Did you ever have any time off from not having to earn a living?
I had a year once. It was a very important year for me, too. I wrote most of the stories in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? in that year. It was back in 1970 or 1971. I was working for this textbook publishing firm in Palo Alto. It was my first white-collar job, right after the period when I’d been a janitor at the hospital in Sacramento. I’d been working away there quietly as an editor when the company, it was called SRA, decided to do a major reorganization. I planned to quit, I was writing my letter of resignation, but then suddenly—I was fired. It was just wonderful the way it turned out. We invited all of our friends that weekend and had a firing party! For a year I didn’t have to work. I drew unemployment and had my severance pay to live on. And that’s the period when my wife finished her college degree. That was a turning point, that time. It was a good period.
— Raymond Carver, propos recueillis par Mona Simpson et Lewis Buzbee