An Anthology of Raymond Carver stories - uncut ;)

Fans and scholars of Raymond Carver can now read his entire oeuvre of completed stories in one place: the nonprofit Library of America has published “Carver: Collected Stories.” The volume includes all stories published in his lifetime, four stories that were never collected, and five stories that were discovered after his death.

Perhaps most notably, the volume includes earlier versions of all 17 stories published in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” the 1981 collection that cemented Carver’s reputation as a master of the minimalist short story. The stories had been radically edited and cut by Gordon Lish, then Carver’s editor at Alfred A. Knopf. At the time, Carver tried to halt publication of the book, but Knopf went ahead. Tess Gallagher, Carver’s widow and a writer, has been leading an effort to publish the unedited versions for several years.

William L. Stull, an English professor at University of Hartford and Maureen P. Carroll, an adjunct professor of humanities at the University of Hartford, reconstructed the Carver stories from Mr. Lish’s papers, now housed at the Lilly Library of Indiana University. Mr. Stull and Ms. Carroll also edited the Library of America collection.

“I don’t think you can really understand Carver’s career or his development as a writer without reading both” the stories as edited by Mr. Lish or as originally written by Carver, said Max Rudin, publisher of the Library of America.

See a comparison of the edited and original versions of Raymond Carver’s stories. (.pdf)

The NY Times
Photo from The New Yorker