Customer Reviews

Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories

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People who consider Raymond Carver to be a strictly minimalist writer should really read this book from cover to cover. What they will discover is a career on the cusp of change, just before the author's life was tragically cut short. The stories are presented in chronological order. The opening dozen stories or so are classics of minimalist style which reaches its peak with the devestating 3-page story "Little Things" in which a child is literally torn apart by its parents divorce.

But Carver's tone and style changes in the stories that follow. "What We Talk About When We Talk about Love" and the gut-wrenching "So Much Water So Close To Home" take on a new level of story-telling where Carver gives us a more intimate look at his characters. The last two of the previously published stories are nothing like the earlier stories. In "Cathedral", a typical Carver married man--distant, cynical, and slightly smug--makes surprising contact with another human being, presumably for the first time, in the most unlikely of situations. It is almost a salvation. "A Good Small Thing" (which was a revision of an earlier story called "Scotty") is nothing less than a masterpiece. In Carver's earlier career, this story would have ended bitterly and, perhaps, indifferently. Instead, this story ends up with an astonishing flavor of hope, forgiveness, and even closure. The seven "New Stories" at the collection's end just drive home the fact that Carver was really moving forward or at least in a new direction. I defy anyone to read "Intimacy" or "Elephant" and say, "Typical minimalism." I would place a heavy bet that the reader would reply the same way I did, "Damn! Damn! Can you imagine what he'd be writing if he were still with us?"

Damn.

Rocco Dormarunno, Author of The Five Points

Raymond Carver is unique among contemporary American men of letters in that he is known almost exclusively for his short stories. Though he published other books, most notably collections of his poetry, his real genius was in the abbriviated summation of ordinary human experience in the short prose form.

This volume is a great introduction to Carver's stories because it represents a selection of his best work from every phase of his career. It is clear from the first story that his special gift is in somehow making a slice of life universal. His stories have hardly any plot and character is revealed rather than described. The essense of his character's lives are distilled into a few scenes wherein the reader can grasp a universe of unspoken meanings. The simplest things in Carver's hands take on a depth of meaning and a resonance that tends to haunt one long after the story is read. There is no overt artifice employed; the stories are deceptively simple. Yet all of these stories, like good poems, pack lots of meaning into a compressed form. His stories are not so much 'about' love, grief, deception, failure, longing and hatred as they are captured moments that embody these elements of the human condition and allow us to really feel what the characters feel. The very lack of exposition and detailed context is part of what makes these moments so powerful. Like a Rorschach ink blot, the short scenes depicted can call forth from each reader a variety of different interpretations and meanings. That is perhaps what is really great about these stories. Every reader can agree on the overt content, but no two are likely to agree about what they really mean, despite almost everyone having a strong emotional response to them. This is unique and superior writing that no lover of literature should miss.

Raymond Carver has been compared, rightly, to Chekhov because of his ability to absorb the reader in a "small" story and say something profound about the human condition. Absent in Carver's stories are stereotypical characters. For example, in "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," we read a story about a heart surgeon, Mel McGuiness, who is obsessed with preaching the virutes of absolute love to his wife and two friends, another couple. As we read the story, we see evidence that Mel is the embodiment of the absence of love. He is imperious, bullying, dogmatic, control-obsessed, fearful of life. Yet Carver doesn't allow us to dismiss Mel so easily. As Mel pontificates on love and gets more and more drunk, we are afforded glimpses of Mel's profound wisdom, which shows that there are two Mels, a tyrant and a vulnerable searcher of truth, that are warring against each other. Mel, the searcher of truth, knows there is a more profound, permanent love than merely carnal or erotic passion. At one point in the story, he confesses, in a moment of drunkenness, that he is completely ignorant of life. We sympathize with Mel's passion for "ultimate love," yet we are at the same time appalled at Mel's bullying and vanity.

Mel's character is indicative of the kind of complexities and contradictions that Carver dramatizes in his very readable stories.

"Where I'm Calling From" is basically Raymond Carver's "Greatest Hits" book, with a touch of never-released material also. All his famous stories are in here, and the book will satisfy hardcore Carver fans, general short story enthusiasts, and anyone looking for accessable fiction. Carver writes in a very original style, using a candor and frankness that "tells it like it is." His stories are primarily case studies of blue collar Americans, whether they be dealing with love, loss, or the boredom of manual labor jobs. Carver himself was a rough-and-tough individual, preferring life in the Northwestern wilderness to the highbrow publishing epicenters of New York or Chicago.

Raymond Carver basically brought life back to the short story genre in the 1980s. It had slowly fallen out of popularity as Ernest Hemingway and John Cheever's careers faded. This book shows why the American public as well as scholars fell in love with Carver's literary voice. He had a true gift and understanding of the craft, and those who knew him said he was the best "people watcher" they had ever met. Raymond Carver remains one of the standards, idolized by thousands of aspiring writers and immitated (unfortunately) more often than not.

"It's possible," wrote Raymond Carver, "to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language . . . with immense, even startling power." All of Carver's stories are about everyday characters and events. They often, like the stories of Hemingway, end with little or no resolution. But underneath every simple story lies a strange, complex anxiety.

In his early days, Carver was a hell-bound alcoholic, and his early writing reflects his way of life. "What's In Alaska?" details the unraveling of a couple's relationship. Like Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants," the story progresses through revealing and anguishing dialogue.

