And Now . . . Jack Handy

It’s relieving to know that not only is the man still alive, but that he is in fact real.

The New Yorker has published Jack Handy, former skit-writer for Saturday Night Live, most famous for his creation of Deep Thoughts, several times in the past few years.

In last week’s issue, The New Yorker published “How Things Even Out,” a short including some Handy philosophy in the “Shouts & Murmurs” section.

“Things are evening out all the time, if you take time to notice, like I do. . . . You might hear that some guy you know is having a party, so you call him up, but he says there’s no party. But then you call back, using a different voice, and suddenly there is a party.

One day, you ask people to take a look at a skin rash you have. Then, a few days later, you’re looking at their rashes. You send someone a death threat and then, mysteriously, the police come to your house and threaten you.”

The story (about a 5 minute read), is not as powerful, perhaps, as some of his most famous one-liners, but for the Deep Thoughts fans out there, it is relieving to know that this man is still around, and has not past as SNL has over the years.

For those unfamiliar with Jack Handy, he is comparable today to Dimitri Martin, who writes and performs for The Daily Show. Handy first began publishing his Deep Thoughts in National Lampoon Magazine, 1984.

Get your Deep Thought of the day, read by Jack Handy, HERE.

Raymond Carver: “I’m not them, I’m not us, I’m me.”

The New Yorker recently published “Beginners,” the original manuscript to one of Raymond Carver’s most famous short stories, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.”

Along with the story, the New Yorker provided a series of letters between Carver and his editor, Gordon Lish, that have exposed Carver’s reluctance to allow Lish the amount editorial freedom that he had once encouraged.

The article, entitled, “Rough Crossings: The Cutting of Raymond Carver,” revealed that Carver’s original document had been cut by Lish by over 40 percent. It also noted that much of Carvers other work had seen similar truncating, many stories loosing up to 70 percent of their original content.

In the story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” Lish’s revisions become increasingly controversial. He omits entire pages, often replacing them with Carver-styled paragraphs of his own.

“What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” ends several pages earlier than the original, “Beginners,” and with a paragraph provided entirely by Lish.

Unhappy and anxious, nearly suicidal over the “minimalist” style that Lish had carved from his manuscripts, Carver wrote to Lish begging him to, at least, postpone publication.

Carver, acknowledging that Lish had made many of the stories “far better than they were before,” feared embarrassment from those who had seen what his stories had been prior to revision. He was also afraid that they exposed him as a vulnerable individual.

Below is a snippet from a letter Carver wrote to Lish on July 8, 1980.

“Maybe if the book were not to come out for 18 months or two years, it would be different. But right now, everything is too new. . . . Gordon, the changes are brilliant and for the better in most cases—I look at “What We Talk About . . .” (Beginners) and I see what it is that you’ve done, what you’ve pulled out of it, and I’m awed and astonished, startled even, with your insights. But it’s too close right now, that story. Now much of this has to do with my sobriety and with my new-found (and fragile, I see) mental health and well-being. I’ll tell you the truth, my very sanity is on the line here.”

Lish went through with publication, anyway. It made Carver the most influential American short story writer since Earnest Hemingway.*

“What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” was published in a collection under the same title. It was featured on the front-page of the Times Book Review—a “rarity” for short story collections, according to the New Yorker.

Most fascinating in the printed New Yorker article is a photo of what became the final page in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” which includes the hand-written revisions by Lish.

Online, the New Yorker has posted the entirety of Lish’s revisions for “Beginners,” shown through Microsoft Word’s “Track Changes” format. View the revisions here.

Click here to view photos of Raymond Carver from the New Yorker’s slide show.
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Other Sources:
*”Two Interviews with Raymond Carver”
http://titan.iwu.edu/~jplath/carver.html