Profile of Raymond Carver on Famous Like Me

Raymond Carver (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was an American short story writer and poet.

Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon and grew up in Yakima, Washington. For a time, Carver studied under the author John Gardner at Chico State College in Chico, California. He published a number of short stories over his lifetime that describe blue-collar life in a number of periodicals, including The New Yorker and Esquire, which were later collected into books. His stories have been included in some of the most competitive collections in the country: Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Stories.

Carver's second wife was the poet Tess Gallagher. An alcoholic whose drinking manifested itself in his work, he was sober for the last ten years of his life. He was a close friend of Tobias Wolff and Richard Ford. In 1988, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Carver's writings are often associated with minimalism. His editor at Esquire, Gordon Lish, was instrumental in shaping Carver's prose. For example, where Gardner had advised Carver to use 15 words instead of 25, Lish instructed Carver to use 5 in place of 15. During this time, Carver also submitted poetry to James Dickey, then poetry editor of Esquire.

Carver died in Port Angeles, Washington, from lung cancer, at the age of 50.

Works

Fiction

• Neighbors
• They’re Not Your Husband
• Vitamins
• Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
• So Much Water So Close to Home
• A Small, Good Thing
• Jerry and Molly and Sam
• Collectors
• Tell the Women We’re Going
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
• Furious Seasons
• Cathedral
• Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories
• Elephant
• Short Cuts

Poetry

• All of Us: The Collected Poems
• A New Path to the Waterfall
• Ultramarine
• Where Water Comes Together with Other Water
• At Night the Salmon Move
• Winter Insomnia
• Near Klamath
• So Much Water So Close To Home

Collected

• Fires
• No Heroics, Please
• Call if you Need Me
• Where I'm Calling From, ISBN 0679722319

Call if you... is an updated version of No Heroics, Please. NHP, published first, featured most of Mr. Carver's uncollected works (early fiction, essays, introductions to other books, etc) as well as uncollected poems. The republished version, Call if... eliminated the poetry but added five new stories, which Gallagher and a friend of hers found among Mr. Carver's papers.

Films

• Shortcuts directed By Robert Altman
• Everything Goes directed By Andrew Kotatko

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