Why does nobody talk about this guy? He was pretty good

rumor has it his editor had to severely clean up his stories and changed them dramatically, but I havent read the unedited version of his stories.

Yeah, that happened, but you can find the unedited stories in the Beginners. They are actually better.

Raymond Carver is excellent but I personally find his prose style very boring, for the most part. My favorite story of his is "Fat"

I wouldn't call it boring, it's just very easy to read.

Read Cathedral in college, for a class. Have read What we talk about, and Where I'm Calling From since then. May be the greatest short story man in American English. Top 3, for sure.

Well, his editor was good.

I wonder how many people are only aware of him because of Birdman

I recently read Cathedral.
It was bretty good :DDD

This is true, but Birdman was actually good.

I like the one with the couple that goes over to their friends house, gets stoned, eats snacks, and the one guy lusts after the other guys wife, only to go home... actually, I forgot how it ends.

It was refreshing to read something so ordinary though. You feel like beneath the surface their is something terrible and great.

Yes, this is what Carver is all about.

I personally find it boring, is all.

recommendations if you enjoyed Carver

'Cathedral' is a little masterpiece. It's even more cathartic to me that a hopeless drunk wrote it.

If user are new to him try that one first.

Is the semi-transcendant experience the narrator has with the blind man at the end of the story meant to be taken as genuinely transformative? Or is that undermined by the fact that they have been smoking weed?

Both.

It was rly stronk smoke brah.

Me too, Lish took way too much out to the point of most stories being absolutely cryptic, I've always liked his later fiction more, but a while ago I figured out why his early stuff was so sparse and detached: Lish took most of the thoughts away from the characters and stripped the dialogue to a bare minimum. I like that both versions exist though, knowing what is missing in the edited version of WWTA give the characters silence more weight, whereas before it just seemed like it was trying too hard to be avant garde. Lish is a fantastic editor and he brought many writers to the forefront of American fiction, but I think he just got way too carried away with cutting back Carvers stories to the point that he is now trying to take credit for the mans work. It's kind of sad seeing some old washed up editor trying to stay relevant by leeching off the legacy and work of Carver. They needee each other in yhe Beginning, then when Carver kept him in line with the editing of Cathedral, and kept complete control over all the stories, and it ended up being his most celebrated and successful collection, and then his fiction that was either barely touched by Lish, or not touched by him at all went on to win O.Henry awards, he couldn't take it.

Carver was off the booze when he wrote all the stories in Cathedral.

Really? I didn't know that. Makes it just as poignant though. In a different way.

Carver power rankings

Errand> Boxes> So much water > Where I'm calling from > Blackbird Pie > Elephant> A small good thing > Call if you need me> Menudo > Whoever was using this bed > What we talk abiut when we talk about love > If it please you> Feathers > Vitamins

No, they're not.

I'm surprised there wasn't more of an explosion of interest here after Birdman, one of the best movies to come out of Hollywood in a long long time, and full of themes I would have thought this board would love.

***forgot Cathedral

What about that has to do with carver

>Muh forced minimalism
>LEL SO ABSTRACT
>Wow I wonder what the complete lack of dialog means! Must be deep XD

Honestly Lish took too much away and tool advantage of Carver being broke and a recovering alcoholic, he should have only given the manuscript a light edit like any good editor, not cut and paste them into things he wanted.

It focuses on a character attempting to write and perform a theatrical adaptation of what we talk about when we talk about love.

I just bought the LoA and the collected poems. Read a few of the latter, quite surprised they left an impression like a (good) Clint Eastwood movie.

i love him

i think lish added more than he took away from the first 2 collections (not literally, of course), so that by the time carver wrote the stories in cathedral he was bursting at the seems. it made it so that when he was able to just, write, the smallest bit of exposition seemed radical - and lish's discipline meant he limited to this for the most part.

idk, that was a bit scattered - i agree with that we are really lucky to have both versions of the early work. "a small good thing" and "the bath", for example, are both masterpieces

i really like his focus on the transcendental qualities of small action and communications. his stories seem so dire and characters feel so remote from each other, but there are so often small gestures that momentarily bridge the gap/offer small moments of shared humanity. makes him a far more optimistic writer than, say, yates.

oh yeah, some (slightly) less well known stuff of his i love.

his amazing, and savage, poem about a night with bukowski. a perfect evisceration of a figure he revered
donttry.tumblr.com/post/218656126/you-dont-know-what-love-is-an-evening-with

his essay about his dad's alcoholism
public.wsu.edu/~hughesc/raymond_carver-fathers_lif.htm

i'd argue the results speak for themselves. What We Talk About is perhaps his most characteristic collection (even though I think Cathedral is better, and is generally Lish-free)

absolutely, i completely agree. also, cathedral couldn't have happened without that unshackling.

I think Carver was at his best when he wasn't impeded by Lish, I think Lish knew that too but wanted to forge his name to a brand and literary style, which he did by cutting out bits and pieces of Carvers stories. The thing is though, most of the time his edits are either just taking out a paragraph that was really nicely written and gives you an understanding of how a character in feeling, changing around certain words in certain senteces that are really inconsequential, or changing and name and title. The things he added to the stories were just rearranged takes on what Carver had previously written or just stating it more dryly. Even though the stories changed so much with his editing and advice, they are still very Carver-ish. Lish is also a pretty terrible writer himself, I've read all of his short fiction and it is just garbage. I think he was a great editor, be from what I've read about him, he's a deluded egomaniac.

Read his poetry and unedited manuscripts, Carver always wrote the way he did in Cathedral, Lish just cut it out to shape a certain aesthetic.

