mode.”49 Replicating his mentor’s general distaste for the “so-called experimental writing” associated with John Barth and the program at Johns Hopkins, or with Robert Coover and the program at Brown, Carver pursued a form of realism that understood itself to be elevated, literary, even self-reflexive to a degree, and yet responsive to what Gardner called the “normal” person’s taste for character and story above feats of metafictional linguistic trickery.
