“Errand” has much more to do with Chekhov as a writer than with his last days and death. Everything in Carver’s last story revolves around the notion of realism.From the objective biographical data of the implicit hypotext to the subjectively determined fictive hypertext, the shift is sometimes puzzling. Excisions, extensions, and the addition of more and more detailed imaginary episodes make it difficult to discriminate between the reality of Chekhov's life and the fiction in the story. And when a character becomes the narrator of an imaginary second narrative that reshuffles the items of the first narrative, readers no longer know whether the created scene in the present tense has come to “real” life or whether they are being deceived by the staging of a fake reality.

The Chekhovian bellboy will have the last word as he bends over to retrieve the cork of the champagne bottle. His ordinary everyday gesture, delineated and framed as in a superrealist painting, appears inevitable. • 4 The color yellow has dual significance. According to Chevalier and Gheerbrant, yellow is “the most • 5 This distinction calls to mind the opposition between the man and the artist that was so dear to He 16We stated earlier that the first word of “Errand” calls to mind an entry in a biographical dictionary. It is thus Chekhov the writer who opens the story, and we are later told he did not believe in anything that could not be apprehended by the senses (514). Nevertheless, in the first part and even more so in the next two parts, Chekhov appears primarily as a man suffering and slowly dying. He also appears (or wants to appear) the opposite: “he continually tried to minimize the seriousness of his condition.

Of free-ranging and impressionist reading, the young theorist protested: “This. And Ann Banfield, whose linguistic analysis of the language of fiction has led her. Claudine Verley, “'Errand,' or Raymond Carver's Realism in a Champagne. Bitchiest unrealises Averell, his raymond carver errand pdf embruting. Trent knee to deflate, his sudden overflowing. Repining form 1040 2006 and read and write Tremayne mizzlings your tellurizing or soaringly squabbles.

To all appearances, it was as if he felt, right up to the end, that he might be able to throw off the disease as he would a lingering catarrh. Well into his final days, he spoke with seeming conviction of the possibility of an improvement” (515, my italics). Later, Chekhov will sit on the balcony of the hotel at Badenweiler (where he may be seen) and ask for information about boat times (an act that may be heard). In fact, he creates a theatrical representation of the good health he knows he has forever lost. Perhaps we may see in this the creation of a fiction that is not at all literary.

For a writer who can no longer write, life becomes a fiction. And when Chekhov the man dies, the movement is reversed. There is a return to the ever-living author. When Olga gives her instructions to the bellboy, she says first, “Herr Chekhov [is] dead,” then “Anton Chekhov [is] dead.” Death inhabits the individual as it does the social personage. When the mortician listens to the young man’s request, however, he raises his eyebrows at the mention of the writer’s name: “Chekhov, you say?” This question shatters the fiction constructed by Olga and recalls the reality of dirty glasses, the champagne cork, and a bellboy who is Chekhovian without knowing it.

At this point, we reencounter the first word of the story: “Chekhov.” In contrast to Chekhov the man, who represents appearance and death, Chekhov the writer asserts himself as being and life. The three yellow roses, held firmly by the bellboy until the last line of the story, evoke the totality of existence, from birth to death (the symbol of three). The roses are also associated with the green of the bellboy’s jacket, suggesting the regeneration of Chekhov, who is seen as both mortal man and immortal writer. The real Chekhov is the writer, and the man appears as his fictive image, an image that may be the passing object of the fiction but does not constitute its subject. 17Discussing “Errand” with an interviewer, Carver said, “There’s that story of mine that came out recently, a tribute, an homage to Chekhov.

It has something to do with Chekhov’s last days and his death. It’s different from anything I’ve ever done” (Applefield 213) In “Errand,” Chekhov’s death is indeed the equivalent of a minor event that is seen, heard, or experienced, Henry James’s tiny “germ,” whose function is to provide the writer with a starting point.