Carver: Recovery
LATE FRAGMENT:
“And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.”—Inscription on Raymond Carver’s tombstone and his poem “Gravy.”
This takes us back to Olivia Laing’s story in The Trip to Echo Spring, about the relationships of six award-winning but alcohol-addicted authors: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. Carver is the only one of these six highly talented American writers who went into significant 12-step recovery. This tells us a great deal about addiction. It is a cunning and baffling disease, even for the most brilliant and creative minds.
I hope you read my favorite Carver story, “A Small Good Thing,” about a dying son, his birthday cake, and the cake baker. Also, make sure you read Carver’s original version, published after his death by his wife, Tess Gallagher, in Beginners (Vintage, 2015).
When people are caught in this disease, their addiction to alcohol, drugs, sex, relationships, or work becomes their God, their higher power. It is impossible to find the relationship with God that our life calls us to when there is something else in our “God hole.” The paradox is that the answer, the awakening, the Lazarus experience for any addiction, is spiritual: surrendering and turning our lives and wills over to the care of the God of our understanding.
