Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

‘It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.’Life has a way of breaking even the strongest of hearts, of dashing families, friendships and lovers against the cold rocks of reality, leaving hopes and dreams to drown beneath the waves of approaching days.Through his short life—the chord of life severed by his own vices—Raymond Carver (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) created a body of work that dives into the wreckage of such [...]

The typical profile of an American adult reader of literature is a college-educated professional making a decent salary in a choice environment such as the publishing industry, law office, consulting firm or college or university. But how about the other America, populated by men and women worlds away from ever reading literary works, men and women living in the raw-boned land of work boots, crap jobs, hard liquor, chain smokes, trailer camps, hollering from foul mouths and breakdowns from beat- [...]

I wanted the first book I read in 2018 to be special, and this classic selection of stories by Raymond Carver – the final book he published during his lifetime (he died in 1988 at the incredibly young age of 50) – fit the bill.Here, presented in chronological order, are 37 stories representing more than two decades’ work. Some of them are among the most powerful and influential works of short fiction published in the late 20th century. Most are written in a clear, unpretentious voice that� [...]

5 starsIn keeping with my “study” of the short story, I figured it was about time I picked up Raymond Carver. (Call me a late-bloomer.) The only story I had previously read by him was Cathedral, which is excellent. This is basically a story about a skeptical, somewhat superficial man who is taught by a blind man how to “see”.The 37 stories in this 526 page collection are arranged chronologically. The final story, called Errand, unpublished at the time of Carver’s untimely death, begins [...]

[Impressioni scritte prima del 15 febbraio 2018]L’altro pomeriggio sabato, ferma ad un semaforo in attesa della freccia di svolta a sinistra, occhio nello specchietto retrovisore che mi restituisce un’immagine nitidamente perfetta non accecata dalla luce di una giornate di sole né oscurata dal buio notturno.Come fosse lo schermo rettangolare di un cinema in un contrasto di bianco e nero vedo una coppia perfettamente a fuoco nell’auto che mi sta dietro.Sono di mezza età né brutti né bel [...]

Devo dire che con nessun altro autore l'effetto sorpresa è stato più violento che con Carver. Le tre ore senza interruzioni in cui mi spazzolai da cima a fondo “Di cosa parliamo quando parliamo d’amore” rimarranno una delle mie esperienze più significative di lettore, le paragonai ad una donna incontrata in vacanza. Se quella stessa donna te la porti a casa la magia finisce; inizia qualcos’altro, ma la magia va persa. Alcuni racconti sono la versione extended di quelli pubblicati in a [...]

Obliquity & ellipses define Carver's minimal prose. It's a threadbare style that doesn't give you much to chew on but somehow it captures the threadbare lives scattered across these stories perfectly. There's sadness & desolation here that would numb you to the point of oblivion, the coiling despair tightening & tightening around you like a python's grip till you are swallowed whole into its blackness. Carver takes the ephemera and flotsam of non-descript, everyday life that no one w [...]

I'm Callin' From Where?"And everything you love starts to disappear,The devil takes your hand and says no fear,'Have another shot, just one more beer.'Yeah I've been there,That's why I'm here."Kenny Chesney, That's Why I'm Here, 1997The Hoff, HammeredUpon starting my own literary renaissance, as part of a mid-life identity crisis, about 9 years ago, I hadn't heard of Raymond Carver. On the New Yorker's monthly fiction podcast, I heard a reading of Carver's short story, "Chef's House." I was move [...]

Murakami on CarverI've never read so many stories about divorcees, unhappy marriages or relationships, dysfunctional families and alcoholics. Carver's writing was incredibly real, and this collection will definitely stay in my memory - I'll be picking this up again down the track, and maybe I will connect with it on a deeper level as I catch up to the ages of the characters, whom are generally older than 30.I'd been interested in reading Carver since Haruki Murakami had consistently praised him [...]

