Carver (Beginners, 14):
“Are they all right now?” I asked. I was involved in the story, too, but I was getting drunk. It was hard to keep things in focus. The light seemed to be draining out of the room, going back through the window where it had come from in the first place. Yet nobody made a move to get up from the table or to turn on an electric light.
“Sure, they’re all right,” Herb said. “They were discharged a while later. Just a few weeks ago, in fact. After a time, Henry was able to get around on crutches and then he went to a cane and then he was just all over the place. But his spirits were up now, his spirits were fine, he just improved every day once he got to see his missus again. When she was able to be moved, their son from El Paso and his wife drove up in a station wagon and took them back down there with them. She still had some convalescing to do, but she was coming along real fine. I just had a card from Henry a few days ago. I guess that’s one of the reasons they’re on my mind right now. That, and what we were saying about love earlier.
Lish (What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, 9):
“I dropped in to see each of them every day, sometimes twice a day if I was up doing other calls anyway. Casts and bandages, head to foot, the both of them. You know, you’ve seen it in the movies. That’s just the way they looked, just like in the movies. Little eye-holes and nose-holes and mouth holes. And she had to have her legs slung up on top of it. Well, the husband was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out that his wife was going to pull through, he was still very depressed. Not about the accident, though. I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn’t everything. I’d get up to his mouth-hole, you know, and he’d say no, it wasn’t the accident exactly but it was because he couldn’t see her through his eye-holes. He said that was what was making him feel so bad. Can you imagine? I’m telling you, the man’s heart was breaking because he couldn’t turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife.
Mel looked around the table and shook his head at what he was going to say.
“I mean, it was killing the old fart just because he couldn’t look at the fucking woman.”
We all looked at Mel.
“Do you see what I’m saying?” he said.
Maybe we were a little drunk by then.
Discussion (Please respond in the comments section of the Home Page)
How did Lish fundamentally change Carver’s original intent concerning the end of the Gates “story within a story?” What is your opinion on Lish’s technique? What do we (the reader audience) miss without this story, or what might it actually add to the overall style of the work?
