# Raymond Carver: Collected Stories (Loa #195): Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? / What We Talk about When We Talk about Love /Cathedral / Stories from - Hardcover

by **Raymond Carver** (Author), **William Stull** (Editor), **Maureen Carroll** (Editor)

In collections such as _Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?_ and _What We Talk About When We Talk About Love_, Raymond 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.

**LIBRARY OF AMERICA** is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

### Author Biography

**Raymond Carver** (1938-1988), the author of such landmark collections as _Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?_ (1976), _What We Talk About When We Talk About Love_ (1981), and _Cathedral_ (1983), was perhaps the most influential short-story writer of his generation.

**William L. Stull** and **Maureen P. Carroll**, editors, have devoted 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).

**Number of Pages:** 960

**Dimensions:** 1.4 x 8 x 5.2 IN

**Publication Date:** August 20, 2009

## Details

- **Price:** 45.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 45.00 USD | In stock |

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- Raymond Carver: Collected Stories (Loa #195): Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? / What We Talk about When We Talk about Love /Cathedral / Stories from - Hardcover

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