For much of the past 20 years, Gordon Lish, an editor at Esquire and then at Alfred A. Knopf who is now retired, has been quietly telling friends that he played a crucial role in the creation of the early short stories of Raymond Carver. The details varied from telling to telling, but the basic idea was that he had changed some of the stories so much that they were more his than Carver's. No one quite knew what to make of his statements. Carver, who died 10 years ago this month, never responded in public to them. How To Use Bluetooth On My Hp Laptop more. Basically it was Lish's word against common sense. Lish had written fiction, too: If he was such a great talent, why did so few people care about his own work?

As the years passed, Lish became reluctant to discuss the subject. Maybe he was choosing silence over people's doubt.

Maybe he had rethought what his contribution had been -- or simply moved on. Seven years ago, Lish arranged for the sale of his papers to the Lilly Library at Indiana University. Since then, only a few Carver scholars have examined the Lish manuscripts thoroughly. When one tried to publish his conclusions, Carver's widow and literary executor, the poet Tess Gallagher, effectively blocked him with copyright cautions and pressure.

Here were the stories from his first two collections as well as from 'Cathedral' in versions from manuscript to printer's galleys. Keygen Php Maker 11alive more. Sly 'They're Not Your Husband.' Raymond Carver's. 'They're Not Your Husband' by Raymond Carver (1981, 7 pages) My Prior Posts on Raymond Carver Raymond Carver (1938 to 1988, Oregon, USA) is on a lot of top ten short story writer of all times lists.

I'd heard about this scholar's work (and its failure to be published) through a friend. So I decided to visit the archive myself. What I found there, when I began looking at the manuscripts of stories like 'Fat' and 'Tell the Women We're Going,' were pages full of editorial marks -- strikeouts, additions and marginal comments in Lish's sprawling handwriting.

It looked as if a temperamental 7-year-old had somehow got hold of the stories. As I was reading, one of the archivists came over. I thought she was going to reprimand me for some violation of the library rules. But that wasn't why she was there. She wanted to talk about Carver.

'I started reading the folders,' she said, 'but then I stopped when I saw what was in there.' ' It's understandable that Lish's assertions have never been taken seriously. The eccentric editor is up against an American icon. The Celestial Country By Bernard Of Cluny Pdf Printer more.

When he died at age 50 from lung cancer, Carver was considered by many to be America's most important short-story writer. His stories were beautiful and moving. At a New York City memorial service, Robert Gottlieb, then the editor of The New Yorker, said succinctly, 'America has just lost the writer it could least afford to lose.' ' Carver is no longer a writer of the moment, the way David Foster Wallace is today, but many of his stories -- 'Cathedral,' 'Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?' ' and 'Errand' -- are firmly established in the literary canon. A vanguard figure in the 1980's, Carver has become establishment fiction. Advertisement That doesn't capture his claim on us, though.

It goes deeper than his work. Born in the rural Northwest, Carver was the child of an alcoholic sawmill worker and a waitress. He first learned to write through a correspondence course.

He lived in poverty and suffered multiple bouts of alcoholism throughout his 30's. He struggled in a difficult marriage with his high-school girlfriend, Maryann Burk. Through it all he remained a generous, determined man -- fiction's comeback kid. By 1980, he had quit drinking and moved in with Tess Gallagher, with whom he spent the rest of his life. 'I know better than anyone a fellow is never out of the woods,' he wrote to Lish in one of dozens of letters archived at the Lilly. 'But right now it's aces, and I'm enjoying it.'

' Carver's life and work inspired faith, not skepticism. Still, a quick look through Carver's books would suggest that what Lish claims might have some merit. There is an evident gap between the early style of 'Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?' ' and 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,' Carver's first two major collections, and his later work in 'Cathedral' and 'Where I'm Calling From.' ' In subject matter, the stories share a great deal. They are mostly about the working poor -- unemployed salesmen, waitresses, motel managers -- in the midst of disheartening lives.

But the early collections, which Lish edited, are stripped to the bone. They are minimalist in style with an almost abstract feel.

They drop their characters back down where they find them, inarticulate and alone, drunk at noon. The later two collections are fuller, touched by optimism, even sentimentality.