"Fever" - A Story I Never Recovered From

Mr. Lewenstein asked us to share a "Book Out of Our Past" on the class discussion board.  He didn't want us to write a book report.  He said  it should come out more like a book experience.  Here I try to show what I got out of  the reading.   I never was much of a reader before I discovered Raymond Carver.  

Back in English class at Kent State University in Ohio, I read a book I didn’t really like or understand. The author’s name was Raymond Carver. He wrote a collection of short stories entitled Cathedral. I’m telling you I didn’t like the stories at first because in each one of them the author didn’t seem to go much of anywhere and not much of anything really ever happened. But because they were short stories, I read them over and over – I thought I was missing out. 

Hey. More sooner than later, I realized I wasn’t missing out. The more Raymond Carver stories I read, the more I understood what he wrote about. I mean, not every book has to have a lesson or finish in a happy ending. I began to appreciate how Carver’s stories show a slice of life. In fact, they seem to concentrate on the very unglamorous side of life.

My favorite story of this collection is “Fever”. It starts with the line, “Carlyle was in a spot.” That’s how Carver writes. He doesn’t waste a lot of adjectives or details, but as you move through the story, you pick up that Carlyle is a sad alcoholic with a crazy wife who has just left him. Here he is trying to forget her and get on with his life, but his wife keeps calling him to find out how he’s doing. And like a lot of other Carver characters, he wasn’t doing very well at all. He still had to take care of his work and his kids, and on top of that, he had come down with a horrible fever.

For some reason, this story stuck with me. His wife kept telling him that if he had a fever, now was the time to write down his feelings. This is what got to me: His heart must have been broken. He must have had a ulcer burning deep in his stomach. And things were just going to get worse, but his wife kept calling him back over and over and over, reminding him to write down his feelings. Like she was the last person he wanted to hear from. He thought she was completely insane.

I don’t know if you know what it’s like to concentrate when you feel like you are going to throw up. It’s like you are moving in two different directions. How can you understand much of anything?

That’s when I began to understand and respect Raymond Carver. When I read him, I stop waiting for the obvious; instead, I look forward to discomfort. When Carlyle in ”Fever” came to terms with the temperature of his skin, he developed a better understanding of who he was.

I think everyone can learn something about themselves from reading Raymond Carver. Here, his stories aren't action adventures that everyone could dream about. There more like everyday moments that we can all relate to.

For me, Carver’s stories aren’t about Magic.  They are about Us.  I mean the writing will connect with the real you.