Hello, I am looking for someone to write an article on Raymond Carver Stories. It needs to be at least 1250 words. Raymond Carver did whatever he had to do to survive, including working as a janitor, sawmill laborer, and library assistant before eventually moving to California where his writing career began.

His stories are mainly set in the pacific northwest states of Oregon and Washington, an environment he was familiar with as he grew up. Coming from a low-income family, Raymond grew up to be humble at heart. In 1963 he failed to complete the Iowa Writers’ Workshop simply because he did not fit into the program’s upper-middle-class milieu and he grew homesick of California. It is, therefore, not surprising that the characters in his books mirror the life that he was used to.

In an article written in the New York Review of Books in April 1976, critic Thomas Edwards describes Raymond’s fictional world as a place “[where] people worry about whether their old cars will start, where unemployment or personal bankruptcy are present dangers, where a good time consists of smoking pot with the neighbors, with a little cream soda and M & Ms on the side.” Edwards continues and says “Carver’s characters are waitresses, mechanics, postmen, high school teachers, factory workers, door-to-door salesmen. [Their surroundings are] not for them a still unspoiled scenic wonderland, but a place where making a living is as hard, and the texture of life as drab, for those without money, as anywhere else.”

It is therefore not a coincidence that Carver had the most distinct vision of the middle-class American society. His life paralleled that of the characters in his stories. His first collection of short stories “Will you please be quiet, please?” was published in 1976. The stories are brief, but not stark. Carver had mastered the art of walking a fine line between no bloodshed and repressed violence. Almost all stories hold the promise of an ugly ending, marred by violence and mayhem as the characters seek to break into liberty from&nbsp.oppression.&nbsp.