The first time I heard about ‘Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?’ and its author Raymond Carver was, well, when I actually held the book in my hand. It was the hopeful attempt of two concerned parents to get their 15 year old daughter out of her post board exam lethargy. It came along with many others, of varied genres – some that made me question my parents’ understanding of a child they’d raised for 15 years – but I digress. 15 year old me had put down the book a few stories in, and had picked it up again a few days later.
It was only natural then, that when the chance of a book review came up, much older me turned to this book. What was it exactly about this book that threw young me into melancholy? Had me feel some despair, smallish, but which had no business in the lives of a student basking in post-exam glory?
Carver, in this book, presents snapshots. Around ten pages each (many even 6-8 pages) – they are disturbing snapshots, indeed. It’s no surprise that when read for the first time, these stories seem to start from and end at nowhere. You really don’t know what exactly Carver is writing about. They are centered around moments – breaking points and crises. They aren’t descriptions – no, Carver has definitely chipped away all around the edges and left only these moments. They are about the everyday catastrophes, not about the life changing and the explosive. They are heart-breaking glimpses into the ugly and the flawed.
Carver, who describes himself as ‘inclined toward brevity and intensity’, certainly sticks true to his words. The stories are written in Carver’s signature minimalist style. These aren’t light reads. They require your attention and time till the end, and then, ‘what next?’ isn’t as important as the calamities in these glimpses themselves. They’re open to interpretation, and to some extent, imagination.
I do realise that addressing all 22 of the stories would be a few too many, and is something to be kept aside specially for when unwanted 9 pm gatherings filled with distant relatives gets gnarly, and hence, I’ll limit it to just a few that unsettled me, and hopefully, dear reader scrolling through their phone, you too.
The first story, ‘Fat’, is a great glimpse of what you would see through the next 21 stories. The writing is clipped, leaves little for you to grasp, and leaves so much unsaid. After serving an obese man at her diner, a young waitress is affected and feels a change coming. A strange moment of an even stranger connection, with someone and somewhere connections are hard to notice, the story would also remind one of ourselves, weighed down by notions of choice and power.
‘Neighbours’- is the second in the book. It’s the story of a couple who are house-sitting for their neighbours while they’re away, and get almost obsessive about and inside the house. The couple’s struggle and envy for the exciting life that their neighbours seem to enjoy, and their way of trying to achieve it- all would, even if not in explicit terms- resonate with us, in our search for our own definitions of normalcy.
‘They’re Not Your Husband’- is another, in which an unemployed salesman, after overhearing men making nasty comments about his wife’s weight, makes her starve to lose weight. This line in itself is disturbing, and if you’re unsettled and furious at the end, then Carver has done his work. The rawness of his characters, no matter how familiar you are with his style, still hits you in the face. The resentful insecurity of the husband mercilessly tearing his resigned wife down is enough to get your blood boiling, only to leave you unsettled, when in the end, on being asked, ‘Who is this joker, anyway?’, she acknowledges him as her husband, and thereby validates him and his masculinity.
There is ‘The Student’s Wife’- a story through which we see a couple dealing with their own compliance with the confinement of their everyday life, and their hopes for change and freedom, and in the end, hopelessness. ‘Jerry Molly and Sam’ is another in which a man decides to abandon his dog for a solution to his problems. The frenzy that leads to the decision and which follows the act creeps into your head as well, leaving you with the same feeling of doom, and then finally, of disquiet.
The last story, ‘Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?’ is of a couple, both teachers, married with two children, seemingly happy. Yet, Carver hints at the trouble that lies hidden beneath, and it is finally revealed – a drunken party where the wife slips out alone with someone else. The sudden way the wife brings up the topic is in contrast to the way the husband seemed to slowly, surely slip into a chaotic frenzy. The story is unhappy, disturbing and more than just unpleasant. So is the nature of the entire collection, and Carver achieves his goal.
Carver’s characters are working class Americans. They are poor, riddled with insecurities, dissatisfaction, disappointment, anger and unhappiness. And this is perhaps why they resonate. We are not told of their life stories, just shown their pivotal moments and these moments are, as Carver very well knows, when we really see and know ourselves for who we are.
Text by Meghna M.
Illustration by Namrata Nirmal
Article 19 