American · b. 1938
Raymond Carver was an American writer regarded as one of the great masters of the modern short story, a leading figure of literary minimalism, author of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.
Raymond Carver is credited with helping revitalize the American short story, writing spare, precise tales of working-class lives, marriages under strain, and quiet desperation.
His collections — including What We Talk About When We Talk About Love and Cathedral — became defining works of literary minimalism, their pared-down style (shaped in part by his editor Gordon Lish) capturing ordinary lives with restraint and devastating implication. He was also an accomplished poet.
Carver is celebrated as one of the supreme short-story writers of the twentieth century, whose influence on the form has been immense.
by Raymond Carver
Twelve short stories that open the minimalist compression of Carver's earlier work into something wider and more generous. A blind man visits a narrator who resents his presence; a woman whose husband has died asks to be taken to the ocean; a couple moves into a new house and finds their marriage reconfigured by distance. Carver at his most humane and his most hopeful.
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by Raymond Carver
Seventeen minimalist short stories of working-class American life: waitresses, mechanics, salesmen, the recently divorced and the chronically unemployed. Carver's people drink too much, talk around what they mean, and find that love and damage are often the same thing. The landmark collection that defined American minimalism and influenced a generation of writers.
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Raymond Carver's complete bibliography in order — from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love to Cathedral and Where I'm Calling From. Best starting points.
guide
Where to start with Raymond Carver — whether to begin with Cathedral, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, or his poetry. A complete reading guide.
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