Product Description

"A writer of astonishing compassion and honesty."

-- Washington Post Book World

This volume of previously uncollected work represents the final legacy of one of the great and truly American writers of our time. It includes five of Raymond Carver's early stories (including the first one he ever published), a fragment of an unpublished novel, poems that have previously appeared only in small-press editions, and all of his uncollected nonfiction. Included here as well is Carver's last essay, "Friendship" about a London reunion with Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff. Arranged chronologically, this book affords an intimate and comprehensive thirty-year vision of a great writer in the process of becoming himself.

"With painful, funny acuteness, Carver captures the electric currents that shoot through people's lives and singe them indelibly." -- Newsweek

"Raymond Carver's America is a place of survivors and a place of stories. He has done what many of the most gifted writers fail to do: He has invented a country of his own, like no other except that very world, as Wordsworth said, which is the world to all of us." -- The New York Times Book Review

"Carver not only enchants, he convinces." -- Time

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1506413 in Books
• Published on: 1992-06-09
• Released on: 1992-06-09
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 239 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This ragtag collection features juvenilia (four short stories written during Carver's undergraduate years and a fifth composed shortly afterward), poetry from the author's small press books, the fragment of a novel, essays and other miscellany. The early fiction holds virtually no literary merit; the poetry is often either derivative or superficial ("He knew he was / in trouble when, / in the middle / of the poem, / he found himself / reaching / for his thesaurus / and then / Webster's / in that order"). The book reviews (with the exception of a thoughtful review of the Selected Letters of Sherwood Anderson ) seem dated. A commencement address, delivered shortly before Carver died in 1988, has a wistfully solemn quality that will seem odd to readers of Carver's elegant but audacious short fiction. In the introduction to Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories reprinted here, Carver remarks on the importance to him of the process of rewriting: "I think by nature I'm more deliberate and careful than I am spontaneous . . . ." This collection of mostly unpolished odds and ends does a disservice to a master craftsman.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"A writer of astonishing compassion and honesty."

-- Washington Post Book World"With painful, funny acuteness, Carver captures the electric currents that shoot through people's lives and singe them indelibly." -- Newsweek

"Raymond Carver's America is a place of survivors and a place of stories. He has done what many of the most gifted writers fail to do: He has invented a country of his own, like no other except that very world, as Wordsworth said, which is the world to all of us." -- The New York Times Book Review

"Carver not only enchants, he convinces." -- Time -- Review

Review
"A writer of astonishing compassion and honesty."

-- Washington Post Book World"With painful, funny acuteness, Carver captures the electric currents that shoot through people's lives and singe them indelibly." -- Newsweek

"Raymond Carver's America is a place of survivors and a place of stories. He has done what many of the most gifted writers fail to do: He has invented a country of his own, like no other except that very world, as Wordsworth said, which is the world to all of us." -- The New York Times Book Review

"Carver not only enchants, he convinces." -- Time

Customer Reviews

" . . . drains away the strength to resist."
There's something encouraging about discovering the pitfalls of a figure previously thought to be invincible. Upon reading through Raymond Carver's uncollected writings, No Heroics, Please, I was thrilled to not be enjoying myself. "Furious Seasons" is bad mediocre Faulkner, while "The Aficionados" is a rib on Hemingway bullfighting obsession. "Poseiden and Company" is nearly pointless. "Bright Red Apples" is like something I'd write if I was into ripping off Flannery O'Connor and ending on a melodramatic note. The best fiction here is "The Hair," and even that is just an uneventful sign of what was to come. The segment of the novel is all right, but there's no way he could have sustained that for longer than 20-30 pages, especially being the revision-hound that he was. If these early stories were all I had ever read, I certainly wouldn't have read more.

Of course, lots more came. Genius stuff, too. So I don't have room to talk, but it's like I've watched a home movie of "giant's first steps" and seen him fall down a bunch. Surely guys like Carver come out of the womb with a furrowed brow and a knack for prose. Or so I thought.

I focused on the fiction present in this collection, though the poetry is less-than-stellar as well. Carver's poetry isn't that great to begin with, falling into the same traps as Bukowski's poetry, where the poem is just a shortchanged story with line-breaks. The book reviews aren't that good either, as his summaries give away too much (I started skipping the summary and just reading his thoughts) and his opinions--while being well thought-out and written--are essentially underwhelming (something I'd know all about). The "Occasions" section is interesting, though with conversational non-fiction, it's hard to mess up. The essay on "Friendship" was a bit cheesy (he finally let his happiness get to him! Another victory for mere mortals) and the meditation was all right at best. The section with a bunch of introductions completely escapes me, with the exception of the Unknown Chekhov, which I own.

So why read this? If for no other reason, read it after you've read everything else, just to prove to yourself that Carver wasn't a God. At least not at first.

Amazing poetry
I cannot stess enough what a great poet (and short stories writer) Raymond Carver is. In his minimalist writing style and his hidden way of dealing with exsitential issues, he earned his way to be my favorite (and nearly only) male poet. His poetry will not intimmidate those who are not so keen on poetry, and at the same time will touch everybody deeply. The poetry in this book, isn't trying to be anything grand or anything it simply isn't, it's just the plain truth, with no masks.

Essential
This book is indispensible (see above) for anyone who appreciates Carver's work.