Customer Reviews (4)

"Intratextuality" of Raymond Carver's stories
Author Runyon provides an insightful interpretation of Raymond Carver's short story collection"Will You Please be Quiet, Please", "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love","Cathedral"

He labels this insight "intratextuality", where the strategic placementandsequence of textmakes a connection to other stories. As he says, "- and this is the thesis of my book -to the interstices between the stories as well."

The more I read this book, I'm not sure I can buy this theory.The word intratextuality, in the book, is defined as when the texts in a text begin to refer to each other in ways that seem to refer to their doing so. Here, the authors who knew Carver personally make their assessments.

An example Runyon refers to in his own words:In "Neighbors",the Millers' fascination with their neighbors is answered by the fascination exerted on the couple in "The Idea" by"their" neighbors, as well as by the fascination those neighbors themselves fine for the very idea of voyeurism.

What he references to in "Intimacy", is the last line, "the narrator sees the need to pick up the leaves strewn, while the beginning of the next story, "Menudo", the narrator is unable to put up with the accumulation of leaves."

In Carver's story "Collectors",narrator Slater, waiting for the mailman,would `look through the curtain'while the next "What Do in San Francisco?", the narrator becomes the mailman who tells that the resident, Marston, would be `looking out at me through the curtain'."

Sure, there are undisputed connections and underlying themes in all Carver's stories, but to follow this idea would be too complex and, at times, a little to deep.How much can you make out ofwhether one character is looking OUT a window, versus the other story's character is looking IN.Storytelling is just a choice of wording,opposing characterization for different stories.

The beauty of Carver stories and poems is that they are NOT complex and deep!His are meant to savor the conversation, to read beyond the surface, to feel the story, feel the characters, their happiness and painregardless of their personality.

Enjoy Raymond Carver as you would any other author, and to go to the extreme of finding some connection or stories strategically placed is quite unnecessary!...MZ RIZZ

ditto
The reviewer below is utterly right-- this book is a waste of everybody's time.What he fails to note is that Runyon's "thesis" is itself unacceptable.Who could buy for one second the idea of Carver "arranging" his stories?Anybody who's done the research understands that Carver's stories were arranged FOR him.Runyon's premise-- and book overall-- is preposterous.The "correspondences" he finds are belabored, contrived, unsubstantiated and unsubstantiatable, outrageous, insane.

Sophomoric and silly
The introductory essay by Dobyns is delightful but the rest of the book is truly bad.The author has a thesis -- that Carvers' stories are interconnected and purposefully arranged in the books -- and that's all he deals with.Once you accept the thesis, what else is there to say?Not much, but the author spins his wheels trying.The book is a waste of money and will add nothing to your understanding or appreciation of Carver.

Reading Carver will never be the same again.
I had been reading Carver for some years before I discovered this gem of a book. After reading this book, I re-read all of Carver's stories and realised how much I had missed the first time round. What fascinates me ishow all the stories and characters are all inter-connected - you just haveto read carefully and look for the clues. Now I realised why Raymond wasnot a minimalist as many think so. He was a precisionist. ... Read more

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Fascinating, Essential for Any Carver Fan
This is a brave book. It attempts to examine Carver the person over Carver the myth. While they're not all that different, one thing that is very memorable in reading this oral history is that Carver, when he was with his first wife and drinking, appeared to create drama in part as a way of creating not only material for his work, but also an identity as a writer -- at least that is the impression his friends leave when talking about him in his earlier days as an up and coming short story writer and poet.

This book is most definitely respectful of Carver, his family, and most definitely respectful of his work. But it is also a probing look at how others saw Carver: Most saw him as a total artist committed to writing about the working class. All, it seems, saw him as nothing less than a good guy, or at the least, someone trying to be as good of a guy as he could given the alcoholism that plagued him for much of his life.

Once Carver stopped drinking, he seems to have blossomed not only as a writer but as a human being. As a result, reading this is not only touching, it's inspirational. What's left out is also telling. Carver's son refused to cooperate with this project. ... Read more

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Raymond Carver is viewed as a genius within the limits he imposed upon himself whose early work was heavily influenced by Earnest Hemingway. The work of this modern-day author who died at a young age is studied in this volume by some of the most respected critics on the subject. Examined works include "Where I'm Calling From," "Cathedral," "Fever," "The Bridle," and "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love."

