In the following essay excerpt, Campbell analyzes how "Errand" both departs from and retains elements of Carver's other fiction.

"Errand" bears witness to what can be achieved when one follows Paul Valéry's example of "The Method of Leonardo." He asserts in his essay on da Vinci that "very little . . . I shall have to say of [Leonardo da Vinci] should be applied to the man who made this name illustrious":

An author who composes a biography can try to live his subject or else to construct him, and there is a decided opposition between these two courses. To live him is to transform oneself into what is necessarily incomplete, since life in this sense is composed of anecdotes, details, moments. Construction, on the other hand, implies the a priori conditions of an existence that could be completely different.

This sort of logic is what leads by...