Clayton writes:
-----Original Message-----
From: Clayton Hansen <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 26 October 2000 09:02
Subject: Re: Raymond Carver
I have the Picador volume The Stories of Raymond Carver, which contains the
stories originally published in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please, What We
Talk About When We Talk About Love and Cathedral. (I've a feeling that he
must have published at least one volume after this.) One of the greatest
short-story writers ever - I don't know his poetry. But I find his early
stories the best - the first three in my book, Fat, Neighbors and The Idea
are devastating. I've always suspected that after the early stories,
somebody taught him to write 'properly', with well-constructed plots etc,
and somehow the dangerousness went out of the stories. I find Cathedral (the
story) sentimental. An interesting case in point is the story The Bath,
which has an open ending in What We Talk About, and gets done again in
Cathedral as A Small Good Thing, with a very sentimental one. (The Altman
film Short Cuts uses the latter version).
He died at 50, of lung cancer.
Best wishes
Matthew
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