21 novembre 2011Ieri SKY+qualcosa ha dedicato la serata alla regia di Altman. Inizio a guardare America Oggi e dopo pochi minuti sono un po’ confusa – so di non aver mai visto il film, ma lo conosco - mi informo e realizzo che è basato sui racconti di Raymond Carver. Dopo essermi detta: quanto ignori, ragazza mia, me ne sono fatta una ragione e ho voluto ben predispormi alla visione, nella volontà di rettificare la mia opinione su Carver che, come ho scritto precedentemente ma qui sotto � [...]

Miles Davis once said, when asked why he played such minimalist, modal melodies when his contemporaries were going for the more fevered, manic sound of be-bop, "I try to only play the notes that matter."That's Raymond Carver. Sparse, deceptively simple, and capable of tearing your soul out by hitting the right notes, consistently, and with purity.Some of these stories sometimes didn't even strike me as I read them. I'd put the book down, walk away, and hours later, not be able to shake the image [...]

Ciao Ray,stasera pensavo a te. Ho preso la tua raccolta di racconti preferiti e ne ho riletti alcuni. Non capisco perché alcuni miei amici, pur apprezzandoti, ritengano che tu sia deprimente. Io trovo forza nelle tue storie, anche disperazione, ma nessuno dei tuoi personaggi si compiange e non fa nulla, anzi. C'è un' accecante passione verso la vita, il fare, il ripromettersi che la prossima volta non commetteranno lo stesso errore, anche se sbagliano ancora e ancora. Ma Dio, siamo uomini, no? [...]

A band I loved in high school -- Peter Parker, of course -- had a song named "Where I'm Calling From," which was based on the title of this book, so I was implored to pick it up.I started read it there and then, and while I think some of the brilliance was hard for my young mind to grasp, there was plenty of it that I could appreciate, despite my naivete. "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is one of my runaway favorites - I tried to do my own short story tribute to it (but failed miser [...]

The Stories included here are:Nobody Said AnythingBicycles,Muscles,CigarettesThe Student's WifeThey're not your HusbandWhat do you do in San Fransico?FatWhat's in Alaska?NeighborsPut Yourself in My ShoesCollectorsWhy,Honey?Are these actual Miles?GazeboOne More ThingLittle ThingsWhy Don't you Dance?A Serious TalkWhat We Talk About When We Talk About LoveDistanceThe Third Thing That Killed my Father OffSo Much water so close to HomeThe CalmVitaminsCarefulWhere I'm Calling FromChef's HouseFeverFeat [...]

I seem to be one of the few people who managed to read this before seeing the Altman film Short Cuts, which is based on nine of the stories. I also like Short Cuts more than most of my friends. Possibly there's some connection.

"Da dove sto chiamando" è una raccolta di 37 dei migliori racconti di Carver. Carver, con la sua grande capacità e invettiva, ci porta nella sua America. L'America raccontata e descritta da Carver è completamente ddiiversa dalla America che siamo abituati a conoscere. Non è l'America dei sogni che si realizzano, ma è l'America dei sogni infranti, della disperazione. I racconti di Carver sono vere e proprie pennellate di vita. Sono pennellate che raccontano e descrivono la desolazione, l'inc [...]

Suffice it to say that Carver is universally recognized as one of the leading lights of Modern American Fiction.Admired by college professors as well as more casual readers, Carver is as enjoyable a read as you will find.Choosing his heroes from everyday life, Carver is that rare writer who is both well respected yet easy to read. With Carver, it's difficult to choose a favorite.Each story is of the highest quality , a reflection of just how consistent a fine writer Carver is.While this collecti [...]

A collection of short stories from a writer considered by many to be one the master of the modern short story. Many of the stories have a flavor of the author’s youth (let’s say the 1940’s and 50’s since Carver was born in 1938 and died at age 50) even though they were written in the 1970’s and 1980’s. The stories have acquired a patina of quaintness from that era: boys on bikes going fishing in the local creek; door-to-door salesmen; everyone smokes; everyone drinks scotch; the mail [...]

4.5 i enjoyed most of the stories. two in particular that i really enjoyed were elephant (best ending) and a small good thing (all around great. tearjerker) read it. highly recommend. this review would be much better buttttt i lost my notes.

