Raymond Carver: Collected Stories (Library of America) (Hardcover)

~ (Author), William Stull (Editor), Maureen Carroll (Editor)

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Product Description

Raymond Carver's spare dramas of loneliness, despair, and troubled relationships breathed new life into the American short story of the 1970s and '80s. In collections such as Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, 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.

About the Author

William L. Stull, editor, is professor of English at the University of Hartford. Maureen P. Carroll, editor, is adjunct professor of humanities at the University of Hartford and a practicing attorney. They have devoted more than two decades to the work of Raymond Carver, publishing numerous essays and editing Conversations with Raymond Carver (1990), Remembering Ray: A Composite Biography (1993), All of Us: The Collected Poems (1996), and Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose (2000).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 960 pages
• Publisher: Library of America (August 20, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1598530461
• ISBN-13: 978-1598530469
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #10,861 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly necessary book., August 25, 2009

By	DanD - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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Raymond Carver managed to capture, in his short stories, the power in the mundane: the extraordinary circumstances hidden within the subtleties of reality. COLLECTED STORIES showcases his immense talent. It collects his three volumes of fiction: "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?", "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," and "Cathedral," as well as the miscellaneous stories not gathered in those three volumes. The collection even offers an "alternate" version of the "What We Talk About" collection: the stories BEFORE they were heavily edited.

The end result is a compelling, powerful look at one of fiction's greatest writers. This is bound to become a standard textbook in English courses (as has been the fate of other "Library of America" books; I am currently enrolled in a graduate course that is using their Emerson collection). Don't let the formality fool you, however; Carver is an accessible writer, enjoyed by both literary and casual readers alike. (One of my very good friends is a "non-reader;" he hardly ever cracks a book, and yet he will go on for hours about the eloquence of Raymond Carver.) COLLECTED STORIES is, essentially, a must-have volume of literature for anyone who has ever professed to love reading. While it is hardly a complete overview of Carver's career (it includes only three essays, and completely ignores his poetry, which is equally brilliant), it is an essential stepping-stone to understanding one of 20th century literature's greatest contributors.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Collected Carver, September 28, 2009

By	Carl H. Hanson - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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Collected Stories of Raymond Carver is the comprehensive book for all readers of Carver, not to mention any lover of short stories. This collection encompasses his entire career, from his early days to those stories published after his death, and all are excellent in depth and nature. Reading this book is a journey into the heart and soul of Raymond Carver, and this will be a collection for the ages.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Human, All Too Human, December 29, 2009

By	Mark McKee Jr. (Tennessee USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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I'm a fan of horror stories. I'm also a fan of literary short fiction though I must admit to rarely being able to figure out what I'm supposed to glean from most stories of this kind. I reckon it's like someone who enjoys crossword puzzles or word games, the joy of decoding the secret meaning. About two years ago, I came across Ray Carver, his name meaning nothing to me up to that point. The more I read about him, the more intrigued I became. Here was a guy that was considered literary, but spoke in the language of the working class. So, I picked up a used copy of Where I'm Calling which set me on what I believe will be a life long fascination w/ this man's work. After 2 years, I can't admit to understanding everything Ray's written, but I know that at the end of each story, I will feel something that no other writer can make me feel: a sense of fear in the oddity and horror that man can display; and in many of Carver's later stories, a feeling of warmth when man can overcome his true nature and stumble upon moments of true understanding.

The first Carver story I read was called "Dummy", which depending on the collection you read, is also called "The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off". It was like a literary murder mystery. Now I know there've been other murder mysteries displaying a vast technical skill, but there was something about Carver's presentation that struck a chord w/ me. There are few writers who's words bring clearer images to my mind. There's an old writer's proverb "show, don't tell" and to my mind, there's no one who adhered more to this creed. Even stories who's underlying meaning may be nestled away in uncomplicated prose, the literal action of the story could not be easier to picture.

Another favorite which I read early on is called "Neighbors". In it, a couple charged w/ feeding the neighbors' pet and watering their plants while they're away, slowly begin to usurp the neighbors' lives and apartment. What ensues is nothing short of brilliant. Carver's insight into the human mind is better than anyone I've ever read. No matter how odd his characters act, everything is totally believable, and when you consider that you yourself are probably in one of these stories somewhere, doing something you yourself probably don't even notice you do, well, therein lies the horror.

The more I studied Carver's writing the more I found the influence of one of his earliest proponents, Gordon Lish. Lish was the fiction editor at Esquire magazine from the late 60's to the mid 70's and was responsible for bringing Ray's work to the attention of a wider audience. Early in their relationship Ray deferred all the editing responsibility to Lish, basically, I feel, because Lish had given him his biggest break. As time went on and Carver became more sure of himself as a writer, he and Lish would often clash on how Carver's story should be presented. While Ray is known as THE Minimalist, his work, though short, was often much longer than the general public was allowed to see. From the Notes in this Library of Congress edition, we learn that Carver's second collection was cut by as much as 55% from its original manuscript form. Carver begged Lish to reconsider the massive editing of the stories in this collection, but Lish steamrolled ahead with the result that Carver became even more famous. But it was a fame Carver felt he'd gotten the wrong way. These were not HIS stories, at least not the way he envisioned them. That is why this LOC edition is so important. Appended to the end of this stalwart collection is Ray's original manuscript for What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

The difference, to me, is night and day. One of my favorite's from that collection is called "Viewfinder". Many critics have found it to be one of Ray's most surreal, angry stories, but when read in it's original form, I divine a totally different outlook, one that would become more apparent in his third collection Cathedral.

If you only buy one collection by Raymond Carver or even if you only have a passing interest in him, you will not be disappointed with this edition. It has nearly all of Carver's fiction plus what is arguably his most influential collection in the author's preferred, and intended, form.

I can't stress enough how amazing this author is. In just a few brief pages he can encompass what it is to be Human, all too human.