This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School; preeminent literary critic of our time. The world’s most prominent writers of short stories are covered in one series with expert analysis by Bloom and other critics. These titles contain a wealth of information on the writers and short stories that are most commonly read in high schools, colleges, and universities. ... Read more

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The Visual Poetics of Raymond Carver draws on the study of visual arts to illuminate the short stories of noted author Raymond Carver, in the broader context of vision and visualization in a literary text. Ayala Amir examines Carver's use of the eye-of-the-camera technique. Amir uncovers the tensions that structure his visual aesthetics and examines assumptions that govern scholarly discussions of his work, relating these matters to the complex nature of photography and to the current _visual turn_ of cultural studies. The research uses visual approaches to reflect upon traditional issues of narrative study-duration, dialogue, narration, description, frame, character, and meaning. Amir shows how Carver's visual aesthetics shapes the meaning of his stories, while also challenging accepted notions of the boundaries of _the literary._ ... Read more

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"Mr. Carver is heir to that most appealing American poetic voice, the lyricism of Theodore Roethke and James Wright.... this book is a treasure, one to return to. No one's brevity is as rich, as complete, as Raymond Carver's."
--New York Times Book Review

"Carver's gifts as a storyteller shine through his poetry.... Sometimes a Carver poem also works as a short story, with all its elements--character, diction, place, event--compressed intact into the brevity of verse. And sometimes Carver delivers the goods in pure lyrical form, in words as full of yearning and sensibility as those of a very young man, but poems possessing the hard-won qualities of focus, stillness and irony only rewarded by experience."
--Los Angeles Times
... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Carver's is unable to translate his genius in the short story to successful poetry . . .
I often find myself defending Carver as a writer's writer, someone whose craft and voice are just as important as the story itself. He uses the language of the people he writes about to tell their story, and his though he's been labeled a minimalist, his work is more of that of a precisionist. Carver wastes no words, and his portions are perfect. I'd place Carver in the top three short story writers of all time, of anyone's list.

His poetry sucks, though. Where his stories are able to carry sparse poetic moments (the drawing at the end of "Cathedral" or the barber moving his hands through the man's hair in "The Calm," to name two) through the strength of the narrative, his poems have almost no narrative to speak of.A poem like "Limits" is almost successful because Carver spreads it out a bit and lets some sort of form emerge, but even then he relies too heavily on the abstract. He's always used the abstract well, and it's disappointing to see him fail so miserably at mastering that same trait in his poetry. The vast majority of these poems are like the last line of the story "Fat" ("Waiting for what? I'd like to know. My life is going to change. I feel it."), where we are allowed to have the whimsy because we've been set-up for it. His poems begin and end with arbitrary people doing arbitrary things, and they eat their slice of life without sharing.

His poems are exactly like his stories: from-the-gut tales of yore as told by an almost-dead Grandfather, the only man who can tell the same story as everyone else, but make it matter. Here's the difference: same Grandpa, same stories, except he's senile now and can only get out bits and pieces. Everything's disjointed and you can only shrug, because even though the story and the people in it probably matter, he's just not convincing enough. That's Carver's poetry.

What matters is underneath
What lies underneath Carver's powerful prose or poetry is a whole world, a reflection of humanity and its enduring power. Carver gives us slices of life like traces made with the most precise pencil, leaving what's important underneath his writing, for the heart and mind to appreciate. This is a testament to the iron will of a man who didn't give up, who could defeat the world's misery and create beauty out of his disgrace.

Do yourself a great favor and buy this book, this is one of those I could recommend to anyone, anytime.

He tells what he sees
He tells what he sees
and what he experiences
it can be Bonnard's life story
in paintings of his wife
it can be his own effort to see the sea and the sky
and not let his mind intervene
he tells and usually what he tells
is a story
and the stories are interesting stories ironic stories
of his own life
and his need to change it
to plunge into clear water
as his father did
or to write with a sharp clear pen
like Kafka
after eight hours too many looking at his watch in the office
he writes these poems and tells these stories
and we reading them become more alive to the life in us
how strange and more real.

Wonderful book of poetry
Ultramarine by Raymond Carver, a collection of his poetry, is a gem. With each of my moves I find myself discarding all of my books except for this one. This is the one I hold and keep returning to.

While Carver is better known for his short stories, I think it's his poems that communicates his silent emotions. The sparse language of Raymond Carver that is so effective in his short stories is even more powerful in his poetry.

If there is anything I would ever recommend, this is it.

A wonderfull book of the Sea and its mysteries
I'm very surprized that no one has reviewed this book!I thought that it was fabulous!I love the way that the plot was on the sea, and its mysteries!I was totally caught up in the book! I read this book straightthrough, whithout talking to anyone.I hope that there are more books likethis out there, and I hope that you will be the next to buy, read, andreview this book! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Germans Love Carver
Interesting little book of three later Carver stories.Text is in English and is meant for German students studying English and American Lit. Various words and phrases and in bold, with footnotes that provide the German translation of American syntax and pop references. Good for the collection of serious Carver fans and scholars. ... Read more

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A comprehensive examination of the fiction and poetry of Raymond Carver. ... Read more

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A collection of Raymond Carver stories from the 1980s. ... Read more

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Brevity and intensity characterized the life and literary creations of Raymond Carver, but too often his prose and poetry have been viewed in isolation rather than as interconnected parts of an artistic whole. New Paths to Raymond Carver brings together a distinguished chorus of voices to assess fully Carver's life, stories, and verse, proffering new inroads for critical investigations into the impressive corpus of work wrought during the celebrated writer's tragically brief career.

