Raymond Carver

The New York Times' Paper Cuts blog has an item today by Jennifer Schuessler headlined "What We Search for When We Search for Books About Running."

What's strange about the piece is that it ends with an apology to a semi-anonymous reader called "Jacob S." who complained the day before about editors and writers abusing the title of Raymond Carver's 1981 short-story collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

In his comment, Mr. S. wrote:

I know [Haruki] Murakami could be blamed for the title of this blog post, but can we institute some sort of embargo against invoking the title of that Raymond Carver story (collection)? It’s used far too often on numerous lit.  read more »

Lose an editor; gain a media property. John Koblin details every maneuver in one very busy week for Rupert Murdoch. This piece has everything: The Wall Street Journal, Marcus Brauchli, Newsday, The New York Times, and Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.  read more »

Word from Knopf is that Sonny Mehta is still in negotiations with Andrew Wylie about what to do with The Beginners, the controversial volume of unedited, Gordon Lish-less Raymond Carver stories that Knopf originally published in 1981 as What We Talk About. Carver’s widow, Tess Gallagher, has long been trying to get The Beginners into print, arguing that it is more faithful to her late husband’s vision for his stories than the version that was published. Mr. Wylie took up the Carver account last year, after differences over the drafts project led Ms.  read more »

James Campbell of The Guardian considers "restorations" through the publication of Raymond Carver's short stories with handy slicing and rewriting work of his editor Gordon Lish taken out. On the Road by Jack Kerouac and Native Son by Richard Wright are other restoration cases that have drawn attention in the past few years.  read more »