Carver eventually managed to pull himself together and his writing became, in turn, beautiful, poetic and somewhat hopeful. His story "Cathedral" is a masterpiece; its characters, as with those in most of his stories, are trying to overcome their apathy and inarticulateness. "Cathedral" possesses a small shimmer of joy. Perhaps his best work, the story involves a husband's difficulty in accepting a blind friend of his wife's. "I wasn't enthusiastic about the visit," he states in the beginning of the story. The blind man comes to the house and spends the evening with the couple. The husband is uncomfortable with the blind man, his way of looking at things, his smell. To break the ice he offers the man some pot, and the two men smoke together. The story builds as the two talk in front of the television together and it ends with a perfect, shimmering moment.

Carver managed to drop his drinking habit, but his love of smoking cut his career and his life short. His life ended just as the lives of his characters were beginning to brighten up. Carver has left us with a collection of characters that seem to be a bit out of touch, like Captain Ahab on Demerol, but which one of us is really any different? One leaves a Carver story feeling like the narrator of his story "Feathers": "I knew it was special. That evening I felt good about almost everything in my life."

It doesn't really matter if Raymond Carver is a minimalist or not. Whatever category you try to "fit" him in...he'll always escape categorization. I believe R. Carver is one of the most talented american writers of the century. His short stories are amazing in that they always let you step into the world of his characters. Whoever said that his stories are "slices of life" was correct. And most importantly, slices of everyday life, of the life of real people, people that you'll identify with, people that'll make you cry, laugh or that'll just remind you of somebody you know. I don't think his stories are depressing as some people have said- it's true that the ending of each one always leaves you a little sad...but that's just life, isn't it? What I find beautiful is the way Raymond Carver ends each story. In a way there's no conclusion. After a scene, a "slice of life" is described, the story just...ends. Abruptly. Which makes you think, makes you feel things, makes you imagine where the people you got to know & like in the story would get to be the next day... The whole book is very good literature, recommended wholeheartedly...but the stories I'd select as my personal favourites, the ones that I thought were heartbreaking & very human, were: "The student's wife", "Cathedral", "Fat", "Why don't you dance?", "Distance", "whoever was using this bed" and "blackbird pie"....

I first became interested in Carver as an undergrad. A professor/professional writer said that he got his start in writing when he happened on a short story by Carver, which immediately sparked an insatiable quest to read everything ever written by him, subsequently inspiring in him the desire to write. Once I began reading Carver's work, I understood why.

Carver has an enormous talent that, alone, makes him worth reading: he can capture the absolute reality of people, how they talk, how they think, and the brief moments of illumination that come to us all. Among his best, in my view, are "Distance," "Cathedral," and "A Small, Good Thing." I like to dabble in writing short stories myself, and some passages of his are so breathtakingly perfect in their simplicity and profundity that I memorize them. This book is a great read for anyone interested in the art of short story writing, in a realistic glimpse into different lives, or just in reading some good prose.

Raymond Carver wrote stories with extremely detailed and fascinating plots, characters, and dialogue. Yes, he was a minimalist. That does not mean that he wrote stories without a plot. Instead, Carver's plots are simple and obvious, they serve as vessels for the message Carver is packing, one that he always delivers with one hell of a wallop by the end of each of his stories. Reading each story once will not yield complete understanding for the reader. Great fiction is usually like this. Instead, rereadings will bring the true meanings, they'll show what this master of prose was trying to say. Raymond Carver never wrote a novel because he didn't have to, because he could always express what he was trying to say in about 20 pages of beautiful, elegant, simple prose, unlike Tom Wolfe, who takes 740 pages in A Man in Full to say absolutely nothing. Carver's wife and editor did not interfere with his writing, that's a common myth that was spread and kept alive by all those jealous of Carver's accomplishments. I felt the need to respond to the previous review so that possible buyers of Where I'm Calling From would not be dissuaded and give this book a shot. You will find in its pages a genius, a man who is sorely missed and for very good reason. Raymond Carver was a true master of the short story, and he shows it here.

I bought this book because several of my friends recommended Raymond Carver in general. So, being the economically efficient college student that I am, I purchased the largest collection of Raymand Carver short stories I could (because they're all priced about the same). I started reading the stories, and they blew me away. I was so shocked at the level of detail and creative but true characterization Carver was capable of.

These stories provide a large variety of types of stories--perspective wise, as well as situational.

I read the book as quickly as I could; when I finished I put the book down and wished that Carver hadn't died so early. The stories are incredible, and I would definitely recommend this collection of stories to someone who is just discovering Carver.

This collection of stories I still read 15 years after reading it in the fall semester of college. The characters are salesmen, waitresses, heart surgeons, students, mill workers, and the unemployed. The settings are usually sparse, allowing the characters and their struggles to be front and center.

Carver writes complex stories in simple sentences. One might think he is not working hard, except for the pause after reading the stories, a result of the epiphany or weight of sorrow at the conclusion. Four of the greatest stories written in the last century are in this collection: What we talk about when we talk about love, So much water so close to home, Cathedral, and a Small Good Thing.

Compare him with Chekov, there was no other writer who could do what Carver did. He was able to dig deeply into the lives of his characters in a few pages with few words.

Raymond, thank you. We miss you dearly.

P.S. If you watched the movie Short Cuts by Robert Altman, it was loosely based, I mean loosely based, on Carver stories.