When I read a book of short stories, I usually wait eagerly for the title story, the one that the book is named after. And then I wonder how that selection was made. In this case the stories are gathered from several previous collections but only one was chosen to be the title of the book. Often in the review of a book of short stories, like this one, the reviewer will summarize several stories to give you a flavor of the book. Other reviewers have done that with Where I’m Calling From so I wi [...]

Elefante, ovvero l'importanza di esserci per gli altri Carver amava la filosofia della libertà di Jaspers e forse mai, come in questo racconto, è riuscito a dimostrare quanto sia catartico scoprire chi si è nel mondo. In questa puntata di 42 si parla del nostro ruolo nelle relazioni, di scelte e, ovviamente, di filosofia della libertà dalla musica degli Smithsundcloud/quarantadue-la

Βecause of Carver, I became addicted to american short stories in my early twenties, more than twenty years ago. I am still hooked Actually, one of his main themes is the struggle against addiction. Another is failure. And the need for love. They are all connected I am a fan of his minimalistic, elliptical early pieces (his editor urged him to cut, like Pound edited T.S.Eliot) but I also admire his later, "uncut" stories, the lyrical ones. Especially his last one, " Errand", written before his [...]

Raymond Carver is generally accepted as the master of the contemporary American short story, and while I have a knee-jerk balk at such high praise of Carver's work, no one more deserving of the epithet comes immediately to mind. Don't get me wrong. I love Carver. He's a very good, very talented, subtle, and perceptive writer. On the other hand, I do not believe he's a very good stroyteller. What he pens aren't exactly page-turners. I've read stories that were difficult to describe because so muc [...]

Why should a collection of short stories published in 1983 be included in Bloom's Western Canon, published in 1994? If the definition of the Western Canon is said to include those works which have most influenced Western culture, then surely this collection would not have had time to do so. Instead, I think it is a collection which reflects a small segment of that culture.At first I read several stories in one sitting. They seemed so much alike to me that I decided to read one or two a few after [...]

tinyurl/4a63ubThere's something about reading short stories that really appeals to me. 1) They go by fast. 2) There's a whole cosmos in 10 pages. 3) Only the best can do them right.I'd never read a Carver story, but I have seen Short Cuts (based on Carver stories). A couple of those are in this collection, notably "A Good Small Thing" (which you'll remember as the Lyle Lovett piece)-- breath-taking in its depth and breadth of emotion. Most of Carver's stories are about drinking and ex-wives, but [...]

Stories about people who are unhappy, will be unhappy, don't know they're unhappy, or are just getting over being unhappy and are almost always drunk or drinking either way. That's a generalization, but a pretty fair one. If you haven't read Raymond Carver before, you should. Too much at one time and their tone becomes a dirge, and some stories are so Carveresque that they read like parodies of themselves (i.e. "One More Thing", "Little Things", and "A Serious Talk"), but for the most past they [...]

I read most of the stories in here about six years ago, but I'm rereading "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" right now, and then maybe some others. It's because of this article from the New Yorker: newyorker/reporting/20d the version of that story that's also included that is supposedly Carver's preferred draft. The relationship between him and his editor is awfully unsettling to me, and I'd like to decide which version of the story I actually prefer. I just finished up the longer one [...]

I do not normally like short stories, I am a fan of the longer novels that really develop a storyline, characters, plot, and have a true climax and ending. However at the beginning of Carver's collection of short stories I was interested in their variety. By time I had read half of the book, I had realized that this variety was actually just a collection of various ways people are depressed and hate their lives. The whole collection to me was just disturbing, depressing, or pointless. I do not d [...]

Reading Raymond Carver is akin to listening to a friend telling story of past experience on a warm sunny afternoon with the joy and sadness of any good tale. It is like eavesdropping on someones inner feelings or spying on someones personal life, but always a good read and a pleasure to read.

An exhausting collection of troubling tales. The saddest story isn't in this 526-page roundup, but rather is the story surrounding this roundup: it is evident that Carver, at the tale end of his life, was just starting to do his best work -- he'd finally worked a lot of that boozy machismo out of his system and was beginning to finally dive to true depths in his writing. At the time of publication, at the time of death, Carver had only just reached his 50th birthday, and would no doubt have cont [...]