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"There was always a glass of gin-and-tonic in his hand." ("Where I'm Calling From" 212)
"Howard had a small glass of whisky beside his cup." ("A Small, Good Thing" 297)
In biographical discussions of Raymond Carver and in general discussions of Carver's fiction, critics often note both Carver's own alcoholism and the subject of alcoholism that recurs throughout his works.1 Hamilton E. Cochrane, in " `Taking the Cure': Alcoholism and Recovery in the Fiction of Raymond Carver," discusses "Where I'm Calling From," "One More Thing," "Careful," "Fever," and "A Small, Good Thing" to demonstrate ways that Carver depicts both the spiritual ills of alcoholism and the spiritual rebirth of the recovery process. Cochrane suggests that "the principles of community, service, and the telling of one's story" serve both to redeem humanity and to cure alcoholism (80). In "Alcoholism as Ideology in Raymond Carver's 'Careful' and `Where I'm Calling From,"' Peter J. Donahue contrasts Lloyd, the alcoholic protagonist in "Careful," with the alcoholics in "Where I'm Calling From." He argues that Lloyd's desire to be alone and refusal to communicate with others signify denial of his alcoholism; but the alcoholics' conversation in "Where I'm Calling From" is essential to their recoveries because it "disrupts the ideology of alcoholism by preventing the characters from becoming verbally isolated" (60).
Other critics briefly mention alcoholism in broader discussions of Carver. Elliott Malamet notes that although the narrator of "Where I'm Calling From" willingly listens to the stories of other alcoholics, his primary dilemma stems from his reluctance to share his own experiences, a reluctance he overcomes at the end of the story. Malamet also demonstrates ways that patterns of repetitive images in the story provide textual coherence and signify the narrator's self-identity. Similarly, Claudine Verley examines patterns of imagery and plot structure in "Where I'm Calling From" that parallel cycles of alcoholism, and she suggests that through discourse the narrator may have broken the alcoholic cycle. In his discussion of insularity and self-enlargement in Cathedral, Kirk Nesset suggests that, unlike characters in "The Compartment," "Preservation," and "Careful," the narrator of "Where I'm Calling From" experiences a "positive and necessary" confinement that prompts the "coming out of hardened insularity [that] involves intensive listening" ("Insularity" 117, 119). All of these critics...