This is a good thread and I've just bought Cathedral as a result.

I've read beginners (and prefer the edited versions in many cases), as well as fires.

Watch Jindabyne, op. It's an australian adaptation of So Much Water So Close To Home

interesting, thx user

good thread gents

Hijacking this decent Carver/Lish thread to talk about one of my favorite books. I bring it up as it's Lish's second favorite book (the first one is not so great).

But this! This is one of the most inventive books with such gorgeous language and creativity.

>a couple lives on a barge
>they float around the seas tinkering with the barge
>grow plants, forests, jungles on the boat
>build glass dome around the jungle barge
>husband intentionally avoids wife who wants to get pregnant
>they never talk, only communicate with slips of paper

I love it.

Anyone else read it?

This was spammed once upon a time. And anyone with a good reads account has seen it in their recs.
It's excellent desu

He's been pushed in MFA programs for years before Birdman, which secured him popularity.

I got caught reading at work by a customer one night and she recommended Carver to me. I don't remember what I was reading that inspired her to suggest reading him, but I'm thankful for that woman. She recommended me an author that I really needed at that time in my life.

So Much Water So Close To Home is my fav story by him. Very interesting work with POV and ambiguity.

Nothing in fires was edited by Lish

I really dislike all of Lish's writing. He was editor.

The thing about Carver OP, is that even when he's at his absolute worst, he is still much better than any other short fiction writer from America and the U.K.

All he wrote was class tourism for middlebrow readers. No thanks.

>"class tourism"

He had a working class upbringing, he was an alcoholic, he was poor most of his life. It would only be "class tourism" if his stories were written by someone from the middle class. He wrote what he knew and nobody has ever matched him when it comes to what he was good at you absolute pleb.

I'm aware of his background but the people reading his books typically aren't the poor blue collar people he wrote about.

One of the nice things about reading is getting insights into what it's like to be people from other walks of life. Who the fuck only reads books about people like themselves?

I'm "blue collar" and have read pretty much everything he has written. Short fiction is what I'm passionate about and there really isn't anybody out there who has come close to him. Alice Munro and Flannery O'Connor are great, so is Lydia Davis, Cheever and David Foster Wallace, but Carver just had something special about him, it's in everything he wrote from his poetry right down to his non fiction. Even DFW loved Carver's later stuff. He was a once in a lifetime writer, one who people still rip off even to this day.

It's just another way of exploiting the working class for money they'll never touch. While you sit in your cozy home reading about their lives, they're working their asses off and drinking their sorrows away. Even if they had the time and energy to read they don't have the education to enjoy Carver's works, simple as they are. Is it really such a good idea to turn their plight into entertainment for the privileged?

Are you against the idea of reading in general when poor people don't?

I agree with you, that that's how he's read by many middle class upper class college readers who just want a thrill, but you sorely underestimate the working class. They also just literally don't even hear about Carver/ I don't think you need much education to appreciate Carver or any decent literature, just the will.

LMAO. How insulated and bourgeois are you? Working class people can't read or enjoy a 10-20 page piece of fiction from time to time that touches on things they can relate to? That is one of the reasons Carver wrote short fiction: "get in, get out" because he actually was busy working and taking care of a child when he was younger. His work is simply written and easily understood by anybody who has finished the bare minimum level of education. This is honestly probably one of the most deluded and out of touch comments I have seen on this board and I have been on it for close to 5 years.

That's weird he was only 50 when he died.

>oldfag
>woah look a badass
or however that meme went

Yes, only middle class struggles should be written about, that's exactly what we need, more stories about "ennui" and how consumer culture "gets us down" and how detached and apathic Xavier has become ever since Elle started dating Brett instead of noticing him and how that other girl he was with for a while started dating another guy who is mildly more interesting than him and how he wallows in his own sorrow by being detached and ironic but conscious of it in a way only a self reflexive young college man can be. So thrilling. So visceral.

African American writers shouldn't publish works about their experiences either, it's just another way of exploiting people of color for money they'll never touch. While you sit in your cozy home reading about their lives, they're working their asses off and drinking their sorrows away. Even if they had the time and energy to read they don't have the education to enjoy Carver's works, simple as they are. Is it really such a good idea to turn their plight into entertainment for the privileged?

Then what do you like about him?

WHAT THE FUCK STOPS YOU FROM KILLING YOURSELVES

This guy's parents taught him well.

"Son, nobody should ever write about marginalised people to draw attention to them, it's just in bad taste and makes respectable folks like me and your mother (who is now living with another man because his father is an effete beta male) feel uncomfortable.

Ultimately, there are just less things that would make me WANT to kill myself. I mean, why do it?

Maybe both your posts are true and there's no reason to impeach things with hysteria or aggression :%)

It's been on my shelf for ages due to it being recommended a while ago on Veeky Forums but I never knew anything about it.

Way to imply the working classes are fucking imbeciles. Fuck off back to tumblr.

How does the kind of people who typically read a work diminish (or increase) the value of said work? Not that you have any way of knowing who "typically" reads it, anyway.

Not to mention some of the most innovative writers were from working class backgrounds.

Raymond Carver
Don Delillo
Sherwood Anderson
Knut Hamsun
Richard Brautigan
Alice Munro
Roberto Bolano
Albert Camus
William Saroyan
D.H Lawrence
Anton Chekov

I'm from a working class background but I'm from the UK and not middle America in the fifties, so clearly I don't have a right to enjoy innovative fiction or perhaps empathise with a class different from my own. I should only read about the middle classes in my own country to avoid accusations of class tourism from special snowflake tumblr pieces of shit.

>No one mentioned Bukowski
GOOD