Raymond Carver, whom I had the fortuitous pleasure of having lunch with, along with his girfriend Tess Gallagher, a couple of years before he died, was a true artist. Emily Dickinson puts poets above the sun and God in pantheon of what's most important, and people like Raymond Carver prove her right. Although this last offering by the 20th century's greatest minimalist writer is neither his greatest nor his most minimal, it strikes the same generous chord of longing, of heart warming simplicity and heart breaking honesty, that Carver strikes elsewhere. The style is the man, wrote Buffon (in French), and sure enough that is the case here: a style of simple emotional honesty, combined with an artist's experimental will to playfulness, sufffused with a hope whose transcendent beauty is precisely its distillation from the undoctored elements of ordinary reality. This book, enhanced and completed by Tess Gallagher's wonderfully loving but unsentimental introduction, shows Carver at the end of his life; still excited about art, and the possibility of the poem form, he splices lines from Chekov stories, giving them titles and thereby
transforming them into poem epigraphs to his own measured prose. The transformation of the Chekov short story to the Carver poem perhaps underscores the poetic process itself, whittling down reality into its artistic essence--the process so aptly demonstrated by Carver, who never wrote a novel, in his short stories. As Salmon Rushdie says on the cover (I paraphrase), read this book by Carver. Read everything by Carver. Raymond Carver was a great writer.

I've read this book a number of times now and it never fails to move me deeply. The 14 page introduction by Tess Gallagher, a touching account Carver's final months and their efforts to compile this collection in the face of his impending death, brings the poems to life and gives them an added urgency and passionate clear sightedness. At times ironic, at times a sardonic observor of life's foibles, and at times utterly transparent and vulnerable, Carver is never less than a great crafter of poetic visions.

this is real poetry. raymond carver is a reflective and insightful poet. there is no denying his powerful way with words. there is a warmth and closeness to his tales that seem painfully close to real life, to our lives. there are also verses by Chekov who is just incredible. i can not describe the visions speaking in this book. But they move and surge and plunge into your heart and speak clearly.

Though these stories together tend to leave one rather depressed, they are still worth reading for the glimpses of the characters' lives they offer. Furthermore, some, especially "A Small, Good Thing" are less depressing and, in my mind, actually very good.
Don't assume you know these stories because you've seen the film of the same name directed by Robert Altman. He said himself (in the book's intro, actually) that he took liberties with them, and believe you me, he REALLY did. You may even appreciate the stories more after seeing the film. I did, but that might be just me.
Do take a look at these stories regardless, though!

Robert Altman made a wonderful film in the 90s based on 9 short stories published by famous American short story writer Raymond Carver. The film was entitled "Short Cuts" and this publication brings together these 9 stories (including a poem) which were culled from several original Carver publications. The book opens with an introduction by Altman who confesses to taking small liberties with Carver's stories and its characters but without compromising their integrity. Those who have seen the movie will concede that the changes in fact give the entity a coherence that would otherwise be missing. But as a collection of short stories. they can and should be read as standalones. Carver is a master of social commentary, using anecdotes of casual human behaviour to capture the absurdity of modern American life. These candid snapshots may not conform with the dictates of conventional fictional writing in that they may lack a beginning, distinct plot development and a neat ending. Often it isn't even the events that trigger off the response of the characters that are significant but the fact that they respond in a certain way that is interesting from the view point of understanding human behaviour. Carver seems to be saying that sometimes the strange things that happen to us are all due to chance and that like it or not, we need to factor chance into the equation of living. As a short story writer, Carver is exceptional. He has that rare ability to communicate some essential truth about the human condition without using melodrama or any of the other techniques frequently used by lesser writers to captivate and sustain our interest. The 9 stories in this collection are individually separate entities which exist in their own right. No character appears anywhere but in the story he originates from. The situations they capture are also pretty diverse. Yet, they don't seem disjointed when you read them in sequence. They are thematically bound together by Carver's magic which may be hard to define but there all the same. I found every one of them absorbing and captivating. Read this first before you watch the movie. You'll enjoy both better.

