It reads like Stull’s writing. Maybe it was a collaboration. I had no idea about Carol’s bio. Nor did my agent. Publishing is complicated. Every major author has more than one bio out, and I am sure there will be more to follow and may be more “in the works” — I would not doubt Prof. Stull has been working on one has he write the first major short-form bio that is often the primary source for many Carver scholars.

Re the above…Man I type like I’m drunk. ;)

I have a memoir published by St. Martin’s Press in hardback in 2006, with the paperback out in 2007: What It Used to Be Like: A Portrait Of My Marriage To Raymond Carver, by Maryann Burk Carver, speaking of biographies of Ray (two coming that we know of, etc.). I knew Ray for thirty-three consecutive years and was married to him for twenty-five, after a two-year courtship. We have two children, four grandchildren, and soon to have four great-grandchildren.

Thank you for writing that book Maryanne.
It was a great experience.
I’m glad our paths crossed.

Maryann: I’ve been trying to get in touch with you without luck, but I loved your book about your life with Ray. I’d love to invite you to San Diego to see our production of three of Ray’s stories as plays.
Please check it out on www.laterthanever.org and if you can make it down, please let me know and come as our guest.

Dear Mr. Moramarco:
Thank you for your kind words about my book and your invitation to come to the theater in San Diego. I shall try to take you up on it.

It should be wonderful to see the stories on the stage, as it was to see Book-It’s production of Ray’s stories in Seattle. (I joked with my friend at the time, “Nothing like feeling thrice-removed,” but in actuality, I felt very moved).

I’ll be in touch in the next few days.
Best,
Maryann Carver

I loved loved loved your book about your life with Raymond Carver.
When I first read his stories I felt like it was a supernatural experience - the first words from a place where no one but the thinker of almost sub concious thoughts goes, and behold here was another person there- explaining, sharing,making things beautiful even though they are so so sad. I am so glad he had you - I admire you and think you are a wonderful writer.

Maryann, if you read this, I would love to hear from you. I have tried to find you in the past without success. After reading your book, I just had to take another chance.
Your book both broke my heart and at the same time sent me over the moon.
Remember out youth!
Love,
Marian

Oh, Marian,
Just this minute discovered you on HERE, on January 3, 2010!!!! One of life’s amazing surprises!!!!!
I almost found you a few years ago when I read an obituary of Jeanne’s, Jewell’s sister, and made an effort to call some people who might know how to reach Jewell, and then you. I’m in Bellingham, Washington. Where in the world are you?
We’ve got to figure out how to call each other and then see each other. (Yes, indeed, I remember our youth. You were SO good to me. You were a junior and I was a freshman, and I’d skipped a grade, so I was a year younger than other freshman, but I started high school, as a freshman, with a broken leg and was on crutches, as we waited for the bus out there on a corner on Tieton Drive, in the country near Yakima, in the apple orchards, with the smudge pots smoking, and we were smoking, too…(In the house, later in the day, haha). And, you liked Dean Martin’s singing, so I did, too, and he sang right at that time, “That’s Amore.”
If you read my book, you read one of my favorite passages…about when you, Jewell and boys came to California, Chico, to visit, and we almost ran over the Portuguese landlord who was terrorizing us, in our haste to get out that night, in our finery—you with the sparkly earrings and low-cut dress, and me in the pink dress with spaghetti straps, and our bottle and our husbands, and our youth, as you say. “We were hot to go.”
My e-mail is maryann-carver@yahoo.com. Send me your phone number, and I’ll call!
Love,
Maryann

Dear Maryann!

Two weeks ago I saw the name Carver on the front page of my newspaper here in Oslo. It was a review of a new biography about Raymond Carver.
The only person I know with that last name is a great sales manager at Parents Cultural Inst. in Sacramento back in 1966 whos husband was a writer named Ray. What a small world!
I remember you so well. The daily peptalks and breakfasts before dropping us off with our saleskits. This has brought back so many memories from my bookselling days 44years ago. I was only 19 years old, from Norway. My last name was Henriksen. You probably don’t remember me, but I sure remember you. I have ordered your biography and am looking forward to reading it.
I’ve been back in Oslo since 1971. For the past 23years I have had an antique shop here. Before that I worked for Pan Am. Last year I closed my shop and I am now in the process of writing a book on gardening (my passion)
I came upon this website and hope that this message will reach you. You are quite unforgetable.

Sincerely
Liv

Dear Liv,
Of course, I remember you! I can see you, tall and pretty in my mind’s eye. Thank you so much for writing! This is a most interesting place; old friends congregate, so I am very grateful to Pinky and the Pinkhaus! I hope my friend, Marian, from my public high school days will check back here, too. Anyway, dear Liv, write to my e-mail address, and I’ll write back. I have a feeling we’ll see each other again, perhaps in Norway, where I’ve never been (or to Sweden or Denmark, though I’ve been to Germany and France several times). I’d love to come to Scandanavia…so maybe still in this lifetime, we’ll connect again.
Love,
Maryann
(Mac’s Movers….remember that??? Cathy Shull, now Catherine Klatzker, and I reconnected this past October after more than forty years. She flew up from L.A., where she has been a pediatric nurse for twenty years. She went back to school and became a nurse, as I say; I went back to school and became a high-school English teacher. She remarried and had two daughters—she had Adam from her first marriage when she worked with us. Anyway, we had a most wonderful reunion. It was as though a day hadn’t passed; we laughed and laughed, talked and talked, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. You and I would, too….Again, thank you so much for writing. You were and are very, very dear).

maryann,

I have sent you an e-mail to the mail address that you gave to your friend above, but received a delivery failure??? Can you check it please.

