Short Cuts: Selected Stories by Raymond Carver
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Book Reviews of Short Cuts: Selected Stories
Book Review: Urges, images and muted longings.
Summary: 5 Stars
Carver explores the neurotic undercurrents of urban dwellers. His characters are typically immersed in the Everyday where the repetitive force of the mundane has them mired in the mechanics of living: House-sitting, birthday parties, beer buddy fishing trips, boredom, initiation of an affair, two pals cruising, looking for a thrill. From these commonplace events, Carver produces stories that are pristine, using language scrubbed clean of verbal theatrics-no show off words, no eccentric constructions - just prose as clean and as spare as Hemingway's and honed dialogue that is simple, but in the way that we say Mozart is simple. The story beneath the undercurrents is what makes Carver so addictive. He describes urges, images, and muted longings that you have always felt, but never could express in words-until now.
Take the story "So Much Water So Close To Home." A group of men go on a beer-bash fishing trip. Early into their trip, they discover the body of a nude woman floating face down in the river. The beer buddies figure to keep fishing! Why ruin a good fishing trip? She's dead already, what harm? After all, they're going to notify the authorities, only later, so as not to interrupt having a good time. The beer-induced logic is funny as hell, but the story's neurotic undercurrent explores sloth, inaction and soulless indifference, characters whose actions can only be sanctified after the factors of humanity and decency have been removed from the equation. The wife of one of the beer buddies serves as the story's conscious. When she discovers that her husband drank and fished while a dead body floated downstream, she is appalled, alarmed. To her every accusation of "What kind of man are you to have done this?" Her husband's consistent answer is "She was ALREADY dead." The marital rift over this issue reflects the story's title "So Much Water So Close To Home."
These are among the best short stories ever penned. If you enjoyed "The Killers," by Hemingway or any of John Cheever's short stories you will be rewarded by reading Carver.
Book Review: Urges, images and muted longings...
Summary: 5 Stars
Carver explores the neurotic undercurrents of urban dwellers. Carver's characters are typically immersed in the Everyday. The repetitive force of the mundane has them mired in the mechanics of living: House-sitting, birthday parties, beer buddy fishing trips, boredom, initiation of an affair, two pals cruising, looking for a thrill. From the mundane and monotony, Carver produces stories that are pristine, using language scrubbed clean of verbal theatrics-no show off words, no eccentric constructions - just prose as clean and as spare as Hemingway and honed dialogue that is simple, but in the way that Mozart is simple. The story beneath the undercurrents is what makes Carver so addictive. He describes urges, images, and muted longings that you have always known existed, but never could express in words-until now.
Take the story "So Much Water So Close To Home." A group of men go on a beer-bash fishing trip. Early into their trip, they discover the body of a nude woman floating face down in the river. The beer buddies figure to keep fishing! Why ruin a good fishing trip? She's dead already, what harm? After all, they're going to notify the authorities; only later, so as not to interrupt having a good time. The beer-induced logic is funny as hell, but the story's neurotic undercurrent explores sloth, inaction and soulless indifference, actions that can only be sanctified after the factors of humanity and decency have been removed from the equation. The wife of one of the beer buddies serves as the story's conscious. When she discovers that her husband drank and fished while a dead body floated downstream, she is appalled, alarmed. To her every accusation of "What kind of man are you to have done this?" Her husband's consistent answer is "She was ALREADY dead." The marital rift over this issue reflects the story's title "So Much Water So Close To Home."
These are among the best short stories ever penned. If you enjoyed "The Killers," by Hemingway or any of John Cheever's short stories you will be rewarded by reading Carver.
Book Review: Raymond Carver: One of the Greats
Summary: 5 Stars
If you love Raymond Carver, or have yet to read any of his stories, this is a great book for you. These are selected stories by Carver, which inspired the movie "Short Cuts." Though I did enjoy the movie, reading the actual stories is ten times more satisfying.Carver is a genius when it comes to the crafting of a short story. He's showed me that you don't need to have the most complex plot or the happiest ending in short stories. You don't even need a solid resolution. Carver creates some of the most memorable characters and is a pro when it comes to dialogue.
I really enjoyed these stories. I liked the fact that some of these stories really caught me off guard. "Tell the Women We're Going," has to have one of the most horrifying and disturbing endings I have ever read in a story. I also liked the fact that these characters seem so real. It's like these are people you have known for all of your life. He writes the way people actually talk, and that is a great talent.
My favorite stories are, "They're Not Your Husband" "Neighbors," "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" "A Small, Good Thing," "Tell the Women We're Going," and "So Much Water so Close to Home." These are very realistic stories that paint a picture of everyday life.
Raymond Carver was a brilliant writer. We need more like him. If you like Carver, or you have yet to read any of his work, check out this book and read some of the stories. It doesn't have a lot, but the ones that are in here are very well done. A book I will read over and over again. We miss you Carver!
Book Review: A world of his own
Summary: 5 Stars
Robert Altman in his introduction to this volume speaks about the element of chance in Carver's work, and how lives are drastically changed in the Carver world by some small incident which can set everything going in a new direction, often a disastrous one.
I feel very uncomfortable with the Carver world though I see what he is doing and recognize his power as a dramatic story- writer who keeps the reader reading to know what is going to happen next. Carver's characters are often people scrambling to make a living. They are often couples in some kind of disarray. The Carver world is a harsh one and yet it has surprising moments of grace and human kindness.
Above all I feel in it some element of destruction, often violent, but often too coming from the self- destructiveness of the characters.
Carver's language is sharp , colloquial and his people seem 'real'.
I recognize his great ability as a writer but somehow I do not feel close to his world or his characters. It is too incidental, transient and difficult for me.
But probably no other writer portrays a certain kind of American world in the way he does. And he gives a feeling of its being a very real world indeed.
Book Review: One of the most exquisite collections of short stories you'll find
Summary: 5 Stars
Carver portrays the banal, mundane, and unknown of life in his exquisite collection of short stories. It is the spouse who after twenty-five years of the same monotonous routine, breaks out and acts in ways that are inconsistent. Showing the psychological buildup of internal angst and tension is what Carver has mastered. He has a way exposing the hidden desire and passion that stem from the dark corners of the psyche. According to Joseph Campbell, many people are uncomfortable reading these types of stories.
The emotional charge that comes from Carver's careful observation takes his writing to the level of masterpiece literature. The narrative observatory techniques in the third person are detached and objective. A few of Carver's stories are written in first person, which give him an opportunity to get inside his protagonist, but even here, Carver chooses to stay at a distance, allowing the reader to dally in ambiguity.