If you love Raymond Carver, or have yet to read any of his stories, this is a great book for you. These are selected stories by Carver, which inspired the movie "Short Cuts." Though I did enjoy the movie, reading the actual stories is ten times more satisfying.

Carver is a genius when it comes to the crafting of a short story. He's showed me that you don't need to have the most complex plot or the happiest ending in short stories. You don't even need a solid resolution. Carver creates some of the most memorable characters and is a pro when it comes to dialogue.

I really enjoyed these stories. I liked the fact that some of these stories really caught me off guard. "Tell the Women We're Going," has to have one of the most horrifying and disturbing endings I have ever read in a story. I also liked the fact that these characters seem so real. It's like these are people you have known for all of your life. He writes the way people actually talk, and that is a great talent.

My favorite stories are, "They're Not Your Husband" "Neighbors," "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" "A Small, Good Thing," "Tell the Women We're Going," and "So Much Water so Close to Home." These are very realistic stories that paint a picture of everyday life.

Raymond Carver was a brilliant writer. We need more like him. If you like Carver, or you have yet to read any of his work, check out this book and read some of the stories. It doesn't have a lot, but the ones that are in here are very well done. A book I will read over and over again. We miss you Carver!

Most people will discover Raymond Carver from one of his short stories. The short stories have been called examples of "minimalism" and have been compared to Hemingway and Chekov. These descriptions are true enough. The stories are short and easy to read in one sitting. They instantly transport you to a completely real place where authentic events of minimal action and monumental drama and feeling take place. Here you meet fictional characters who might resemble Raymond Carver if you know a little of his life story.

When you read his poetry, and this is the definitive collection, you meet Raymond Carver in person. I enjoy his poetry as poetry. However, that is not what drew me to this work because I don't generally read poetry. Rather, through these poems I meet the man, Raymond Carver. I understand that my attraction to his stories was to be not in the presence of the characters and their situation, but rather to be in the presence of a master storyteller. In the poems, Carver takes us into his life as if we were his companion and shares his personal stories. The poems create similar feelings to those evoked in the stories. Sadly, Raymond Carver has died. However, something of him lives on in these poems.

somone i know once said that some people love carver's stories and other likes his poetry, and that you can't equely love both. i'm deffently one of those who are more of a fan of his poems then of his stories.

reading his poems is like readingg one of his stories after it's been refined into prefection, is such a minimalist language, he manages to kick you right in your soft belly. unlike other poets, he used everyday language and describe in his poems events rather then emotions. which for me, makes them far more emotional. some of those poems just lift my spirit up and reminds me that there's some beauty in the hardship of life.

i gave this book 5 stars because i enjoy raimond carver's poetry and because i wanted one volume with all his poem at a resnable price, but i have to say that the production of the book's far from perfect, too transparent pages, every poem doesn't get it's own page (i know i'm being petty, but that' the way reading poetry should be...) and the type and over all look aren't as inviting as they should be. but i seppose you get what you are willing to pay for.

Raymond Carver is one of the finest American writers of short stories and, during his short liftime, (he died at age 50) was acclaimed for this talent. Critics seemed to create the term "minimalist" and label Carver with it---which I believe caused him a disservice. What are readers who do not know his body of work to make of this word: "minimalism?" Labels, in any field, never quite take the measure of the man. What, indeed, is a "compassionate conservative?" Does this label mean that an old-fashioned conservative automatically has no compassion? Does it mean that a "liberal" is automatically compassionate? And where do these labels take and leave us? For readers unfamiliar with Carver's work, does "minimalist" mean that he stints on imagery? on emotion? on plot? If you have never read Carver, you owe it to yourself to find out what all the shouting was/is about. In his stories and here, in this book of collected poems (some of which are published for the first time), he takes everyday life and makes it resonate with great feeling and extraordinary beauty---be the subject married love, nature, fatherhood, fishing or his quickly approaching death by cancer. I find one of the the final, very short poems in this book, "Late Fragment" almost unbearably moving. In it he tells us what he wanted in life: "To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth." Very Highly Recommended.

