Stories Of Raymond Carver: A Critical Study [Paperback]

Kirk Nesset (Author), Raymond Carver (Contributor)

Product Details

• Paperback: 131 pages
• Publisher: Ohio University Press; 1 edition (January 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821411004
• ISBN-13: 978-0821411001
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #915,495 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kirk Nesset is author of MR. AGREEABLE and PARADISE ROAD (fiction), ALPHABET OF THE WORLD (translations), THE STORIES OF RAYMOND CARVER (nonfiction), and SAINT X (poems, Lewis Clark Press, forthcoming. He was awarded the Drue Heinz literature prize in 2007 and has received a Pushcart Prize and grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His stories, poems, translations and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, American Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, Agni, The Sun, Fiction and Prairie Schooner, among others. His short short stories have been widely anthologized. most recently in Norton's anthologies Flash Fiction Forward, New Sudden Fiction and Sudden Fiction Latino. He teaches creative writing and literature at Allegheny College.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Carver Lives in This Book, June 13, 2001

By 

George Reston (London, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Stories of Raymond Carver: A Critical Study (Hardcover)

I've perused all of the critical work and this book outshines them all -- by at least 300 per cent. It's engaging, penetrating, well-developed and lucid, and written humanely no less, with much flair and elan. What a refreshing read, considering the arid critical deserts one often wanders. Nesset explores all of Carver's major volumes of stories, discussing selected stories in each while touching on others, and reflecting on Carver's poems here and there to good effect, using them as signposts and touchstones. If you've ever felt baffled by those bare, darkest stories, feel baffled no more. Carver's craft, his magic, is revealed in this book -- revealed from first page to last in that most illuminating, helpful, and respectful of ways.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Raymond Carver's Critical Condition, March 24, 2001

By 

Kevin Avery (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stories Of Raymond Carver: A Critical Study (Paperback)

Nesset, whose near-obsessive interest with Carver provides many insights, manages to do what few serious critical inquiries do: entertain while he enlights. And, as anybody who has read some of Nesset's own fiction can attest, what he has learned from a master has not been lost on the student.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Critical Work!, July 8, 2002

By 

sheila raschfield (missoula, MT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stories Of Raymond Carver: A Critical Study (Paperback)

This is the study on Ray Carver I've been looking for. Excellent! Very smart, super smart, and still readable. A great aid for teaching Carver's fiction, or for writing about it, or for just understanding its intricacies, of which there are many, as Nesset demonstrates. Great book!