Raymond Carver's 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 knife-edge of poverty and other deprivations. Beneath his pared-down surfaces run disturbing, violent undercurrents. Suggestive rather than explicit, and seeming all the more powerful for what is left unsaid, Carver's 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. Carver's 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 I'm 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 effects.
In gathering all of Carver's stories, including early sketches and posthumously discovered works, The Library of America's Collected Stories provides a comprehensive overview of Carver's 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. Lish's 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 relation between writer and editor, Beginners expands our sense of Carver and is essential reading for anyone who cares about his achievement.
Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, in 1938. His father was a saw-mill worker and his mother was a waitress and clerk. He married early and for years writing had to come second to earning a living for his young family. Despite, small-press publication, it was not until Will You Please Be Quiet Please? appeared in 1976 that his work began to reach a wider audience. This was the year in which he gave up alcohol, which had contributed to the collapse of his marriage. In 1977 he met the writer Tess Gallagher, with whom he shared the last eleven years of his life. During this prolific period he wrote three collections of stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Cathedral and Elephant. Fires, a collection of essays, poems and stories, appeared in 1985, followed by three further collections of poetry. In 1988 he completed the poetry collection A New Path to the Waterfall.
William L. Stull, editor, is professor of English at the University of Hartford.
Maureen P. Carroll, editor, is adjunct professor of humanities at the University of Hartford and a practicing attorney. They have devoted more than two decades to the work of Raymond Carver, publishing numerous essays and editing Conversations with Raymond Carver (1990), Remembering Ray: A Composite Biography (1993), All of Us: The Collected Poems (1996), and Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose (2000).
How to make people feel desperate? Don't blame them, nor need you yell, scream or cry. That is too explicit. You just silently suppress them. Create certain atmosphere. Torture them by acting instead of saying anything. The gruesome calmness easily crashes ...
评分先有海明威的 Men without Women (1927),后有村上春树的〈女のいない男たち〉(2014),实在没有理由不给卡佛也编一个同名选集,毕竟他的很多作品都符合这个主题,譬如〈[收集]〉、〈[夜校]〉、〈[不跳个舞吗?]〉。十年前读卡佛,只觉得犀利,但其实什么都没读懂,没有办法真正...
评分先有海明威的 Men without Women (1927),后有村上春树的〈女のいない男たち〉(2014),实在没有理由不给卡佛也编一个同名选集,毕竟他的很多作品都符合这个主题,譬如〈[收集]〉、〈[夜校]〉、〈[不跳个舞吗?]〉。十年前读卡佛,只觉得犀利,但其实什么都没读懂,没有办法真正...
评分How to make people feel desperate? Don't blame them, nor need you yell, scream or cry. That is too explicit. You just silently suppress them. Create certain atmosphere. Torture them by acting instead of saying anything. The gruesome calmness easily crashes ...
评分How to make people feel desperate? Don't blame them, nor need you yell, scream or cry. That is too explicit. You just silently suppress them. Create certain atmosphere. Torture them by acting instead of saying anything. The gruesome calmness easily crashes ...