Raymond Carver wrote stories with extremely detailed and fascinating plots, characters, and dialogue. Yes, he was a minimalist. That does not mean that he wrote stories without a plot. Instead, Carver's plots are simple and obvious, they serve as vessels for the message Carver is packing, one that he always delivers with one hell of a wallop by the end of each of his stories. Reading each story once will not yield complete understanding for the reader. Great fiction is usually like this. Instead, rereadings will bring the true meanings, they'll show what this master of prose was trying to say. Raymond Carver never wrote a novel because he didn't have to, because he could always express what he was trying to say in about 20 pages of beautiful, elegant, simple prose, unlike Tom Wolfe, who takes 740 pages in A Man in Full to say absolutely nothing. Carver's wife and editor did not interfere with his writing, that's a common myth that was spread and kept alive by all those jealous of Carver's accomplishments. I felt the need to respond to the previous review so that possible buyers of Where I'm Calling From would not be dissuaded and give this book a shot. You will find in its pages a genius, a man who is sorely missed and for very good reason. Raymond Carver was a true master of the short story, and he shows it here.

Raymond Carver is unique among contemporary American men of letters in that he is known almost exclusively for his short stories. Though he published other books, most notably collections of his poetry, his real genius was in the abbriviated summation of ordinary human experience in the short prose form.

This volume is a great introduction to Carver's stories because it represents a selection of his best work from every phase of his career. It is clear from the first story that his special gift is in somehow making a slice of life universal. His stories have hardly any plot and character is revealed rather than described. The essense of his character's lives are distilled into a few scenes wherein the reader can grasp a universe of unspoken meanings. The simplest things in Carver's hands take on a depth of meaning and a resonance that tends to haunt one long after the story is read. There is no overt artifice employed; the stories are deceptively simple. Yet all of these stories, like good poems, pack lots of meaning into a compressed form. His stories are not so much 'about' love, grief, deception, failure, longing and hatred as they are captured moments that embody these elements of the human condition and allow us to really feel what the characters feel. The very lack of exposition and detailed context is part of what makes these moments so powerful. Like a Rorschach ink blot, the short scenes depicted can call forth from each reader a variety of different interpretations and meanings. That is perhaps what is really great about these stories. Every reader can agree on the overt content, but no two are likely to agree about what they really mean, despite almost everyone having a strong emotional response to them. This is unique and superior writing that no lover of literature should miss.

"It's possible," wrote Raymond Carver, "to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language . . . with immense, even startling power." All of Carver's stories are about everyday characters and events. They often, like the stories of Hemingway, end with little or no resolution. But underneath every simple story lies a strange, complex anxiety.

In his early days, Carver was a hell-bound alcoholic, and his early writing reflects his way of life. "What's In Alaska?" details the unraveling of a couple's relationship. Like Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants," the story progresses through revealing and anguishing dialogue.

Carver eventually managed to pull himself together and his writing became, in turn, beautiful, poetic and somewhat hopeful. His story "Cathedral" is a masterpiece; its characters, as with those in most of his stories, are trying to overcome their apathy and inarticulateness. "Cathedral" possesses a small shimmer of joy. Perhaps his best work, the story involves a husband's difficulty in accepting a blind friend of his wife's. "I wasn't enthusiastic about the visit," he states in the beginning of the story. The blind man comes to the house and spends the evening with the couple. The husband is uncomfortable with the blind man, his way of looking at things, his smell. To break the ice he offers the man some pot, and the two men smoke together. The story builds as the two talk in front of the television together and it ends with a perfect, shimmering moment.

Carver managed to drop his drinking habit, but his love of smoking cut his career and his life short. His life ended just as the lives of his characters were beginning to brighten up. Carver has left us with a collection of characters that seem to be a bit out of touch, like Captain Ahab on Demerol, but which one of us is really any different? One leaves a Carver story feeling like the narrator of his story "Feathers": "I knew it was special. That evening I felt good about almost everything in my life."

