Carnations: A Play in One Act, Common Knowledge by Raymond Carver (review)

I tell my students—I teach playwriting at the University of Houston—that they shouldn't even consider a career in the theatre unless they feel they will be incomplete without it, that the theatre is a tough and unfair business where honor and talent don't carry much weight—rather like life, I suppose. I tell them that the theories of playwriting can be taught, that I can instruct them how to write like other people, but that only if they are playwrights by nature can I nurture.

If I had been teaching in 1962 (I was not, for I had just begun writing plays myself) and had Raymond Carver submitted Carnationsas entrance evidence to my class, I imagine I would have taken him on; though with some misgivings. I prefer student work that is wild to that which is tame, chaotic to too-well-ordered, messy to neat, adventuresome to timid, and semicoherently alive to safely comatose. I think I would have been taken by Carver's stylistic jumble—expressionism cheek to jowl with surrealism; I'm sure I would have been impressed by the sudden startlements of the text, by the two or three moments I was suddenly and inexplicably moved; I know I would have been pleased by the unknowing of the stage technique, its crude and probably unsatisfiable demands.

As I say, I like the wild, the chaotic, the messy, the semicoherent, and I'm almost certain I would have taken Carver on, if for no other reason than to discover the mind and talent responsible for such work.

I'm not certain, however, I would have encouraged Carver to pursue playwriting, for I'm not sure I would have been convinced that it was there his quirky and undeniable talent could blossom best. I think I would have encouraged him to try other forms, to find where the possible turned into the inevitable—poetry, perhaps?—the novel, maybe?—short fiction, even?