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1

In related news, old people keep dying from - getting old.

Like McCain.

Posted by Will in Seattle | August 5, 2008 1:56 PM
2

@1, will you please be quiet please?

Posted by Jubilation T. Cornball | August 5, 2008 2:09 PM
3


Doesn't he fall into that rarified milk-fed veal school of authors mainly presented as "good" during Creative Writing classes at college? It's that whole Joyce Carol Oates, never leave the dormitory for the real world kind of novel, wouldn't soil myself for Hollywood...unless Meryl Streep played all six roles...even the male ones...

Posted by John Bailo | August 5, 2008 2:16 PM
4

3: No.

Posted by David Schmader | August 5, 2008 2:19 PM
5

Raymond Carver is one of the main things I dislike about Postmodernism. I'm not interested in the so-called gritty realism that he and everybody who imitates him tries to portray.

Nevertheless, I also wish Will would please be quiet.

Posted by Chris in Tampa | August 5, 2008 2:25 PM
6

I was more into his writing in my 20's than I am now, but I'd still say he's one of the best short story writers of all time. At that age, he was the perfect antidote to the sea of Tom Robbins' types and all (separately) that Latin romantic mysticism that was all the rage with my peer group.

Posted by Dougsf | August 5, 2008 2:36 PM
7

@3, oh my goodness. That was breathtakingly philistine. You may have posted the most misinformed opinion since...god, I don't know; you're even worse than girlgerms.

Carver's writing is profoundly moving; it's likely that I'll never read another writer capable of so movingly evoking the most profound loneliness of the soul, of hopelessness, of being a finger's touch away from something you must have, but will never have. Maybe Proulx in Brokeback, but that was one story; Carver did it again and again, in so many brilliantly different ways, and it always felt like hammer blows.

Yes, I met Carver's writing in college. Guilty as charged. But I can tell you, my dear Bailo, that after all the MFA workshops and the American Lit MA, from among all those writers read, Carver stands immensely tall among his contemporaries, and his predecessors.

Posted by Jubilation T. Cornball | August 5, 2008 2:40 PM
8

Other things happened in 1988 too, you know.

Posted by Will in Seattle | August 5, 2008 2:49 PM
9

Will, shut up.

Posted by Chris in Tampa | August 5, 2008 2:59 PM
10

I'm unsure how I feel about Carver's writing since I read the New Yorker article about Lish's editing:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/24/071224fa_fact

When does an editor go too far? When does the work become, for all intents and purposes, the editor's vision and not the writer's?

Posted by PopTart | August 5, 2008 3:14 PM
11

What we write about when we write about editing:

Editing, an attempt to heighten sense, cutting introspection, description, the sentimental.
He added as well -

- paragraph breaks between lines of dialogue -

the limited, repetitive vocabulary of “K-Mart Realism”.

Posted by kinaidos | August 5, 2008 3:15 PM
12

Holy shit, some of you are wrong. Others of you are right. This is the way of the world, I suppose.

Posted by Paul Constant | August 5, 2008 3:58 PM
13

Dirty Realism, as I remember. Granta coined the term.

Posted by Eric F | August 5, 2008 4:05 PM
14

@10 hey now, since I'm unsure I'm neither right nor wrong. I liked Carver's original story, as re-printed in the New Yorker, more than I liked the edit. But Paul, we rarely agree anyway, so put me down for whatever the opposite of you is.

Posted by PopTart | August 5, 2008 9:07 PM
15

Oh, oops, that was supposed to be @12, directed at Paul. I'm not schizophrenic, I usually do agree with myself...

Posted by PopTart | August 5, 2008 9:08 PM
16

Carver was brilliant and needed now more than ever in a world threatened to be overtaken by the Dave Eggers school of hyperdrived bullshit.

Posted by Bob | August 5, 2008 10:42 PM
17

Hard to get through but in Carruth's case, these are actual miles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMYywOioemA

Posted by dvnms | August 6, 2008 7:47 AM
18

BTW, Carruth mentions a story called "The Ugly Baby." He must mean "Feathers" (from Cathedral), which is a great story. Fran and Jack and Bud and Olla witness transcendent love.

Posted by dvnms | August 6, 2008 8:26 AM
19

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Posted by fjtrpi rmtgn | August 12, 2008 4:16 PM
20

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Posted by fjtrpi rmtgn | August 12, 2008 4:17 PM
21

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Posted by fjtrpi rmtgn | August 12, 2008 4:20 PM

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