I recently did a tandem reading of Beginners and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. I would highly recommend this analysis to anyone seeking to get a better understanding of Raymond Carver's work and the mechanics of writing and editing short stories. It was illuminating to read some more fleshed out versions of Carver's stories and seeing where Gordon Lish's editing took the stories. There are some stories where the paring down works very well and the "core" of the story is maintained, like the title story or others where it's severely altered such as "Tell The Women We're Going." ( )

Beginners by Raymond Carver is the original unedited manuscript of his 1981 collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (heavily, and against Carver's wishes, edited by Gordon Lish).

There are two ways to consider this collection depending on your familiarity with Carver's work. One is to simply read it as a collection. This is obviously how one who has not read What We Talk About.. will read it but I also think if it has been long enough and you don't recall all of the stories from reading the edited version long ago, this would be an ideal way to read it through the first time. Using this method, I would still give five stars though it would be rounding up from four and a half. The stories are strong and the writing is wonderful.

If you are pretty familiar with the original edited version it will be hard to read this without doing some kind of comparison. In my case, this was how I read it. There were a couple stories I liked a little better with Lish's editing but all in all I preferred this new "restored" version. Probably the difference, for me, is that this version has a lot of very strong stories while the edited one is more up and down but the highs are higher than in this version. In other words, while I think Lish did more harm than good I feel the ones he got right he got extremely right.

No matter where you stand on Lish and his heavy-handed editing, this version is valuable as an insight into Carver as a writer since it illustrates how he chose to treat his characters and conflicts. Looking then at works without Lish we can see that Carver likely learned a thing or two from Lish but without compromising who he was as a writer.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )

Obsessiu amb alguns temes, dur, brut però espectacularment interessant i a estones, moltes, esgarrifosament atractiu. ( )

Un volume formidable avec la version intégrale d'une petite douceur http://perruchenautomne.eu/wordpress/?p=1688 qui est encore plus formidable. Les autres nouvelles sont encore une fois géniale et passionnante. C'est un immense novelliste, d'une humanité exceptionnelle et d'un talent à tomber par terre. Les 4 dernières nouvelles sont exceptionnelles. ( )

Ésta es la versión sin «corregir» de la obra maestra de Carver –De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de amor–, que acabaría sufriendo una poda de casi el cincuenta por ciento por parte de Gordon Lish, a la sazón editor y mentor de Carver, previa a su publicación en 1981. La preocupación de Carver por la médula de las cosas se halla tan presente en los relatos originales como en los que fueron publicados. Una jovencita que baila con su novio en el jardín delantero de una casa, percibe el primer aviso de los peligros de la vida adulta, y siente que la colma una «felicidad insoportable». Un hombre y una mujer se encierran en la habitación de un motel y, despacio, reconocen el final de su relación. Pero a medida que recorremos estas pequeñas tragedias, se nos van revelando nuevos significados. Una incursión fascinante en la estética de uno de los grandes autores contemporáneos, los interrogantes que suscita podrían desencadenar un gran debate literario. «Si alguna vez hubo una pieza literaria que nunca requirió enmienda alguna, es ésta» (Philip Roth); «El verdadero Carver da cabida a digresiones e historias secundarias. El verdadero Carver no es carveriano» (Blake Morrison). ( )