Product Description

This powerful collection of stories, set in the mid-west among the lonely men and women who drink, fish and play cards to ease the passing of time, was the first by Raymond Carver to be published in the UK. With its spare, colloquial narration and razor-sharp sense of how people really communicate, the collection was to become one of the most influential literary works of the 1980's.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #52470 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Review
'One of America's most original, truest voices' Salman Rushdie

About the Author
Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, in 1938. His father was a saw-mill worker and his mother was a waitress and clerk. He married early and for years writing had to come second to earning a living for his young family. Despite, small-press publication, it was not until Will You Please Be Quiet Please? appeared in 1976 that his work began to reach a wider audience. This was the year in which he gave up alcohol, which had contributed to the collapse of his marriage. In 1977 he met the writer Tess Gallagher, with whom he shared the last eleven years of his life. During this prolific period he wrote three collections of stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Cathedral and Elephant. Fires, a collection of essays, poems and stories, appeared in 1985, followed by three further collections of poetry. In 1988 he completed the poetry collection A New Path to the Waterfall.

Customer Reviews

An American Classic
Short stories are one of my favourite forms, and Carver is masterful. His sparse prose reminds me of Hemingway, and his characters - all struggling with their own small-town psychoses - hit you directly from the page. I'm not the biggest fan of American literature, to be honest, but embarked on my first experience of Carver after recommendations from a friend (who is a huge fan). Carver's stories wheedle their way into your consciousness. His portraits of everyday yet remarkable people are sharp and linger long after the few pages devoted to each tale. There's still something cerebral rather than emotional about the stories, but this alienation is part of the package. If you want to see beautiful craftsmanship and feel in the mood to take the wry, sometimes deeply sad, stories of failed promise or everday accident, then Carver is a rewarding experience.

Haiku prose
Again, I might well be arriving late to the party, and maybe the food might all be gone, but I still feel it worth attending and seeing if I can't find something.
I found Carver via Murakami's 'Birthday Stories', where, having been impressed by 'The Bath', I decided to dig further and seek other works. Now, having read 'What we talk about...' I can only say three things;
i) Brilliant! Carver is a literary genius who occupies rare ground,
ii) Original. He re-wrote the short-story, he invented, re-invented the short-story,
iii) More! I want more! I want to read every word he wrote, I am thirsty for his world vision.
Carver's style, his vision, his world-view optimises what makes American literature great, and what is great American literature. After reading this I was reminded just how good modern American literature really is - there is not a country on this planet who has a definite modern style as beautiful, clean and expressive as America. People often say that Jazz is the only true American Art, but I disagree! To that I would also add the short-story! America has a rich and unchallenged history in the short story and it must surely be at least partly attributable to the likes of Raymond Carver.

Many readers have commented that 'nothing happens'... NOTHING HAPPENS? Things happen, lots happens, it's just, like life, things happen quickly - who could forget the three page masterpiece 'Popular Mechanics'? Where Carver's real genius lies is that he really is a master storyteller, that is to say he paints a sparse picture and challenges the reader to fill in the blanks, to use THEIR imagination to join the dots. He is not a spoon-feeder, rather he is like a Haiku poet, he strips everything down to the bare minimum and what is not said, but what is inferred is the point, that is what is most important. And that is his real strength and the expression of his pure genius. Anyone can babble on and on and on for pages, or tell as story like a drunk in a bar, very few can whittle an entire tree down to one single clothes-peg, Carver can, and did.

Over-rated
Well, I am a big fan of the short story genre, and was looking forward to reading this collection as I have heard so many positive things about it. I have to say that I was very disappointed. The stories themselves are reasonably well written, but what I found difficult to stomach was that there seemed to be nothing that lay beneath them, they seemed purposeless. To this extent they reminded me of John Cheever's work which I have also struggled with in the past. If you are interested in something deeper, I would signpost you on to Alice Munro, Alistair Macleod or even William Maxwell. Although Carver's stories were an easy read, I finished the text wondering what the point was and I felt that they said nothing about life. I finished the book a couple of days ago, and already in my mind I cannot think of any stories that stood out. Disappointing.