, and her extended family, he found a safety net that carried him.
If he felt himself "beloved on the earth" it was through this woman who would not leave, until he wanted her to leave, and knew the very moment to go, like a mother who knows her child better than he knows himself.
A quintessential story of a teenage friendship, that became a love affair, and a quarter-century long, sacrificial marriage, 20th century style.
January 20, 2010
While not a great book, this is an interesting addition for Carver fans to read. Written by his first wife, Maryann, What It Used To Be Like provides some insights into their life together from the time they were teens to their breakup in the late '70s--being young parents, moving from Washington to California, pursuing education, and pre-fame days for Ray.
Maryann Carver is not a flawless writer. At times amazingly clunky sentences are at odds with honest realizations about life in general, and the life of writers in particular. Nonetheless, you get a real sense of the love between them, and the many sacrifices she made to make sure his career as a writer was the priority. She seems to have kept this priority even amidst alcoholism and the sporadic violence of their relationship.
The latest and much more comprehensive Carver bio by Sklenicka is drier and far better in terms of writing and structure, however Sklenicka obviously took a lot of the Carvers' personal history from Maryann's book. She even mirrors Maryann Carver's chapter titles, i.e. lists of cities they lived in during each time period.
Maryann Carver is not a flawless writer. At times amazingly clunky sentences are at odds with honest realizations about life in general, and the life of writers in particular. Nonetheless, you get a real sense of the love between them, and the many sacrifices she made to make sure his career as a writer was the priority. She seems to have kept this priority even amidst alcoholism and the sporadic violence of their relationship.
The latest and much more comprehensive Carver bio by Sklenicka is drier and far better in terms of writing and structure, however Sklenicka obviously took a lot of the Carvers' personal history from Maryann's book. She even mirrors Maryann Carver's chapter titles, i.e. lists of cities they lived in during each time period.
July 8, 2010
Maryann married Raymond Carver in 1957 when she was just seventeen and Raymond was nineteen. This book is the story of their two-and-a-half decade marriage and lifelong friendship that continued to Raymond Carver’s death in 1988.
The couple suffered from constant money problems, which resulted in a drifter-like lifestyle, moving from place to place and job to job. Maryann doesn’t shy away from informing her readers about the difficult times, including alcoholism, philandering, and emotional and physical abuse.
She does not critique his writing for the reader, nor does she discuss his writing process in great detail. But that’s not the focus of this book. She does, however, discuss many of the stories behind Raymond’s published stories.
I was very interested in Maryann’s story and could really hear her voice in the writing. I am close to giving this book five stars. However, I felt Chapter 12 entitled “Writing, Teaching, Drinking” strayed away from the otherwise cohesive, chronological thread of the book and found it a bit jarring. I would have preferred her to continue with the story rather than awkwardly breaking it out. Otherwise, excellent.
The couple suffered from constant money problems, which resulted in a drifter-like lifestyle, moving from place to place and job to job. Maryann doesn’t shy away from informing her readers about the difficult times, including alcoholism, philandering, and emotional and physical abuse.
She does not critique his writing for the reader, nor does she discuss his writing process in great detail. But that’s not the focus of this book. She does, however, discuss many of the stories behind Raymond’s published stories.
I was very interested in Maryann’s story and could really hear her voice in the writing. I am close to giving this book five stars. However, I felt Chapter 12 entitled “Writing, Teaching, Drinking” strayed away from the otherwise cohesive, chronological thread of the book and found it a bit jarring. I would have preferred her to continue with the story rather than awkwardly breaking it out. Otherwise, excellent.
March 26, 2012
So so SO poorly written. How is it that someone so close to Carver can express such an intense relationship so flatly? We get a sense of the author's emotional dependence on Ray and her undying commitment to keeping their marriage together, despite his bashing her face into the ground, his running off with other women and his poor treatment of their children. He's a abuser and she still loves him. It's utterly disgusting, but not even that interesting. We never get a glimpse into his thoughts, because ultimately, the wife never really knows. Sad.
