The Whole New Yorker Raymond Carver Thing

joyce carol oates + shelley duvall + lillian gish = tess gallagher

I think what's fascinating is that Lish basically created Carver's signature style. Gallagher's repackaging and re-repackaging and re-re-repackaging of Carver's work has made her seem at least as opportunistic as Lish. I'm assuming Carver was as opportunistic as the company he kept. "Beginners" is OK, though it seemed much more like an Ann Beattie story in its original form, rather than something groundbreaking.

i rented 'jindabyne' yesterday, but haven't watched it yet. has anyone seen it? i loved 'so much water so close to home' but i'm nervous about how much the movie is going to match up.

steve mcqueen + steve martin = raymond carver

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*in this particular photograph.

i knew lish was a heavy handed editor but I can't wrap my head around this :/

see: maxwell perkins. he took 100,000 words out of look homeward, angel. and people considered This Side Of Paradise "his" book.

Time for an auteur theory of fiction editing.

The piece in Salon where they point out that Lish wasn't ever a great writer is a bit otm-ey.

I have been on a bit of a mission to get into Carver. Can anyone recommend a good collection to start with. Cathedral? I'm more a fan of the Lish butchered (apparently!) stuff. The Bath is a beautiful story. That part that goes something like "she listened to the boy. She held his hands in her lap" just cuts me in a way I don't understand.

If you're a fan of those stories, best to read his first two collections. Cathedral is less in that style.

Look through any issue of Lish's The Quarterly and it's clear that he creates a consistent voice in the work that he edits. (Look at the one Tim O'Brien story in The Things They Carried that was published in The Quarterly and compare it with the others.)

That long Carver letter to Gish is quite saddening. It seems like Carver felt there was something a bit sordid about Gish's extensive involvement in the final form of those stories - or at least something that conflicted with this internal image of what the author's role should be.

Can anyone recommend a good collection to start with.

I'd say go ahead and dive right into Where I'm Calling From.

Yeah, Is that good?

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

These are now in my Amazon basket. Any reason why they shouldn't be?

That comes across as very aggressive sounding doesn't it?

i like them all. i mean, they all have good stories in them worth reading.

i much prefer 'a small good thing' to 'the bath'. i really don't like the style of 'the bath' - for me, it felt very cold. 'cathedral' is one of my favourite stories. i think each collection has its gems, and you should buy them all! :)

and then you should buy 'jesus' son' by denis johnson.

I don't think it's cold. I think it's numb, like the characters all walking around in shock.

yeah, but to me it didn't feel like he pulled it off.

I really like "Intimacy", one of his final stories.

and then you should buy 'jesus' son' by denis johnson.

-- Rubyredd, Saturday, 29 December 2007 11:04 (2 days ago) Link

I was just given this for my birthday, and Carver is one of my favorite short story writers; should I be excited? It may be a while 'til I get to it, but, you know, it will BE there. Also, here is a long and detailed article on the same subject: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F03E3D71F38F93AA3575BC0A96E958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

It's... intense. I'm also wondering about things, now, like how different the versions of stories in Cathedral are from the versions in "Where I'm Calling From." Not to mention "Fires" which notes specifically that they're early drafts of stories published later. The duplication in Carver anthologies has sort of bummed me out, but if the versions are that different it would probably be worthwhile to do some A/B comparison, no?

(that NYT link was originally posted by Mr. Que on I Love Books a few years ago, I think.)

'jesus' son' is one of my all time favourite books. i think if you like carver you'll love this. carver's revisions are really interesting, and i admire the fact that he wasn't afraid to rework and reprint stories he wasn't happy with.

you should definitely be excited! plz come back and post here after you've read it, and tell me what you think. my favourite story from that collection is 'the emergency room'. so laugh-out-loud funny.

also: if you like carver, and then you read johnson and like it, DEFINITELY track down a copy of maggie dubris' 'weep not my wanton'.

It may be a while 'til I get to it.

But it's so short! You could read Jesus' Son in an afternoon.

okay guys, you got me. i'll read it once done with Blood Meridian and report back.

shit yeah, it's definitely a super fast read.

I took a writing class with Denis Johnson last semester. He's great. He signed my copy of Jesus Son.

I gave my mom Cathedral for christmas, and I don't think she likes it. :\

hoos i am so freakin' jealous

The birthday boy told his mother what had happened. They sat together on the sofa. She held his hands in her lap. This is what she was doing when the boy pulled his hands away and lay down on his back.

In THE PENGUIN BOOK OF THE MODERN AMERICAN SHORT STORY (2021), I read Raymond Carver's story 'Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes' (1973).

Though I've read Carver closely before, I don't think I'd ever read this story. It describes one Mr Hamilton who is called to a neighbouring house where his son Roger is accused of stealing or destroying a bicycle. Other boys are involved. It's not certain who did what to the bicycle. The drama here is mainly something about family, connection and obligation - so, should Hamilton stand up for his son in this stranger's house, because he's his father? He does feel that he has to when another boy's father, one Mr Berman, turns up and is harsh towards Roger. Now the dynamic, for Hamilton, goes from being an honest broker, a witness to a process, to being involved, unable to avoid taking sides. In fact, having told Berman that he's out of line, he ends up fighting him and banging his head on the lawn. Berman survives. Hamilton and Roger walk away home.

In a final scene, Hamilton puts the boy in his bed. The boy expresses a surge of admiration for his father's strength, his ability to fight. He expresses a wish that he could now know his father as a child; that they could be contemporaries. Here, I think, is a strangeness that Carver is able to access, an unexpected thought or feeling.

I quite admired this story. More than the other stories in the book so far (not many), it at once conveys a mundane, everyday world of small interactions, and something mysterious; some way in which people don't fully understand themselves. The action, fighting, slow release of tension after it, also creates a strong narrative dynamic. Writing about it, I can almost still feel the build-up of tension in the father as he walks away from the embarrassing, unintended fight.

I saw him read in late winter or early spring of 1986, at either Reed or Portland State. He was in full ascent at this time and the room was full. Very fucked up time in my life from which I'm lucky to have emerged at all, which goes a way to explain why I don't remember which school it was at -- I had heard about it, probably from my poetry teacher at PCC, and somehow remembered to go. The hall was packed; I remember having the impression that although his demeanor was mild, he was really enjoying all the acclaim, although this could very easily have been projection on my part. He read a story which I think was "Are You a Doctor?"- the opening was a long bit involving a wrong number in the middle of the night. There was a line in it that brought the house down -- "Why'd you answer?" I think it was.

I think it's one of the new stories included in Where I'm Calling From iirc.