raymond carvers spare dramas of loneliness despair and troubled relationships breathed new life into the american short story of the 1970s and 80s in collections such as will you please be quiet please and what we talk about when we talk about love carver wrote with unflinching exactness about men and women enduring lives on the knifeedge of poverty and other deprivations beneath his pareddown surfaces run disturbing violent undercurrents suggestive rather than explicit and seeming all the more powerful for what is left unsaid carvers stories were held up as exemplars of a new school in american fiction known as minimalism or dirty realism a movement whose wide influence continues to this day carvers stories were brilliant in their detachment and use of the oblique ambiguous gesture yet there were signs of a different sort of sensibility at work in books such as cathedral and the later tales included in the collected stories volume where im calling from carver revealed himself to be a more expansive writer than in the earlier published books displaying chekhovian sympathies toward his characters and relying less on elliptical effectsin gathering all of carvers stories including early sketches and posthumously discovered works the library of americas collected stories provides a comprehensive overview of carvers career as we have come to know it the promise of will you please be quiet please and the breakthrough of what we talk about on through the departures taken in cathedral and the pathos of the late stories but it also prompts a fresh consideration of carver by presenting beginners an edition of the manuscript of what we talk about when we talk about love that carver submitted to gordon lish his editor and a crucial influence on his development lishs editing was so extensive that at one point carver wrote him an anguished letter asking him not to publish the book now for the first time readers can read both the manuscript and published versions of the collection that established carver as a major american writer offering a fascinating window into the complex fraught relationship between writer and editor beginners expands our sense of carver and is essential reading for anyone who cares about his achievementcontentswhat we talk about when we talk about lovewhy dont you danceviewfindermr coffee and mr fixitgazeboi could see the smallest thingssacksthe bathtell the women were goingafter the denimso much water so close to homethe third thing that killed my father offa serious talkthe calmpopular mechanicseverything stuck to himwhat we talk about when we talk about loveone more thingstories from firesthe liethe cabinharrys deaththe pheasantcathedralfeatherschefs housepreservationthe compartmenta small good thingvitaminscarefulwhere im calling fromthe trainfeverthe bridlecathedralfrom where im calling fromboxeswhoever was using this bedintimacymenudoelephantblackbird pieerrandother fictionthe hairthe aficionadosposeidon and companybright red applesfrom the augustine notebookskindlingwhat would you like to seedreamsvandalscall if you need meselected essaysmy fathers lifeon writingfiresauthors note to where im calling frombeginners the manuscript version of what we talk about when we talk about lovewhy dont you danceviewfinderwhere is everyonegazebowant to see somethingthe