Call If You Need Me

Description

A new collection containing previously unpublished stories that show Carver at the peak of his powers as a contemporary master of American fiction. When he died in August 1988, Raymond Carver had just published what were thought to be his last stories in his own selection, Where I'm Calling From. This new volume brings together all of his uncollected fiction, including three late stories only recently discovered in his house in Port Angeles, a fragment of a novel, five early stories, and all of his non-fiction prose, including his last essay "Friendship", about a London reunion with Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff. The five "new" stories are wonderful examples of his late open style, while the non-fiction prose includes all of the essays, together with occasional commentary on his own fiction and poetry, writings on the American short story, and reviews of work by his contemporaries, including Donald Barthelme, Richard Brautigan, Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane and Richard Ford. Call if you Need Me: The Uncollected Writings takes us into Carver's workshop, and completes the picture of one of the most original writers of his generation in the English language.

Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, in 1938. His father was a saw-mill worker and his mother was a waitress and clerk. He married early and for years writing had to come second to earning a living for his young family. Despite small-press publication, it was not until Will You Please Be Quiet Please? appeared in 1976 that his work began to reach a wider audience. This was the year in which he gave up alcohol, which had contributed to the collapse of his marriage. In 1977 he met the writer Tess Gallagher, with whom he shared the last eleven years of his life. During this prolific period he wrote three collections of stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Cathedral and Elephant. Fires, a collection of essays, poems and stories, appeared in 1985, followed by three further collections of poetry. In 1988 he completed the poetry collection A New Path to the Waterfall.

Raymond Carver has done what many of the most gifted writers fail to do, he has invented a country of his own -- Michael Wood * New York Times * The prose is a prayer book of simple words, unsentimental. Carver's gleam -- Tom Adair * Scotsman * Carver the writer is still the hero of this story, as this 'last of the last' abundantly proves -- Bharart Tandon * Times Literary Supplement * In Call If You Need Me, generosity and fidelity to his characters shine from every page... In his style, Carver may have affinities with Hemingway, but his portrayal of relationships between men and women is deeper and more nuanced than anything the old bullfighter ever committed to print -- Toby Mundy * New Statesman *