"Where I'm Calling From" (1982)

Here we find Raymond Carver moving into the recovery phase of his writing (and life), acknowledging not only the realities of alcoholism but possibilities for the road back. He seems to understand the pitfalls well. This story is set in a treatment center ("drying-out facility"), with the first-person narrator there for a second round of rehab. Carver captures the best features of 12-step recovery while avoiding most of the worst. He notices without comment, for example, the coffee and sugar cookies. On the inevitable war stories he notes, "We'd all done things just as bad and crazy, so, sure, that's why we laughed." In fact, this story is mostly about their storytelling, specifically between the first-person narrator and another patient. They tell stories about broken relationships and bad mistakes. I feel sorry for these tellers more often than repulsed (which is often my reaction when 12-steppers start winding up into their stories). But they are still damaged and thus unsafe people. I appreciate the distance of only reading about them. Carver is so blunt and straightforward about these disasters that he is disarming. I don't think I'd care to meet either of these characters but their stories are absorbing and poignant. "Where I'm calling from" in this story is the treatment center—the narrator needs to talk to both his wife and his girlfriend but doesn't seem to be able to reach them. Carver was obviously fond of the story and its title, including it in Cathedral as well as in his last collection, which bears its name. Perhaps it represents his sense of both connection and distance, both at once. The treatment center is a place of connection, but many there are wounded and deeply flawed. Carver also parachutes Jack London into all this, name-checking both The Call of the Wild and "To Build a Fire," the latter given an interesting synopsis by the narrator. The story feels a bit mechanical but I think it works too. What's best is how the Carver voice carries on as usual even in a treatment center, a place that more often in fiction is overdone or underdone or done awkwardly, too piously. There is nothing like that here, and it is finally a great meditation on wreckage.

Raymond Carver, Where I'm Calling From (Library of America)