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Stephen King puts the spotlight on Raymond Carver
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Stephen King puts the spotlight on American short story writer Raymond Carver in The New York Times.
Stephen King puts the spotlight on American short story writer Raymond Carver in The New York Times.
In an article in the Sunday Book Review published on November 19th, Stephen King reviews two recent Raymond Carver books, "Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life", a biography by Carol Sklenicka and a long-overdue "Collected Stories." Both works "spotlight Carver's growth as a writer and illuminate his poisonous relationship with the editor Gordon Lish," King writes.
In "Collected Stories," edited by William L. Stull and Maureen P. Carroll, The Library of America publishes an overwiew of Carver's stories, and also includes "Beginners", an edition of the manuscript of "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" submitted by Carver to Gordon Lish, his influential editor. Thus, "Collected Stories" is not only an exciting mixture of Carver's stories. It is also a close look at the relationship between author and editor, one that, in Carver's case, greatly influenced his work.
Stephen King writes, "Carver himself says it best. When the narrator of “The Fling” finally faces up to the fact that he has no love or comfort to give his father, he says of himself, 'I was all smooth surface with nothing inside except emptiness.' Ultimately, that’s what is wrong with the Ray Carver stories as Lish presented them to the world, and what makes both the Sklenicka biography and the “Collected Stories” such a welcome and necessary corrective."
Read a review of "Premium Harmony", short story by Stephen King recently published in The New Yorker.
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