What It Used to Be Like: A Portrait of My Marriage to Raymond Carver

Interesting that her book ran to 1,250 pages and took years and years to write, and that someone called John Stryker edited it down to its present lapidary form. Don't people say that Raymond Carver also wrote too long and that the notorious editor Gordon Lish cut and chopped as he saw fit in order to maintain that famous "minimalist" style we associate with Carver? Maybe he got it from his wife, as he got so much else. He's great and everything, but her book shows who was the real writer in the family. The first word of the book is "spudnuts," did you ever hear of them? As she explains, they are the doughnuts of Washington State, made with potato flour and marketed as an indigenous treat. She met Ray when she worked with his mom at a spudnut cafe in Union Gap, south of Yakima, and he was far and away the best looking boy she had ever known. Though only fifteen, Maryann knew what she wanted already. It was a sexist society which said it was all right for Ray to go to prostitutes and pay cold cash for "an around the world" (as MBC adds, if you don't know what that is, don't ask") but that it was wrong for Maryann to want to go to college classes. Most of the book is about her giving up her life to help Ray and his career, while raising their two beautiful children (by the time she was 20, she was saddled with these two bundles of energy) in a series of rundown, crumby apartments. It's all about how an ambitious girl of the working class suffers when her husband's a genius and naturally society makes her defer her own dreams so that he can become famous. And following the fame, Ray starts drinking even more heavily than before, while female groupies start prowling around, rubbing his legs, asking for more than autographs, and spending weekends with him while Maryann stays at home, overwhelmed, and doing a fair bit of drinking herself. She has a loyal and loving sister, who is quite talented too, in another field, someone to whom she can complain to, someone who will understand. It's hard to believe that the Carver estate wouldn't allow MBC to quote from any of Carver's stories, not even from the love letters he wrote her. Who's in charge there and how deep does their vindictiveness run? Maryann is never nasty or confrontational, but she does paint an unpleasant portrait of Ray as a serial cheater, who couldn't keep it in his pants because he was too drunk to keep the pants up, and the coeds or whoever they were who wanted a taste of his fame have a special purdah all their own. A special golden spudnut goes out to Tess Gallagher, that talented poet who became Raymond Carver's widow, marrying him only a few months before his death and that's stretching it. She and Maryann apparently maintain cordial and amicable relations. God bless us all.

Maryann Burk Carver, first and long-time wife of the great writer Raymond Carver, has here published an enormously important memoir. Though married to one of the greatest short story writers of the twentieth century (arguably the greatest), this book is about her, about Maryann, and from it, we learn of a strong, intelligent, loyal woman, and the nearly three decades she fought for a marriage which later would so often be summed up and dismissed as a horrible burden to Raymond Carver's creativity, instead of a blessed anchor in the chaotic storm he was creating for himself and for those around him. One can't help admire Maryann's enormous efforts to be a good mother, a good wife, a good supporter of her husband and his work, a good bread winner, at a time when women were expected to sacrifice themselves for their families, but still find (or feign) contentment. Still, it surprised me to read about all the struggles she went through, all the pain and sorrow and degradation, and to see that somehow she still loved and loves this man. Also laudatory (and surprising) is that she seems to foster no hatred, no animus toward the other women in Ray's life-most notably, his second wife, Tess Gallagher. There is no finger-pointing here. Maryann takes full responsibility for her own battles with alcohol, for her own breaking of the marriage vows, for her own flaws and frailties. In its frankness, What It Used to be Like makes clear how Raymond Carver's young life laid the groundwork for Will You Please be Quiet, Please? and for his next two books, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love and Cathedral, the triad in all likelihood constituting the very best of Raymond Carver's work. In its compassion and downright humanity, What It Used to be Like is so reminiscent of how Raymond Carver seemed to view his characters-never with disapproval or condescension, but with a gentle, open heart. No wonder he adored Maryann. Seeing through her eyes may have brought out the best in him.

When a person of considerable renown dies their memory and legacy is often fought over by survivors and disciples. Often there are rivals claims about who really knows and defines the ' true person'. Often out of the conflicting versions there may emerge more than contradiction, rather a more complete sense of the person. Raymond Carver had two wives, one for twenty- five years and one who he married towards the end who he had lived with for nine years. One is the author of this book, the mother of his children Maryann Burk Carver, the other was the one with whom he spent an easier, more successful and calmer time, the writer Tess Gallagher. In the first marriage Carver was largely poor, troubled, striving to become a writer, a very young husband and father. This book is about the first marriage as told by his first wife, a wife who during their married years worked as waitress, telephone operator, teacher to help support him. Their life was often a life at the edge, at the edge of bankruptcy, and homelessness, at the edge of poverty and despair. It was also a life of good times and love. And one central theme of this work is that her love for Carver persisted even after she understood that he really wanted a separation, and it was better for them to divorce. As his often the case she was in a sense the sacrificing better half, who helped enable her husband to go forward in the work he needed to do. For Carver writing was a vocation, an obsession, a love which he had greater loyalty to than to his family. This book tells the story through the long difficult years to the point where Carver knows initial and real success- and everything falls apart. The second half of his story , of his abandoning drinking, of his developing creatively in new ways, of his relationship with Gallagher is naturally not told here. This work is an important document for all those who would more fully understand the life and development of a major American writer.But it also stands in its own right as Maryann Burk Carver's effort at understanding and justification the years she gave to the man of her life.

This book is about profound love and addiction. Maryann got hooked on Ray at 15. She never stopped loving him. Towards the end, when she says, "I didn't have anything. I had trashed my own life trying to keep Ray in it."--she summarizes the price she paid for her bond with Ray, that tormented, gifted, bewitching and lovely love of her life. But it doesn't end there. Forgiveness and healing follows. Her portrayal of Ray makes me feel compassion and affection for him, but it is Maryann I most root for. "I have the best wife if the world," Ray is quoted near the end. "There's nothing the matter with my wife. It's me. It's me." I believe it, and I believe that he believed it. The final chapter, Always, is particularly moving. For me, the conclusive evidence of her memoir's quality is this--it made me cry. Well done, Maryann.

Maryann Burk Carver writes about her love and life with the late Raymond Carver. Her writing evokes passion about the man she loved, intimate details on their life together, and insight into Carver`s greatness. This memoir complements other works on him, as well as maintains his legacy. Read this book if you are at all curious about him and how he became such a wonderful writer.