Raymond Carver: Collected Stories (LOA #195): Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? / What We Talk About When We Talk About Love / Cathedral / Stories from Where I'm Calling From / Beginners / Other StoriesIn collections such as Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver wrote with unflinching exactness about men and women enduring lives on the knife-edge of poverty and other deprivations. Beneath his pared-down surfaces run disturbing, violent undercurrents. Suggestive rather than explicit, and seeming all the more powerful for what is left unsaid, Carver's stories were held up as exemplars of a new school in American fiction known as minimalism or "dirty realism," a movement whose wide influence continues to this day. Carver's stories were brilliant in their detachment and use of the oblique, ambiguous gesture, yet there were signs of a different sort of sensibility at work. In books such as Cathedral and the later tales included in the collected stories volume Where I'm Calling From, Carver revealed himself to be a more expansive writer than in the earlier published books, displaying Chekhovian sympathies toward his characters and relying less on elliptical effects. In gathering all of Carver's stories, including early sketches and posthumously discovered works, The Library of America's Collected Stories provides a comprehensive overview of Carver's career as we have come to know it: the promise of Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and the breakthrough of What We Talk About, on through the departures taken in Cathedral and the pathos of the late stories. But it also prompts a fresh consideration of Carver by presenting Beginners, an edition of the manuscript of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love that Carver submitted to Gordon Lish, his editor and a crucial influence on his development. Lish's editing was so extensive that at one point Carver wrote him an anguished letter asking him not to publish the book; now, for the first time, readers can read both the manuscript and published versions of the collection that established Carver as a major American writer. Offering a fascinating window into the complex, fraught relation between writer and editor, Beginners expands our sense of Carver and is essential reading for anyone who cares about his achievement. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries. |
From inside the book
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Page 29
... kitchen and the glass doors that gave off the kitchen onto the balcony . The doors stood slightly ajar , and a little chill went through him as he recalled the large man in the sweatshirt . " Mama went out for a minute , " the child ...
... kitchen and the glass doors that gave off the kitchen onto the balcony . The doors stood slightly ajar , and a little chill went through him as he recalled the large man in the sweatshirt . " Mama went out for a minute , " the child ...
Page 66
... kitchen out here , ” Jack said . " When we lived in the city , " Mary said , " people said you could see who'd turned on the night before by looking at their kitchen in the morning . We had a tiny kitchen when we lived in the city ...
... kitchen out here , ” Jack said . " When we lived in the city , " Mary said , " people said you could see who'd turned on the night before by looking at their kitchen in the morning . We had a tiny kitchen when we lived in the city ...
Page 580
... kitchen for beer . But all the while Alfredo went on very seriously looking after his menudo . He could have been home , in Morelia , making menudo for his family on New Year's day . People hung around in the kitchen for a while ...
... kitchen for beer . But all the while Alfredo went on very seriously looking after his menudo . He could have been home , in Morelia , making menudo for his family on New Year's day . People hung around in the kitchen for a while ...
Other editions - View all
Raymond Carver: Collected Stories (LOA #195): Will You Please Be Quiet ... Raymond Carver No preview available - 2009 |
Raymond Carver: Collected Stories (LOA #195): Will You Please Be Quiet ... Raymond Carver No preview available - 2009 |
Common terms and phrases
Alaska anyway asked baby bathroom began Bill Daly bingo called Carl Carlyle Carver chair Chekhov cigarette closed coffee cream soda door drink Dummy everything eyes face father feel felt fingers fish Frank Martin front girl glass gone Gordon Lish guess hair hand happened he'd hear heard hippie Holits honey Howard James Packer Jerry kids kitchen knew laughed leaned legs light listened living room looked menudo minute morning mother moved Myers Naches River night nodded okay Olla picked porch Port Angeles pulled Raymond Carver remember shook his head shoulder side sleep sofa sorry stared started station wagon stood stopped story talk tell Terri Tess Gallagher There's things thought told took turned waited walked watched What's wife window woman Yakima