I love Raymond Carver, but I would say don't read this one until you've read Cathedral and What We Talk About When We Talk about Love. Simply because this is his first collection, and it's a little rough.

There are good stories here, and definitely hints and flashes of what Carver will become. His talent for small-talk dialoge is apparent and the shining moments in this book come when couples get together and talk. But he has not perfected that bright, clean, no-nonsense tone that became his trademark. There is a feeling of a lot of borrowing tones, writing like other writers, and playing around. Which is all fine. But the stories here lack the vision and power of those in the later books.

So read those first. Then, when you're hooked like I am, come read these.

Carver is truly amazing, and not even at his peak in this collection. His stories, minimalist sketches of loss and inarticulation, have spawned an entire generation of imitations. Don't bother with them, read the best. And don't smoke.

Raymond Carver is my all-time favourite writer. I was hooked on his writings since the first time I read his book, which is this one. When I first finished reading this book some years ago, it changed my view in English literature altogether. What struck me was the stark honesty and reality in his writings. Never had I come across a writer who was as honest as Carver. He tells his stories the way life really is, without trying to twist, sensationalise or glamourise it. He tells stories about people like us. In fact, his stories are about us and the people around us.

Don't be fooled by the length of his short stories, his shortest pieces like 'Neighbors' and 'Fat' are among his best (though I can't really point out any that is not his best anyway) because it tells so much in so little words.

Another startling thing about Carver's stories is that it can relate to people everywhere in the world though he writes about Americans.

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!

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!

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.

Just picked up this book for my dad for father's day. Of course, it was impossible not to dip in and sample some of the poems. They are really neat - touch a chord that resonates beautifully.

This is fine poetry to start Raymond Carver with. "The Ashtray" demonstrates an excellent portrayal of a selfish man and his girlfriend. "My Daughter's Apple Pie" is probably one of Carver's best works as far as showing his understatement style especially with a serious subject (which, actually, is very common with Carver). The book contains everything: nature, death, love, father/son relationships, water, everything. Carver's death is only a loss if you do not read his work.

For fans of Raymond Carver, it may seem strange to start with this book of poetry, as I did, rather than with one of his collections of short stories. I can only say that I came away from this work amazed at what this writer was able to do with a short form of writing and determined to rush out and start reading his short stories as well. These are reflective pieces of a man who has experienced and processed much, who has had time to reflect on the true essentials of life. While these poems are beautifully and artfully written, they are filled with universal messages that will reach, touch and change every reader. The title poem alone, with its theme of personal growth, is worth the price of the book. This is poetry for every man (and woman) written by someone who was clearly not.

This book will boggle your mind. The words used to describe the situations in the short stories. There are more that many excellent stories in this book. I find it more enjoyable that a single novel. Advanced school programs use this as a learning experience. It is a 4 star book.

I read "Midair" standing up in the bookstore. This book contains some true classics in short story writing.

Raymond Carver's short stories in the book "Cathedral" do tell perhaps of his life's stories but there is more here. It is what he doesn't say that makes the stories so unique. It is what is left when one finishes a story...the feelings, sad or dismayed or maybe even "I don't care" that come from the writings but are not of the writings It isn't what he writes but what he doesn't write. It is what he leaves you with and each reader can be left with something different. Carver is one writer who can be enjoyed by a man or a woman. His slices may be short stories but they are huge slices indeed. This is a book to read when you don't mind thinking a lot!.

Why do so many people feel that this collection is depressing? Carver's earlier stories were a lot more bleak (though equally excellent). The best stories in "Cathedral" actually end on a note of optimism (this is relative to Carver's other work, remember): see the great title story, "Fever", and my favorite, "A Small, Good Thing", the famous revision of "The Bath" from "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love".

