Short Cuts [Hardcover]

Raymond Carver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 7, 1994

This book contains the nine stories and one poem on which Robert Altman has based his film Short Cuts.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, in 1938 and grew up in Yakima, Washington State. His father was a sawmill worker and his mother was a waitress and clerk. He married early and for years writing had to come second to earning a living for his young family, although he did manage to attend John Gardner's creative writing course at Chico State College. During this period he worked as a hospital porter, a textbook editor, a dictionary salesman, a petrol station attendant and a delivery man. These experiences and his own increasingly desperate domestic circumstances were frequently the subject of his poetry and fiction. Although he published a number of small-press books of poetry and one chapbook of fiction in the 1960s and early 1970s, it was not until the appearance of the story collection Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? In 1976 that his work began to change: he gave up alcohol, which has contributed to the collapse of his marriage, and in the same year met the poet Tess Gallagher with whom he shared the last eleven years of his life. He began to write again and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979 and the prestigious Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award in 1983. During this prolific period he wrote four collections of stories ( What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Cathedral, Fires and Elephant) and three collections of poetry Where Water Comes Together with Other Water and Ultramarine, which was published in Britain as In a Marine Light. Also published posthumously were his Uncollected Writings, No Heroics, Please. In the last year of his life he chose and revised for the press his Selected Stories, Where I'm Calling from, and was honoured by induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died in August 1988.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Harvill Press Ltd (March 7, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1860460402
• ISBN-13: 978-1860460401
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.5 x 8.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,910,578 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, in 1938. His father was a saw-mill worker and his mother was a waitress and clerk. He married early and for years writing had to come second to earning a living for his young family. Despite, small-press publication, it was not until Will You Please Be Quiet Please? appeared in 1976 that his work began to reach a wider audience. This was the year in which he gave up alcohol, which had contributed to the collapse of his marriage. In 1977 he met the writer Tess Gallagher, with whom he shared the last eleven years of his life. During this prolific period he wrote three collections of stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Cathedral and Elephant. Fires, a collection of essays, poems and stories, appeared in 1985, followed by three further collections of poetry. In 1988 he completed the poetry collection A New Path to the Waterfall.