Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
In Raymond Carver’s first
book of short stories, Will You Please Be
Quiet, Please? we are given twenty-two realistic and pessimistic stories of
average people one could see on the street every day. Each story takes on a
different point of view of the American working class with a bit of dry humor
and minimalist writing. Carver holds nothing back in his depiction of daily
human life, including the disappointing aspects most overlook in their day. A
perfect read for anyone with little time, and anyone who appreciates the gritty
realism of middle class America and the struggles that come with it.
Put Yourself in My Shoes
Easily relatable for anyone who has ever had an
unpleasant experience with a landlord, this story depicts the strange encounter
between the Meyers and their landlords, the Morgans after a good night of
drinking. The Meyerses Christmas celebration is disturbed by a rather unusual
encounter with the elder couple, complete with a haunting story of infidelity,
a woman dying in Germany, and a rant about personal property bringing it all to
a head with a rather awkward ending that makes you squirm in your seat.
One wonderful thing this story does is have one person telling
a story within the story. We are given three stories from two characters and that
builds both some suspense for what’s actually going on in the story and it
gives a bit of character to people most readers see as unlikeable. The use of
certain language sometimes reads like a script, making you hear what they’re
saying and the emotion in each syllable, which I personally enjoy. It’s
admittedly a bit of a slow build, but it does tend to keep you engaged by
giving personality to each of the four main characters, making you feel like
you have met at least one person like this before.
Why, Honey?
This story is easily my favorite, partly due to its
subject matter and partly due to the way it is written. “Why Honey?” is a very
simple, story written in the format of a mother writing a letter about her son
to a mystery man. We very quickly get an idea of a seemingly escalating fear
she cultivates over years, giving us examples of her baby boy’s behavior. By
the end, it is very easy to understand this woman’s fear and even feel a small
chill in the spine by the last lines.
With almost no direct dialogue in the story, we are given
the entire story from the mother’s point of view which tends to boarder on
sentimental, but it can be easy to feel for this woman. The language of the
story tends to be easy to suck you in and make you believe easy that this is a
scared woman. I think the writing for this passage is good at immersion, not by
describing every environment and every person, but by giving any crime lover
the perfect glimpse into the possible childhood of a pathological liar. This story,
I believe, reels you in easily from the first line of “Dear, Sir.”
The Idea
My least favorite story of the collection, “The Idea”
depicts one couple watching what they believe to be a strange sexual fetish of
their neighbors. After wanting to retire to bed, the wife of the two stays up
and tries to rid her home of an ant infestation before whispering to a dark window,
“…things I cannot repeat.”
I think this story is rather boring and doesn’t give too
much to itself in terms of what it’s about. The plot is foggy at best and the
ending is a great let down considering we start out the story with two people
watching their neighbor peeping through the window at his wife. The judgmental
neighbors are either unlikable in the case of the wife or not flushed out in
the case of the husband. All in all, you will not lose any sleep by skipping
this story.
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