Narrative: Raymond Carver's "Fat"

Like the old saying about God, narration operates in mysterious ways its wonders to perform. I will be examining the narrative techniques in some of my favorite stories in the next couple of blogs I post.

One thing we need to get straight at first. I am not just picking out favorite stories and then examining how the narration operates in these stories. They are works that I have come to realize stand out, are memorable, and that distinguish themselves precisely because of narrative technique. So they merit our attention as examples.

Raymond Carver

 The first of these is Raymond Chandler’s “Fat,” a masterpiece of narrative script. It is told from the point of view of a waitress who one night waits on a man who is obese. She tells a story in which very little happens and the conflict is rather abstract. Yet the way she tells it makes the story one many consider to be among the handful of the best short stories ever written.

Carver uses multiple layers of reference to tell her story, which begins, I am sitting over coffee and cigarette at my friend Rita’s and I am telling her about it.  Here is what I tell her. The narration is first person, but we soon find out is layered. The main character is telling a friend something that has already happened, so the action is removed one step from the actuality of the story. The action has been reflected upon, pondered, and arranged in the narrator’s mind. Of course, the narrator is telling this to the reader as well, so add another layer of distance. We are getting it at two removes. It is not an immediate recitation of the story’s action, but a retelling of it at more than one remove.

This sets the stage for what happens to 

the main character in this tale. Plot:   

she waits upon an obese man who is well-spoken, well-dressed, and mannerly. Rita, he was big, the waitress says. She goes about her business and waits upon him, upsetting his water glass and reciting from the menu. When he orders, the man uses the pronoun “we” for himself, rather than “I.”

A friend once quipped, “The reason he does that is because he’s so big it’s like there’s two of him.” Well, maybe, but I think he does this to distance himself from himself. A king uses “we” to differentiate between his person and his office. The man in the story keeps distance between himself and the fat man that contains him.

Soon, though the thing that makes the story remarkable occurs. Some kind of bond develops between them, as in this dialogue:

            Believe me, he says, we don’t eat like this all the time, he says, And puffs. You’ll have to excuse us, he says.

            Don’t think a thing about it, please, I say. I like to see a man eat and enjoy himself, I say.

            I don’t know, he says. I guess that’s what you’d call it. And puffs. He arranges the napkin. Then he picks up his spoon.

The main character uses present tense dialogue tags (she is telling this story to Rita); Carver does not use quote marks so the two characters’ speech is not made specific to them. As the story goes, the waitress sympathizes and, it seems, identifies with him somehow. When she serves him dessert there is this exchange:

            Thank you, he says.

            You are very welcome, I say—and a feeling comes over me.

            Believe it or not, he says, we have not always eaten like this.

            Me, I eat and I eat and can’t gain, I say. I’d like to gain, I say.

            No, he says. If we had our choice, no. But there is no choice.

           

The fat man shares his plight and a little of his despair. The waitress by now is defending him from the mockery of the kitchen staff. As the story goes on, the strange bond strengthens between them. Then the man pays and leaves, and that is the end of the talking. But not the end of the narrative.

The waitress goes home. We see she does not have a good home situation. Her live-in, whom she works with, is self-centered and demanding. She seems passive and withdrawn. But the dialogue with the fat man has done something to her. She begins to imagine. During sex with her live-in boyfriend she envisions him very small and her as much larger than him.

She ends the story. Rita is disappointed:

            She [Rita] sits there waiting, her dainty fingers poking her hair.

            Waiting for what? I’d like to know.

            It is August.

            My life is going to change. I feel it.

This is how the story ends. But what does it mean? Some of my students think it may mean she is pregnant or thinks she is because earlier she imagines having a child who would turn out like the fat man in the story. But this doesn’t fit exactly. I’m not absolutely certain, but I get the idea that whatever happened between her and her unnamed guest has opened up new channels in her mind and new insights into the nature of people. Her life cannot remain the same and she will be liberated as time goes on.

This story could not have succeeded in this manner without the complex narrative. You will have to read the entire thing (it’s not long) to see how the narrative works, but from the bits and pieces above you get an idea. The narrative creates the story. It takes a small incident and turns into what a writing teacher of mine once said is the best story ever written.

More on narrative to come.

Check out my narrative experiments. Strange Brew. A book about love, music, magic, and the pre-civil rights South.  

 Check out my Writer's Website for a list of books for your reading pleasure and for great Christmas and holiday gifts.

I would love to hear your comments, either on the blog itself or through Twitter or Facebook.