24:4 Spring 1973

RAYMOND CARVER

They're Not Your Husband

Although many writers of the 1970s experimented with non-narrative and self-reflexive techniques, others turned to develop realist portraits of everyday life through a minimalist aesthetic. The chief practitioner of this aesthetic was Raymond Carver. His story, “They’re Not Your Husband,” appeared in the Spring 1973 issue of Chicago Review; it subsequently was included in his first major collection, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (1976). In an interview in the Autumn 1988 issue, Carver noted that this was the first story in which he was able to create an emotional detachment from his characters through narrative framing: “About that time the idea of people looking on, or people looking through something at someone else—a real and a metaphorical frame for the story—that notion began to appeal to me. And I used a frame somewhat similar to that in several stories, written more or less during the same period.”

[DN, 1996]

Copyright (c) 1973 by Tess Gallagher. Reprinted by permission of Tess Gallagher.

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