My suggestion is if you want to know more about Raymond Carver, just read his own writing again. You're not going to get much insight about him in this book.
Laughable quotes: "Looking back on your life, some moments are unmistakable turning points"; "I was amazed that my dreams and reality were magically becoming one"; "I was overjoyed. When the kids came home from school, I smiled and hugged them hard. I made the family a delicious dinner".
My suggestion is if you want to know more about Raymond Carver, just read his own writing again. You're not going to get much insight about him in this book.
Laughable quotes: "Looking back on your life, some moments are unmistakable turning points"; "I was amazed that my dreams and reality were magically becoming one"; "I was overjoyed. When the kids came home from school, I smiled and hugged them hard. I made the family a delicious dinner".
July 28, 2012
I gave this book four stars, not because of the writing, but because of the content. The author uses a conversational tone, inserting asides such as "Oh, God"; "Perfect..."; "Life went on"; "Eureka, here we come!" I found that aspect of the book off-putting.
Maryann Burk Carver married poet and short story writer Raymond Carver when she was sixteen and pregnant and he was nineteen. The couple had two children in quick succession. I thought I'd moved a lot, but these two moved constantly up and down the northwest coast. For many years they worked at low-paying jobs, all in the hopes of Ray's making it big someday. In the first few years of the marriage, Carver was a good husband and dad,helping with the children and housework. The couple loved to party and eventually, Raymond Carver fell into a downward spiral of depression and alcoholism.
The book was fascinating and an eye-opener into the life of yet another troubled writer.
Maryann Burk Carver married poet and short story writer Raymond Carver when she was sixteen and pregnant and he was nineteen. The couple had two children in quick succession. I thought I'd moved a lot, but these two moved constantly up and down the northwest coast. For many years they worked at low-paying jobs, all in the hopes of Ray's making it big someday. In the first few years of the marriage, Carver was a good husband and dad,helping with the children and housework. The couple loved to party and eventually, Raymond Carver fell into a downward spiral of depression and alcoholism.
The book was fascinating and an eye-opener into the life of yet another troubled writer.
February 25, 2020
This was a very disappointing book. It was hard to believe Maryann actually wrote it, since I knew her to be a highly skilled and articulate writer. It may have been edited to the point it now is published, hacked to disconnected bits, with very little depth to the surface tale it tells. But she should not have allowed this bare and superficial book to be printed in her name. There are better bios out there, and Maryann's ought to have been the best, for all that was experienced and shared in his early years. Sad.
This could be an amazing film in the right hands. I hope that happens, and that Maryann has some editorial privilege or clout in that endeavor.
This could be an amazing film in the right hands. I hope that happens, and that Maryann has some editorial privilege or clout in that endeavor.
March 8, 2015
I read this book on impulse after spying a copy in my local library. I've never read a more treacherous, disturbing, and malignantly narcissistic work. This book deserves recognition as a primer for the hollow shame and deep wounds inflicted by the false entitlement and squeaky frivolity of American Alcoholics.
September 15, 2007
Sadly, I read this book due to my devoted love to Raymond Carver and my curiosity about his life before he officially became the Raymond Carver we now read.
January 7, 2008
I'd like to have a 1/2 star option. 3 1/2 stars would be about right.
November 7, 2011
Some interesting material. Some poorly written passages. Overall a worthy book for anyone interested in Raymond Carver.
Full review at Monk Notes.
Full review at Monk Notes.
August 25, 2014
felt safe? was expecting something honest and gritty and unflinching. instead got something nicholas sparks-ish?
October 12, 2014
I remember thinking as I read this book that Raymond Carver was a jerk, whether drunk or sober. I also remember thinking that Maryann's decision-skills weren't so great. A youth . . .
January 1, 2024
A heartbreaking book about my perhaps favorite writer after which my appreciation of him can never be reinstated.
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