我必须承认,初次接触这位作家的作品时,我的内心是抗拒的。太灰暗了,太聚焦于人性的那些“不可爱”的部分。他似乎刻意避开了所有传统文学中关于英雄主义和浪漫救赎的描写,转而把镜头对准了那些在生活边缘挣扎、语言能力退化到只能进行最基本交流的个体。文字的密度极高,每一个短句都像是一块精细切割过的玻璃碎片,锋利而易碎。我特别欣赏他对于环境细节的捕捉,比如一台嗡嗡作响的冰箱,或者窗外永恒不变的阴沉天空,这些背景元素仿佛成了人物内心状态的具象化投射。当你读到主人公试图用笨拙的肢体语言或者一句错位的问候来打破僵局,但最终失败时,那种强烈的挫败感会穿透纸面,直接击中你的神经。这哪里是小说,这简直是一份精准的手术报告,剖开了现代人际关系中那些难以言喻的隔阂。
评分说实话,我把这本书放在床头好几个月才鼓起勇气读完。并不是说它很难懂,而是它太“沉重”了。这不适合在心情愉悦的时候翻阅,它更像是一面镜子,映照出我们自己都不愿面对的那些生活碎片——对未来的迷茫、对亲密关系的疲倦、以及那种即便身处人群中也挥之不去的孤独感。我特别喜欢他处理“沉默”的方式。在很多段落里,人物之间大量的对话是无效的,真正的意义都隐藏在他们没有说出口的话里,隐藏在他们递烟的姿势里,隐藏在他们盯着电视屏幕时眼神的游移里。这种对日常微小瞬间的精准捕捉,体现了对生活本质近乎残酷的洞察力。它不会让你感觉被治愈,但它会让你感到被理解,被一种非常冷静、不带任何感情色彩的理解。
评分这本小说集简直就是对“平淡生活中的暗涌”最好的诠释。卡佛的笔触干净得像刚下过雨的街道,每一个字都带着一种不加修饰的真实感。你读着那些关于工人阶级、关于婚姻中的冷漠、关于酒精如何缓慢吞噬掉梦想的故事,一开始可能会觉得平淡无奇,甚至有点索然无味。但正是这种看似波澜不惊的叙事,像一个沉重的秤砣,慢慢地压在了你的心口。那些人物,他们不会有宏大的哲学思考,他们的挣扎都发生在厨房的餐桌上、廉价汽车的后座里,或者是一杯又一杯威士忌下肚之后。最让我感到震撼的是,他从不急于给出一个答案或一个明确的结局。事情就是发生了,然后就这么搁置在那里,带着一种宿命般的无力感。读完后,你不会感到大彻大悟,只会觉得空气变得稀薄了,仿佛自己也沾染上了那种生活特有的、挥之不去的疲惫和淡淡的绝望。这种“什么都没发生,但一切都改变了”的感觉,太高级了。
评分这本书的结构安排非常巧妙,每一篇短篇的能量都集中在小小的篇幅内爆发,像一个个微型核弹。我最欣赏的一点是,他笔下的人物尽管生活困顿,但他们身上总残留着某种原始的尊严,即使是在最卑微的境地里,他们也拒绝彻底的沦陷。这种内在的抵抗,往往通过一些极小的动作来体现,比如一个男人坚持要自己修好漏水的龙头,而不是去叫人帮忙;或者一个女人在丈夫醉倒后,只是默默地收拾残局,然后看向窗外,那种眼神里没有控诉,只有对时间流逝的无奈。阅读体验是压抑的,但这种压抑并非令人窒息,反而有一种净化作用。它让你重新审视自己生活中的“必需品”和“奢侈品”,让你感激那些你曾经视为理所当然的稳定和宁静。这是一部需要细嚼慢咽,并且会在你放下书很久之后依然在脑海中回响的作品。
评分与其他那些热衷于构建复杂世界观或者心理迷宫的作家不同,他的力量来源于极度的节制。你几乎找不到任何冗余的形容词或者华丽的排比句,叙述节奏如同一个老练的鼓手,在最恰当的时候突然放慢、收紧,让你屏住呼吸。我注意到他非常擅长使用“留白”,故事的很多关键冲突点往往被轻描淡写地带过,或者干脆留给读者自己去脑补其背后蕴含的巨大能量。这种叙事手法,对于习惯了被喂养式阅读的读者来说,可能需要适应期,但一旦进入他的频率,你会发现这种“不直说”比任何直白描写都更具穿透力。它迫使你的大脑去填补那些缺失的连接,让你在不经意间成为了故事的共同创作者,共同品尝那种弥漫在空气中的不安。
评分Cathedral很是让我震撼。
评分看了几篇 发觉都差不多
评分吭吭哧哧读完
评分終於開始看ray carver了。
评分終於開始看ray carver了。
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