“Menudo” was included in Raymond Carver's compilation book Where I'm Calling From, which was published in 1988 (Carver). Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon in 1938. He later lived in Yakima, Washington, where he would father two children, Christina and Vance. After moving to Northern California and receiving a degree from Humboldt State College in 1963, Carver began to write and publish many stories, arguably his most famous being “Furious Seasons”, which was included in Best American Short Storie[']s 1964 edition (Gies). Raymond Carver would live and continue to write until 1988, when he died of lung cancer, a life full of drinking and smoking had finally caught up to him (Gies).
“Menudo” follows the story of Hughes, a man who is constantly comparing himself to others, as he gets up from bed during a fit of insomnia (Nesset). Hughes sits up thinking about his mistress, Amanda, whom he was just caught having an affair with (Carver 456). Amanda's husband, Oliver, has given Amanda an ultimatum, he has left for a week, and he stated she had better not be there when he gets back (Carver 456). He makes a glass of warm milk to try and fall asleep, commenting that he used to drink whiskey when he had insomnia (Carver 457). Hughes starts recalling things from his past at this point, including when his first wife Molly started talking about destiny, how everything was predetermined, and how his father died, and he showed no emotion, and just went blank and didn't sleep through the whole grieving process. He later recalls how his current wife, Vicky, revealed that she had had an affair, and how he slept through getting over it, and handled it similarly to how he handled his father passing (Carver 458). Hughes warms his milk...
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...ence of re-thinking his life after realizing the meaning of the menudo, and his feeling of powerlessness overcame, Hughes will rake up his life by talking things through with Amanda, and raking up his life in reality, instead of just in his head.
Works Cited
Carver, Raymond. Where I'm Calling From. Toronto: Random House, 1989. 471-545. Print.
Campbell, Ewing. Raymond Carver A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992. 74-76. Print.
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Hennessy, Denis. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 218: American Short-Story Writers Since World War II, Second Series. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Patrick Meanor, State University of New York at Oneonta, and Gwen Crane, State University of New York at Oneonta. Gale Group, 1999. pp. 70-77.
"Unit 2: Reading & Writing About Short Fiction." ENGL200: Composition and Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 49-219. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
May, C. E. (2012). Critical Survey of Short Fiction: World Writers (4th ed.). Ipswich: Salem Press.
Weele, Michael Vander. "Raymond Carver and the language of Desire." Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas Volteler. Detroit: Gale Publishing Inc., 1989. 36-41.
Robison, James Curry. Peter Taylor: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988. 78, 89-95.
Nesset, Kirk. "Insularity and Self-Enlargement in Raymond Carver's 'Cathedral.'" Essays in Literature. March 22, 1994: 116.
_______. Critical Review of Short Fiction. Vol. III 4 vols.. Pasadena, California: Salem Press, 1991.
Carver, Raymond. Cathedral. Exploring Literature: Writing and Arguing About Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. Ed. Frank Madden. 4th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009. 1151-61. Print
Carver, Raymond. Cathedral. “The Norton Introduction to Literature.” New York: W.W Norton &, 2014. Print.
Charters, Ann & Samuel. Literature and its Writers. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2013. 137-147. Print.
Magill, Frank N. Critical Survey of Short Fiction. Vol. 6. Pasadena, California: Salem Press, 1993.
Messer, H. Collin. "Fleeing The Wasteland Of Alcoholism: Alienation, Recovery, And Hope In Raymond Carver's Cathedral." Studies In Short Fiction 37.1 (2012): 43-58. Academic Search Elite. Web. 7 Mar. 2014.
Raymond Carver uses strategic dialogue and point-of-view to illuminate the themes of his stories. After reading “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” and “ Cathedral” the reader is able to mend each piece of work together and understand how Carver creates his short stories.
Over thirty years after his death, Langston Hughes still remains one of the most influential writers of our time. His life, so full of passion due to the events he experienced from his childhood to young adulthood, is reflected in all of his written works. Heartaches and joys taught this man to understand all emotions and skill allowed him to place his thoughts on paper for the world to see, hear, and feel. A history of what Langston Hughes has lived through lies within each piece he has written.
Carver's short stories can have so many aspects due to the minimalism he has uses during his stories that the only limit is our own fantasy and the few guide lines we are given in the stories.