But, depressing or not--who cares, really? What matters is the art that Carver used to craft his fiction. Read these stories and enjoy them--and yes, you can enjoy the "depressing" ones just as much as the uplifting ones if you have any idea how to really read.

Well, besides the two previous reviewers who said Carver was "boring" and "mundane", I think, for the most part, that Carver is apprecitated. As for the dissenters, you two have the compassion of a peanut butter sandwich.

Michael Fischer rideronthestorm@hotmail.com

P.S.--This is for the reviewer who made the idiotic statement that the short story is dead: read Glimmer Train, read The Best American Short Stories (published anually), read Sulpher River, read Granta, read The Virginia Quarl'y, read the Greensboro Review, read the Black Warrior Review, etc. Your problem, I think, is your belief that the world of literature revolves around New York, and if the New Yorker or Esquire isn't publishing short fiction (or if no short story collections are on the so-called New York Times Bestseller list) than the genre is dead. Or maybe you and your friend are, I don't know. Wake up, please.

Although I am a fan of Raymond Carver and this book, the purpose of my review is merely to clarify that the editor alluded to in the dialogue below is named Gordon Lish. It was Gordon Lish who became the fiction editor at Esquire and who first championed Raymond Carver's stories. And true, he had a hand in shaping those early fictions. It is worth noting, though, for those reviewers slinging anti-Carver invective, that Gordon Lish was an editor. That's what editors do. They read other people's work and help them make it better. Perhaps Lish was overzealous in his efforts early on. Still, I believe (although obvioulsy I was not there) that the core of the work, the vision, was Carver's. If there are others who need convincing, I suggest picking up Cathedral, Carver's last, most fully-realized collection. One read of Cathedral will, at least in the minds of sensitive, discriminating readers of literature, surely put to rest any doubts about Carver's talents as a writer. Not liking Raymond Carver is fine, but calling into question his integrity and ability based strictly on a series of rumors and sensational newspaper articles, is loony.

Any true Carver fan will tell you that he is a "precisionist", not a "minimalist." That said, I still think this is the most minimalist of Carver's books.

Part of that is because of ruthless editors. I recently read that, despite Carver's protestations, many of the stories here were cut mercilessly. Some of this shows through later in his fiction -- "The Bath" is clearly a cut-back edition of "A Small, Good Thing", published in Cathedral, and a longer version of "So Much Water So Close to Home" can be found in "Where I'm Coming From."

Enough. You want to know about this book, not mumbo-jumbo about Carver and his other books. Carver is in fine form here, and his ability to portray pain, suffering, desperation, humor and hysteria in just a few pages is powerful.

Carver writes the blue collar, alcoholic, separated or divorced character so much and so well you begin to assume these things about this characters, his stories. Here is the working man's writer, and the writer's working man.

My favorites in this book are "Why Don't You Dance?", "Gazebo", "Everything Stuck to Him", and, of course, the title piece.

His writing is so well-executed it changes my patterns of thinking -- I wander with a Carver-esque grimness, loneliness. He doesn't just write about love and desperation, he writes them directly -- a distinction I can't really explain.

All that to say here is wonderful writing.

An example:

"My friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right.

The four of us were sitting around his kitchen table drinking gin. Sunlight filled the kitchen from the big window behind the sink. There were Mel and me and his second wife, Teresa--Terri, we called her-- and my wife, Laura. We lived in Albequerque then. But we were all from someplace else."

--- if you'd like to discuss Carver with me, this book, my review, or anything else, e-mail me at williekrischke@hotmail.com. i'd love to hear from you.

Please discount the inane ramblings of the "reader" from Los Angeles. He/She exposes his/her true colors with the complaint that "nothing happens" in these stories. I suppose he/she should stick to Daniel Steele or Tom Clancy. For the rest of you truly intelligent, literary people, this is one collection of short stories you cannot live without. Carver is able to express more emotion with his "minimalist" approach than most authors could ever dream of. One does not have to be overly verbose to tell a story. But don't take my word for it. Read all of Carver's books for yourself.