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Published to coincide with the release of a film--loosely based on stories by Raymond Carver--by one of the authors, the screenplay includes portraits of the twenty-two main characters, played by some of Hollywood's top names. Original. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

A Great Critical Work!
This is the study on Ray Carver I've been looking for.Excellent!Very smart, super smart, and still readable.A great aid for teaching Carver's fiction, or for writing about it, or for just understanding its intricacies, of which there are many, as Nesset demonstrates.Great book!

BRAVO!
Thanks to Kirk Nesset for writing a study that's EXCITING TO READ even while thoughtful and smart and interpretively right on the money.Who said writing about writers and writing had to be boring?This is the book I've been wanting to find!

Carver Lives in This Book
I've perused all of the critical work and this book outshines them all -- by at least 300 per cent.It's engaging, penetrating, well-developed and lucid, and written humanely no less, with much flair and elan.What a refreshing read, considering the arid critical deserts one often wanders.Nesset explores all of Carver's major volumes of stories, discussing selected stories in each while touching on others, and reflecting on Carver's poems here and there to good effect, using them as signposts and touchstones.If you've ever felt baffled by those bare, darkest stories, feel baffled no more.Carver's craft, his magic, is revealed in this book -- revealed from first page to last in that most illuminating, helpful, and respectful of ways.

Raymond Carver's Critical Condition
Nesset, whose near-obsessive interest with Carver provides many insights, manages to do what few serious critical inquiries do: entertain while he enlights. And, as anybody who has read some of Nesset's own fiction can attest, what he has learned from a master has not been lost on the student.

a creative work in itself
I must admit, I did have some trouble with Mr. Nesset's book.All and all I found the book very entertaining, but I am not convinced for one second that Raymond Carver made a conscience effort to add all the symbols to his stories that Mr. Nesset claims he did.As a fiction writer myself, it ishard enough to just put the words on paper without making a conscienceeffort at turning every single thing and detail into a symbol relating tothe story.I am curious as to whether Carver himself said that the manwithout hands in "Viewfinder" represented the man's feelings ofseperation (dismemberment) from his family. Or if the man throwing rocksfrom the roof and being captured in a blurred frame from the Poloroid isrepresentive of the man's current state of confusion.I mean, come on, Mr.Nesset, give us a break here.I've always been taught to create memorablecharacters--and what's more memorable than a man without hands coming toyour house to snap photographs of it.Are these figments of your creativeimagination or actually Carver's conscience attempts at cramming hisstories full of symbols?Also, in the story "Chef's House," whydoes the wedding ring being tossed into the peach orchard have to berepresentative of the last falling fruit in a failing marriage?MaybeCarver was eating a peach as he wrote the story.Ever consider that one? All joking aside, I found this book entertaining and enlighting and wouldrecommend it to any Carver fan, but I would, however, read it lightly. Acadamia and fiction writing don't mix.Critics, for the most part, arepeople who wish they could write fiction.Those who can do.If you're ascholar on an author, you're not that author, and if you're a scholar andan author, than you can't be good at both.So, read Carver's stories forwhat they are:just simple stories about down trodden people.And don'tfool us into believing Carver considered each minute detail he put in hisstories.Besides, I once read in an interview with Carver that the blackman in his story "Vitamins" was incorporated into the workbecause he received a wrong-number phone call from what he suspected was ablack man while he was writing the story.So is that a symbol or something else?Thank you, J. Michael Campbell. ... Read more

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Short Stories by Ann Beattie, Ethan Canin, Joy Williams, Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, Alice Munro, Thomas McGuane, Lord Tweedsmuir, Donald Barthelme, Raymond Carver, and many others. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Solid Offering
I have read many of the Best American Short Story collections, and this is certainly one of the better ones.Up front Carver, this year's editor, says that he likes "people in realistic detailed situations."All of these stories are very down to earth, much like Carver's own writing.No fantasy found here.The first story, "Basil From Her Garden" by Donald Barthelme threw me for a loop.It didn't seem anything that Carver described.Read pretty much like an interview on some rather off the wall things like making adultery acceptable.Very odd story that I didn't really care for, and Carver warns the reader that this one is slightly different.

The rest are really good, though.

James Lee Burke appears in this addition before he was typecast in the Mystery series.I like everything he writes."The Convict" is no exception.

Tess Gallagher also appears, which to me, seems a little bias since the editor was married to her at the time.

Joy William is also here.Carver and her were good friends.He admits that he did not choose the selections blindly.

All in all worth the read. ... Read more

Product Description
This first book-length study on the black humor in Raymond Carver's work includes valuable interpretations of Carver's aesthetics as well as the psycho-social implications of his short fiction. The presence of an indeterminate "menace" in the oppressive situations of black humor in Carver—as compared to a European tradition of existentialist writing and his American predecessors including Twain, Heller, Barth and others—is mitigated through humor so it is not dominant. As a result, a subtle promise emerges in the characters' lives. ... Read more

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Addresses minimalism as demonstrating a parallel poetic to that of the short story, and analyzes many works of short fiction by Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel and Mary Robison which reflect this relationship. This book traces the evolution of literary minimalism as a by-product of the short story. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Solid Literary Analysis
Yes, I'm actually writing a review for this book, Minimalism and the Short story, on the off chance that someone stumbles across this entry.First, I'll begin with some general praise.This book is worth buying, borrowing, reading at your local library, etc., if for no other reason than the fact that this book, I believe, is the only academic, professional, literary study of minimalism, a much maligned and completely misunderstood movement (even describing it as a movement is kind of troublesome) that swept through literature in the late 70s and on into the early 80s.Yes, you can probably find volumes on Carver, but there's surprisingly little out there (aside from interviews/articles in literary magazines) on Robison and Hempel.A serious examination of Robison and Hempel has been long overdue.

