Two giants of the American short story. One NYPL quiz.
Raymond Carver and John Cheever have birthdays two days apart: May 25 and May 27, respectively. Cheever was born in 1912, more than 20 years before Carver. Cheever lived to 70; Carver died at 50.
And, although their styles weren’t exactly similar, they may not be as different as you think.
Can you tell who said what? (Answers below.)
- “All literary men are Red Sox fans — to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.”
- “The truth is, cathedrals don’t mean anything special to me.”
- “I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss — you can’t do it alone.”
- “I hate sloppy or haphazard writing whether it flies under the banner of experimentation or else is just clumsily rendered realism.”
- “It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.”
- “He had lost his crown, his kingdom, his heirs and armies, his court, his harem, his queen and his fleet. He had, of course, never possessed any of these.”
- “Paint me a small railroad station then, ten minutes before dark.”
- “The first time I robbed Tiffany’s, it was raining.”
- “My husband eats with a good appetite. But I don’t think he’s really hungry.”
- “A collection of short stories is generally thought to be a horrendous clinker; an enforced courtesy for the elderly writer who wants to display the trophies of his youth, along with his trout flies.”
- Cheever, quoted in Newsweek, Oct. 20, 1986
- Carver, “Cathedral,” Collected Stories
- Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever
- Carver, “On Writing,” Collected Stories
- Carver, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”
- Cheever, Oh What a Paradise It Seems
- Cheever, Bullet Park
- Cheever, “Montraldo,” The Stories of John Cheever
- Carver, “So Much Water So Close to Home,” Collected Stories
- Cheever, quoted in The Writer's Quotation Book