Raymond Carver / editor, James Plath, Illinois Wesleyan University.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Plath, James.

Contributor:

Plath, James, editor.

Series:

Critical insights.

Critical Insights

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Carver, Raymond, 1938-1988--Criticism and interpretation.

Carver, Raymond.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 271 pages).

Place of Publication:

2013.

Ipswich, Massachusetts : Salem Press ; Amenia, NY : Grey House Publishing, [2013]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Raymond Carver made the short story a viable literary form; since Carver, short-story collections became a marketable commodity in the book trade. Both as a model and as a teacher, he had such an influence on younger fiction writers that author Jay McInerney could truthfully say (alluding to a famous statement that Fyodor Dostoevski made about Nikolai Gogol) that there is hardly a single American short-story writer younger than Carver who did not "come out of Carver's overcoat."Edited by James Plath, professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University, this volume in the Critical Insights series presents a variety of new essays on the significant and controversial writer. For readers who are studying Carver for the first time, a biographical sketch relates the details of his life and four essays survey the critical reception of his work, explore its cultural and historical contexts, situate Carver among his contemporaries, and review key themes in his work. Readers seeking a deeper understanding of the writer can then move on to other original essays that explore a bevy of topics, such as the author's association with the literary movement dubbed "minimalism," the influence of the American West on Carver's body of work, Carver's approximation of the paintings of Edward Hopper, and the author's documented struggles with alcoholism. Among the contributors are Chad Wriglesworth, Kirk Nesset, Claire Fabre, and Peter J. Bailey. Rounding out the volume are a chronology of Carver's life and a list of his principle publications as well as a bibliography for readers seeking to study this fascinating author in greater depth.

Contents:

On Raymond Carver / James Plath

Raymond Carver and the shaping power of the Pacific Northwest / Chad Wriglesworth

The critical reception of the works of Raymond Carver / William L. Stull and Maureen P. Carroll

Minimalism, dirty realism, and Raymond Carver / Enrico Monti

The Carver triangle : lost in an Edward Hopper world / James Plath

Intimate divisions : Raymond Carver and alcoholism / Kirk Nesset

Middle-age crazy : men behaving badly in the fiction of Raymond Carver and John Updike / Matthew Shipe

Feminist perspectives on the works of Raymond Carver / Claire Fabre

First inclinations: the poetry of Raymond Carver / Robert Miltner

Cycling fiction : on the structure of Raymond Carver's three major story collections / Randolph Runyon

Carver, realism, and narrative self-consciousness / Vasiliki Fachard

Small good things : symbols and descriptive details in Carver's short fiction / Ayala Amir

Short cuts : Robert Altman's take on Raymond Carver / Peter J. Bailey

What's postmodern about Raymond Carver? / Francoise Sammarcelli

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-259) and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781429838467

1429838469

OCLC:

843334815