Love Liv

WILLIAM ROBERTS
116A Gordon Road
London SE15 3RP
United Kingdom
(tel.: +44 207 564 5461)
(email: williameroberts2@aol.co.uk)

24 March, 2010

Dear Maryann,

I don’t know if you will remember me, but I was a student at Humboldt State College from 1961 to 1968 (with a year or two off to go to Europe, etc.), and I knew you and Ray early on during that period, however slightly. I was a Theater Arts undergraduate – having appeared in several productions with Amy, who I remember very well (so sorry to learn of her early demise) — and you may remember that when Ray’s play, Carnations, was produced up at Founders’ Hall, I directed the companion piece for the evening, the name of which I have completely forgotten. In any case, during the run-up to the production, I had stopped by your house in Arcata to discuss production questions with Ray, and I remember the visit well. You were just about to start your BA, I believe, and the kids were both very young.

Since the republishing of Ray’s early stories in Beginners, without the drastic editorial butchery of Mr. Lish, I have been re-reading all of Ray’s stories and enjoying them enormously – so much so that at my advanced age I have decided to try to write original pieces myself for the first time in my life, concentrating first upon short stories. I know I have a long way to go before they will amount to much, but I am enjoying myself, and who knows, perhaps one day I will actually write something worth sharing? If I do, it will be owing to Ray’s influence primarily.

I wanted to write to tell you how much I enjoyed What It Used To Be Like, and how moving I thought it was, and how evocative of that period of the sixties and seventies that was so important to all of our generation. Your description of your years together was like a direct line back to my own youth, and the struggles of trying to put together a career and a family at the same time. It helped me to understand more of the context out of which Ray’s stories evolved, and I thank you for writing it, though it must have been a painful process for you.

I have lived in the UK for over forty years, but I come back to the states every year to see family and friends, and last summer I stopped by in Arcata for a reunion of the old HSC theatre group (raising money for a scholarship in the name of the late and wonderful Richard Rothrock). While I was there, Dick Day’s name came up in conversation, and I was told that he was still about, though retired and a bit feeble. I telephoned him, and we met for a coffee somewhere near the plaza. Dick was much the same as I remember him, only a bit frailer. We had a great chat about the old days, and about Ray (and you, and Amy), and the latter years of his life and work. Dick also gave me copies of his (Dick’s) two last published books – When In Florence, and Something For The Journey – which I read with great pleasure. His stories, too, were an influence upon my decision to try to do some writing of my own. Anyway, Dick mentioned your book about your years with Ray, and as soon as I got home to London I ordered it via the internet and read it through with great enjoyment.

Why am I writing you? Only to thank you for your very moving book, and to say ‘hello’. If you remember, my girlfriend in 1962 was Lila Cooper, who was also in the theatre crowd. She remembers you well (I tracked her down last summer in a suburb of Portland and went to see her after forty years apart), and would want me to say hello on her behalf as well.

I hope your life is still filled with good things, Maryann. If you are ever in London in the coming years, it would be great to see you and to have a drink and a chat.

If you want to know about me, look me up on www.imdb.com under William Roberts III. I was in the film Cold Mountain, so you can also cross-reference my page from that site. There’s also a recent photograph of me – hope it doesn’t frighten you!

I should also mention that as well as being an actor, I am largely a voice artist these days, and have for the last score of years recorded books on tape for various audio publishers (and for BBC broadcasts). If you do a Google search for ‘William Roberts + audiobooks’ you will get an assortment of sites offering my recorded books, interviews, etc. I also record talking books for the blind, for the Royal National Institute for the Blind. Recently, I read the lion’s share of the stories in Beginners for the RNIB, and am now trying to get them to record Dick’s two books as well. I shall also suggest that they record your book, for I think that anyone interested in Ray should know about his early life, and you are the source for that. You wouldn’t get any money out of it (the RNIB is a registered charity), but it would give your book a larger audience. They would contact you, of course, if they are interested. I also, incidentally, recently recorded Dick Day’s story ‘Out and Back’ (from Something For The Journey) for the online download site www.spokenink.co.uk . I’m hoping to read a couple of Ray’s stories for them, as well. You might want to check out the site.

All best wishes to you, Maryann.

Sincerely,

Bill Roberts

MARIAN CONKLE HILL MC G…….,
FORGET THE YAHOO ADDRESS—GOTTEN MUCH TOO COMPLICATED AND PSEUDO ESOTERIC, WITH ADS TAKING UP THE ENTIRE RIGHT SIDE OF THE PAGE. WRITE ME AT maryanncarver@hotmail.com. HURRY UP! WE HAVE TO GET TOGETHER!
Love,
Maryann

Marian, Liv, Bill, Et Al,
You can reach me at maryanncarver2010@hotmail.com
Best,
Maryann

Maryann Carver! Here is your old public school chum from Yakima. If you see this, please email me and I will send a ph. number.
Marion

Maryann Carver! Here is your old public school chum from Yakima. If you see this, please email me and I will send a ph. number.
Marion

Marion!
You came back. My e-mail is maryanncarver2010@hotmail.com. Please e-mail me, and we’ll exchange telephone numbers and get together asap!
Love,
Maryann

Dear Maryann

You have probably been flooded with mail from all over, so I hope this won’t be a nuisance to you too, but I was so glad to find a way of possibly getting a note to you that I thought I’d risk it anyway. I am – regrettably – not one of those who are fortunate enough to have known you in the old days and is now making a reacquaintance. However, I would just like to let you know, as a complete outsider, how very, very much I enjoyed your book What It Used To Be Like. I came upon your book as a fan of Ray Carver’s writing, and I now know what an important part you played in that writing. Your devotion, your dedication, your energy, your resolve are simply incredible. Thank you for telling your wonderful story.
Errol Collen
Johannesburg, South Africa
ecollen@gmail.com