How Would You Feel About a Writer Who Wrote About Your Suicidal Mother's Ruined Teeth?

Here's a story I heard last February at AWP that floored me. Did it bother anyone else that Douglas Unger admitted to a room full of Raymond Carver fans, myself among them, that good old Ray "took things from [him]"? I'm not sure it did. In fact, to many in attendance and to many who read this, it may only add to Carver's reputation, to his swagger as a man, his bravado as a writer.

And yet there was Unger, himself a writer, a colleague of Carver's. Family practically, Unger having married Carver's sister-in-law. They'd formed an all-male writers group together, a tight-knit handful of men who trusted each other to share their work and their most intimate lives.

Bret Lott was on the panel, too, telling of what it was like to be Ray Carver's protege, a glorious experience from Lott's account, echoed by C.J. Hribal, a student of Carver's later in his career. They were all three generous in their praise of the man, and my interest in and appreciation of Carver was only enriched by their stories.

"I had many good teachers," Lott said. "But the best teacher I ever had was Ray Carver and those stories."

"We thought we were going to be taught by a mild-mannered axe murderer," Hribal said. "He referred to himself as the 'good Ray.' I was becoming a Ray Carver character myself when he saved my life when he called me and said a fellowship was waiting for me."

"He spoke [of his students] not so much as students," Unger told us, "but as equals, and he was going to do all he could to make sure they got where they should be. He believed that writers are better than other people. Ray gave to student-writers that sense that they’d had a chance, a shot. He made young writers feel anointed, confirmed."

High praise. Deep reverence from the whole panel. It was amazing.

And yet I was drawn back to Unger, who seemed clearly not okay with this breach of trust at the hands of his old friend. It broke my heart listening to him.

"He took things from me. Little things I’d told him," Unger said, "or other people had told him. That shameless word thief stole my mother’s teeth and put them in 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.' My mother’s teeth had been damaged after she drank ant poison. Amy told the story. How would you feel about a writer who wrote about your suicidal mother’s ruined teeth? Take it and use it first, before anyone else," Unger warned.

Where do writers get their ideas? We steal them, of course. We "appropriate" material from other people. We are all of us a bunch of thieves when you get right down to it. Robert Morgan tells the story of a relative who came to one of his booksignings who said, "The only fiction in that book is the disclaimer that says all of this is a work of fiction." (Or words to that effect.)

As fellow beings living in the world, we feel entitled to taking whatever is ours -- ours in the sense of it having intersected in some way with our own lives. We take what is ours, and then some. As writers, we are, in fact, charged with the responsibility of making meaning from experience, our own as well as others.

Still, it's one thing to pilfer certain uninventable details from our own lives, even to "borrow" from the world sleeping around us. But to swindle a guy out of his mother's ruined teeth? Another writer, no less, fully awake, who is earnestly trying to make sense of those nightmarish teeth himself? I'm not talking about homage or inspiration or even voice creep here, though maybe I'll talk about those in a later post. No, this is worse than "shameless." Worse than arrogance even. It's misanthropic. It reveals one of Carver's deepest, darkest sins, I think -- his doubt in his friend's ability to handle his own story. And beyond that, his true estimation of their relationship, which is not much estimation at all.

Because Carver wanted those damned teeth more than he wanted a friendship with Unger. And that's the saddest thing; it's high treason, betrayal with a kiss. First, there's the stealing. And then there's the careless handling of the friendship, the sacrificing of the relationship. For all his generosity later, he took from Unger what could never be replaced.

http://www.douglasunger.com/

But the story doesn't end there, with the friendship. It doesn't even end with Carver's death. Because Unger is still very much alive. Best of all, he's still writing.

And perhaps he gets a bit of revenge in a story called "The Writer's Widow," from a recent collection published by Ontario Review Press, which is said to paint a damning portrait of Tess Gallagher, Carver's second wife.

I haven't read it yet, but wouldn't that make for an inevitable and satisfying conclusion?

Maybe that's the moral of this unfortunate story.