The short stories from Carver that I like the most are Fat and They're Not Your Husband. The similarities between them are interesting and I've really no idea why I like them so much. Fat has the waitress telling the story of a very obese customer to her friend Rita and then the revelation she has in her mind when thinking about that very fat man after being with her partner Rudy. In They're Not Your Husband Doreen's husband visits her at work (a diner/ cafe) and he overhears some men comment on the size of her ass and becomes embarrassed by his wife's size (since she is an object/product) and forces her to lose weight. It's so interesting to me that when he achieves his goal no one else cares and that's upsetting to him. but his rational to his wife about his actions is "They're not Your Husband I'm your husband". It's a really nice juxtoposition/ duality that gives you that dissatisfaction and unsatisfied feeling I've come to know and love from Carver stories. Meanwhile the wife seems unhappy with him but still listens to everything he says. Everything about the story is very bleak and grim without being dystopian and downright dark like Vonnegut's works. I really like the mundane-ness of his style because it makes these situations feel more possible and real because they are treated as dull. For Fat everything felt gross and slimy and disgusting simply because the narrator was displeased with her life and her experiences. She needed and wanted a change, it's the last line of the story actually. Everyone's dissatisfaction comes from their lives and quality of their relationships and perception of themselves compared to others. People may be educated and have fairly decent jobs but they're still a part of Carver's working class desperation. This is because of their feelings of being unhappy that come from within or from relationships. Doreen and her husband are unhappy. She's been starved by him. He treats her as property and barely acts like a husband truly should, until he made it impossible for her to do the things at home she typically would because she has to spend a lot of time in bed resting or asleep. The narrator in Fat is incredibly unhappy with her life, wanting it to change because of an encounter with a severely overweight character. Her relationship with her coworker Rudy is purely physical and not one she seems invested in or happy in. Weight and relationship dissatisfaction are major motifs in these stories and I'm very attracted to the way Carver wrote them. Mundane, Bleak, almost drab. I wanted to explore these elements when writing a short story. I haven't written a story or anything creative in a very long time so I feel like I need to give myself goals and a guideline in order to get started or even just "create" anything.