Professor Hallett's book provides nice background on literary minimalism's roots.In addition, Hallett does a nice job delineating minimalism from an overall economy of language (i.e. minimalism is not simply spare writing--a confusion too many book reviewers are guilty of spreading).Also, Hallett makes a decent comparison between the minimalists and the post-modernists, aruguing (rightly) that the two sides aren't so far apart.

Sure, I have some small concerns with this book.The background material on minimalism itself is more useful than Hallett's discussion of the authors themselves.If you're looking for a thorough examination of Carver, Robison, and Hempel, you're probably best off searching elsewhere.These three writers are sort of glossed over, no single story by any of them receives much treatment, and thus the reader is left with the feeling that he/she is reading synopsis rather than analysis.Of the three writers examined, Hempel probably receives the most (and best) attention.I'm not sure I've been further enlightened about Carver and Robison after reading this book.

Still, for those who want an introductory splash into a frequently misunderstood fictional movement, you should begin here. ... Read more

Product Description
Disgraced ex-president Richard Nixon is walking on a beach when he meets his neighbour and poet, Raymond Carver. History has chosen to revere one man and revile the other, yet when they sit down to tell each other their life stories, it seems their experiences are not so different after all. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An adequate, if brief overview of Carver's work. Grade: B+
From the Editor's Preface: "_Understanding Contemporary American Literature_ has been planned as a series of guides or companions for students as well as good nonacademic readers."

Well said. _Understanding Raymond Carver_ is the kind of thin textbook you would expect to read in an undergraduate Figures of Literature class at a public liberal arts college. Saltzman only scratches the surface of literary criticism and interpretation regarding Carver, but adequately. For students: you will find decent quotes to support your research papers. For nonacademic readers: you will find brief critical analyses of your favorite stories.

Here's an illustrative section:
"Because Carver's locations are unexceptional, they are deceptively lulling, seeming immune to eventfulness; yet all the while, in familiar homes and neighborhoods, acts of brinkmanship regularly take place. What, for example, could be less precipitous than a waitress serving a customer? Yet in 'Fat' the event looms monumentally in her consciousness. Breathless and repetitive, the narrator anxiously tries to 'sell' her friend on the significance of the tale of her incredibly fat customer as if she had just been implicated in some vague parable. However, she cannot pin down the reason its having unsettled her so: 'Now that's part of it. I think that is really part of it.' 'I know now I was after something. But I don't know what.' 'Waiting for what? I'd like to know.' "

"Perhaps it is the surprising dignity and pleasantness of the fat man that is so remarkable -- one can easily surmise what sort of course [sic] treatment she is accustomed to -- and that causes her to defend him against the rude remarks of her co-workers. Perhaps his use of the royal 'we' to refer to himself, as though he needed to measure up verbally to his size, makes her realize how dwarfed and submissive she has been. Or perhaps the jokes about her being 'sweet' on him lead her to evaluate her relationship with Rudy, who is similarly incapable of appreciating feelings she can hardly approximate. (During their lovemaking, she imagines herself to be so astonishingly fat that Rudy disappears within her bulk.) Her inarticulateness stakes out the limits of her growth of consciousness. Significantly, although she believes her life will change -- the meeting with the mysterious fat man surely heralds it -- she characterizes herself as passive, waiting for a transformation. 'Fat' concludes with the narrator prepared for something different but at a loss as to what that 'something' could be or how she would go about initiating it. Insight extends no further than dissatisfaction."

Saltzman provides an overview of Carver's style and themes; has a chapter for each of the four major collections (_Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?_, _Furious Seasons_, _What We Talk About When We Talk About Love_, and _Cathedral_); and one for selected poems. His conclusion "feels" dated (the text was published in 1988), but is otherwise adequate.

Overall, this is a good text, worth having if you are a dedicated Carver reader. ... Read more

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Precious gems abound in a collection of 21 unabridged stories by the best American writers, presented by outstanding readers. A rare value and ideal for students and teachers of the short story. 6 cassettes ... Read more

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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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Gem of a Book

A slender 135 page book of 17 often brief stories all focusing on the theme of love, how it changes over time, changes in meaning and focus, how the idyll is so far removed from the daily grind.
These are fantastically written stories that seem half complete (you almost feel you are intruding on something that everyone bar you know all about) yet merge into a whole to really illuminate Carvers theme. Each tale is written in a sparse, clipped style that is unique in the way it 'talks' to you.
I've not come across too many collections like this that explore a central theme (Patrick White's 'Burnt Ones' and Richard Yate's 'Liars in Love' and 'Eleven kinds of lonliness' are the only ones that spring to mind) but this easily comes out top.Very impressive indeed. ... Read more