Edited by Sandra Lee Kleppe and Robert Miltner, the anthology features pieces by noted Carver scholars Randolph Paul Runyon and Kirk Nesset, a chapter by Carver's longtime friend and fellow writer William Kittredge, and the first publication in English of the introduction to the Japanese edition of Ultramarine by Carver's widow, Tess Gallagher. International in scope, this collection includes essays by a number of emerging Carver scholars representing France, Norway, Canada, and the United States.

The first half of the collection offers six insightful essays on Carver's poems, spanning his career and grappling with such topics as the musical quality and dreamlike nature of his verse, treatments of death and gender in his late work, themes of voyeurism, and his vocabulary of affection. The second grouping of essays focuses on current interpretations of Carver's fiction and covers topics as widely variant as McCarthyism, Alcoholics Anonymous, television, humor, voyeuristic empathy, and the crucial role of the banal in Carver's diction. The volume closes with Kittredge's moving reflections on Carver's life and premature death. ... Read more

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A thoughtful, in-depth literary analysis
New Paths to Raymond Carver: Critical Essays on His Life, Fiction, and Poetry is an anthology of essays by learned authors concerning Raymond Carver's body of prose and poetry. Among the authors are renowned Carver scholars Randolph Paul Runyon and Kirk Nesset, Carver's longtime friend and compatriot writer William Kittredge, and others from such diverse nations as France, Norway, Canada, and the United States. The first half of New Paths to Raymond Carver consists of six essays discussing Carver's poems throughout his career, while the second half interprets Carver's fiction. Rounding out New Paths to Raymond Carver is the very first English-language publication of the introduction to the Japanese edition of "Ultramarine" by Carver's widow, Tess Gallagher. A thoughtful, in-depth literary analysis that surveys themes stretching across the whole of Carver's works. Highly recommended, especially for college library collections and anyone seeking to better understand the nuances of Carver's literature.
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Definately worth the money
I found this one down in the zshops. You really have to be a fan of Raymond, or perhaps a fisherman. These were all, with the exception of 'So Much Water, So Close to home', stories that I hadn't read before. I particularly liked the first one, 'Dummy', and I also liked, although it was the shortest story, 'Mine'.Not agood book for your first introduction to Raymond Carvers work. Strictly for the long time fan. ... Read more

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The Short Stories of Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and John Updike
5 cassettes / 7 1/2 hours
Unabridged short stories

Three American masters of the short story - Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and John Updike, brought together for the first time in one deluxe audio collection.

Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver, read by Peter Riegert
Few American writers are more admired than the late Raymond Carver.InWhere I'm Calling From, his highly acclaimed short story collection, Carver displays an astonishing genius.His stories are populated by characters living in an unforgivable world, suffering the burdens of displacement, divorce, despair.These people snarl and bark and speak in bursts of rough-and-tumble dialogue.They are everybody, anybody, nobody.A final testament to Carver's towering talent, Where I'm Calling From is a mesmerizing masterpiece of fiction drama, and poetry.

The Stories of John Cheever, read by Maria Tucci
"[John Cheever is] a master storyteller." - Time
A selection of the incomparable short fiction that has, together with his novels, secured John Cheever's place among the foremost writers of our time.The stories included on this AudioBook are "The Enormous Radio", "O Youth and Beauty!", "Just One More Time", "A Woman Without a Country", and "The Worm in the Apple".

Selected Stories by John Updike, read by the Author
John Updike reads six stories, including "A&P", recounting a moral crisis at the checkout counter; "Pigeon Feathers"; "The Family Meadow"; " The Witness"; "The Alligators" and "Separating," which recounts the June day when Richard and Joan Maple separate, in front of their children.
Mr. Updike, when asked to describe his method of reading aloud, said "I try to picture the things described, and to speak the words distinctly, and to let the emotion come through on its won."
The method works beautifully.

