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...Carol Sklenicka's judicious, thorough and sometimes harrowing biography, Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life (Scribner; 578 pages), we learn just how well Carver knew the worlds he wrote about. He grew up mostly in blue collar Yakima, Wash., where his father worked in a sawmill, changed jobs frequently and drank heavily, patterns he passed on to his son. Carver was barely 18 when he married 16-year-old Maryann Burk, but he had already dedicated himself to life as a writer...
...what that would turn out to mean was a life of struggle. For years, the couple moved constantly, taking whatever jobs they could find while trying to cobble together degrees at one school after another. In Sklenicka's book, Maryann emerges as an admirable if flawed anchor in her husband's life. Companion, breadwinner, fierce believer in Carver's genius, she was also a classic enabler who sank into alcoholism just as he did, though he sank deeper. Over the years, Carver and Maryann, with their two wary children in tow, would suffer just about every indignity that drunkenness confers...
Apart from his wife, the pivotal figure in Carver's adult life was Gordon Lish, an influential fiction editor at Esquire magazine who later became a power in book publishing. In 1970, when Carver was 32, Lish gave him his first crucial exposure in Esquire--but at a price. He revised Carver's manuscripts extensively, cutting out whole pages, changing titles, expelling lyrical passages and moments of uplift. The result was a set of stories more terse and elliptical than the originals, more "minimalist," which was how Carver's early style came to be known...
David Kistner's midcareer switch to green cleaning was prompted by another life-changing experience: having kids. In 2002, Kistner was working as a consultant in the aviation industry and his wife Effie was expecting their first child. (They ended up having twin boys.) The baby books he devoured contained a fact that caught his attention: pregnant women and infants should avoid dry cleaning because of the toxic chemicals used in the process. When he had trouble finding a greener cleaner in New York City, Kistner had an epiphany - he'd start his own. The result is Green Apple Cleaners...
...chooses shows for her bird carefully and has drafted legal agreements to make sure he'll be portrayed in a positive light. But despite appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman and Good Morning America, she says viral videos aren't a sure ticket to the good life. "People think my life is glamorous, but I still spend a lot of my time scrubbing birdcages," Schulz says. "There's just a lot of work...