One might not think of Stephen King (commercial horror storyteller supreme) and Raymond Carver (the late local crafter of exquisitely serious short stories) as working the same side of the street. But King, in an NY Times review of a new Carver bio, sees a lot of himself in Carver’s early career, particularly the chain-drinking and chain-moping parts.
But the biggest lesson King takes from Carol Sklenicka’s Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life is that we should think more (and more kindly) about Maryann Burk, the first Mrs. Carver. It was she who supported and suffered from the struggling (and often violently drunk) early Raymond. The better known second wife got to live with the sober, successful Raymond.