Bruce Weber wrote in the
New York Times Magazine (24 June 1984) that "Carver country is a place we all recognize. It is a place that Carver himself comes from, the country of arduous life." His father, Clevie Raymond Carver, also knew the grind of economic hardship. In the 1930s he moved from Arkansas to the logging districts of the Pacific Northwest, where he married Ella Beatrice Casey. While he was eking out a living as a saw filer in the lumber mills of Oregon and Washington, his wife worked as a clerk and waitress to help pay bills.
Born in Clatskanie, Oregon, on 25 May 1938, Raymond Carver was three when his parents moved with him to Yakima, Washington, a working-class town in the eastern part of the state. His younger brother and only sibling, James Carver, was born in 1943. The parents gradually struggled their way into the lower middle class.
Carver often described his childhood and adolescence as average. His father was a storyteller, embellishing tales about the Civil War and about riding the rails west.
This is a free page. This page contains 163 words. This
biography contains 5,152 words (approx. 17 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Raymond Carver Access Pass.