* American Masters also includes a 30-minute audio sampler of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, performed by Jeremy Irons
Amazon.com Review
What's unique about American Masters is that it's sucha complete work of art. Not only are the stories well written andthought provoking, but the narrators are perfectly suited to theirtasks. Each voice is like the bass note of a complexsymphony--whenever your mind begins to wander, swimming within thetones of the various worlds composed, these voices call you back tothe original structure of the story. Of course, the narration isvarious and unique, suitably matched to the writers: Raymond Carverdeports himself with all his usual rawness of character and grittyrealism through Peter Riegert's gruff but melodic intonations; JohnCheever disguises the same with an air of refinement and quietlypiqued nostalgia in the fine New England accent of Maria Tulcci; andJohn Updike holds them both down (through his own narration) with afunniness that is all too serious, or vice versa (you're never quitesure which). But the differences only highlight the fact that theseliterary giants all carry a certain bearing toward their work that isdistinctly American. They all seem to find it rather like an animal ofits own, like human nature itself. Taken like this--as variations on atheme--and mingled with the textures of the ancient art ofstorytelling, the collection becomes less a set of audiobooks and morea rare tapestry of American vantage points. Listen and discover thesemasters' works all over again. (Running time: 7.5 hours, 5 cassettes) --Courtenay Kehn ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Nice Experience
I appreciate the timely manner in which I received the item.I haven't been able to listen to all the tapes yet, but so far the ones I've listened to work well.There was one tape missing (The Special Preview of Vladimir Nabakov's LOLITA).However, it was not mentioned as part of the sale anyway.

Thanks

Wonderful
This audio collection of short stories - by three American Masters, Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and John Updike - is perfect for that next long drive, morning commute, or anytime you need something really good tolisten to.I highly recommend. ... Read more

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"A writer of astonishing compassion and honesty."

-- Washington Post Book World

This volume of previously uncollected work represents the final legacy of one of the great and truly American writers of our time. It includes five of Raymond Carver's early stories (including the first one he ever published), a fragment of an unpublished novel, poems that have previously appeared only in small-press editions, and all of his uncollected nonfiction. Included here as well is Carver's last essay, "Friendship" about a London reunion with Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff. Arranged chronologically, this book affords an intimate and comprehensive thirty-year vision of a great writer in the process of becoming himself.

"With painful, funny acuteness, Carver captures the electric currents that shoot through people's lives and singe them indelibly." -- Newsweek

"Raymond Carver's America is a place of survivors and a place of stories. He has done what many of the most gifted writers fail to do: He has invented a country of his own, like no other except that very world, as Wordsworth said, which is the world to all of us." -- The New York Times Book Review

"Carver not only enchants, he convinces." -- Time ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

" . . . drains away the strength to resist."
There's something encouraging about discovering the pitfalls of a figure previously thought to be invincible. Upon reading through Raymond Carver's uncollected writings, No Heroics, Please, I was thrilled to not be enjoying myself. "Furious Seasons" is bad mediocre Faulkner, while "The Aficionados" is a rib on Hemingway bullfighting obsession. "Poseiden and Company" is nearly pointless. "Bright Red Apples" is like something I'd write if I was into ripping off Flannery O'Connor and ending on a melodramatic note. The best fiction here is "The Hair," and even that is just an uneventful sign of what was to come. The segment of the novel is all right, but there's no way he could have sustained that for longer than 20-30 pages, especially being the revision-hound that he was. If these early stories were all I had ever read, I certainly wouldn't have read more.

Of course, lots more came. Genius stuff, too. So I don't have room to talk, but it's like I've watched a home movie of "giant's first steps" and seen him fall down a bunch. Surely guys like Carver come out of the womb with a furrowed brow and a knack for prose. Or so I thought.

I focused on the fiction present in this collection, though the poetry is less-than-stellar as well. Carver's poetry isn't that great to begin with, falling into the same traps as Bukowski's poetry, where the poem is just a shortchanged story with line-breaks. The book reviews aren't that good either, as his summaries give away too much (I started skipping the summary and just reading his thoughts) and his opinions--while being well thought-out and written--are essentially underwhelming (something I'd know all about). The "Occasions" section is interesting, though with conversational non-fiction, it's hard to mess up. The essay on "Friendship" was a bit cheesy (he finally let his happiness get to him! Another victory for mere mortals) and the meditation was all right at best. The section with a bunch of introductions completely escapes me, with the exception of the Unknown Chekhov, which I own.

So why read this? If for no other reason, read it after you've read everything else, just to prove to yourself that Carver wasn't a God. At least not at first.

Essential
This book is indispensible (see above) for anyone who appreciates Carver's work.

Amazing poetry
I cannot stess enough what a great poet (and short stories writer) Raymond Carver is. In his minimalist writing style and his hidden way of dealing with exsitential issues, he earned his way to be my favorite (and nearlyonly) male poet. His poetry will not intimmidate those who are not so keenon poetry, and at the same time will touch everybody deeply. The poetry inthis book, isn't trying to be anything grand or anything it simply isn't,it's just the plain truth, with no masks. ... Read more