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Title: Where I'm Calling from: Selected Stories by Raymond Carver, Richard Ford ISBN: 0-87113-721-6 Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press Pub. Date: September, 1998 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.53 (47 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: May Not Be For Everyone
Comment: May not be for everyone if you want the standard elements of a short story such as a character who really wants something and has to overcome a series of escalating obstacles to obtain it or fail. That's not the formula he follows. His characters and settings are stark but very realistic, the dialog is clipped and somewhat strange. I think it's some of the best short stories I've ever read. I think if you like Hemingway, you'll like Carver. But Carver is not for everyone. May not be for everyone. No.
Rating: 4
Summary: Raymond Carver is da man!
Comment: I actually have never read this one, but I did read Cathedral, and What We Talk About... some years ago, when I was in college or just out. That's basically this compilation. They are all beautiful and touching stories- this guy is as gifted as any short story writer that would be taught in classrooms. Think of Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants". I remember giving Cathedral to a friend at U of Delaware who said he didn't like it. Why?- It's too depressing. But that's not quite true, it's real. I was and still am a "student" of contemporary
story writers, and these are very rewarding reads. There is a lot of truth in his writing. Instructional and, dare I say it, entertaining. Turn off the television and read this compilation.
Rating: 5
Summary: What he'd be writing now
Comment: 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
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Title: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love : Stories by Raymond Carver ISBN: 0679723056 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 18 June, 1989 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Cathedral by Raymond Carver ISBN: 0679723692 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 18 June, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? : Stories by Raymond Carver ISBN: 0679735690 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 09 June, 1992 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever ISBN: 0375724427 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 16 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Call If You Need Me : The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose by Raymond Carver ISBN: 0375726284 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 09 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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