assortment of harsh, condensed, short stories

books:

	• Will You Please be Quiet, Please? Raymond Carver Vintage, 2003 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

assortment of harsh, condensed, short stories

There is something very satisfying about short stories, especially if you are short of time; here you still manage to feel some sort of "accomplishment" at having read a "piece of life" embodied in a story. Raymond Carver's short stories are a special treat in this regard. I first came by Raymond Carver's name while watching the movie "Short cuts". This is why I was so intrigued to read this book, his first collection of short stories.
"Will you please be quiet, please?" is an assortment of harsh, condensed, short stories. The stories are brief and "to the point". Carver captures the human experience at a certain important moment in time. This moment can seem trivial to an outside observer, but this is a flash of revelation, a private understanding that comes after a seemingly regular event. This is a moment of small change, recognition --- something will not remain as it was before.
The story "Fat" can be a good example for Carver's style. "Fat" opens the book and is one of my favorite stories in this collection. This is an account of a rather trivial, every day encounter of a waitress with a fat client. However, this encounter manages to shake something inside her and force her to feel something of his "Fat experience". Somehow this makes her think about relationships and people and brings her to a certain realization as to her personal interactions.
Carver does not glorify human beings. His description is not tender and he does not write with mercy. This is true regarding instants of ugliness and on the other hand - quick moments of great love and compassion - just as during one day you can have mixed feelings and a great moment of love can come from nowhere and just pass by, sometimes even unnoticed. Somehow Carver manages to grasp the stream of thoughts, feelings and events that led to the after come feeling.
Carver's descriptions give us glimpses of life - ordinary, as it happens in real. No drama around it. Carver talks about father son relationship, husband and wife or two lovers. Most of his stories deal with difficult moments, and center around simple, ordinary people, struggling to make a life to themselves - Like Al, the main character in "Jerry and Molly and Sam". Al feels his life is falling apart. His work is not secure any more, he has an affair and is a little terrified by it, he just rented a new apartment... and on top of it there's this new dog his sister in law brought the kids. As an attempt to put some order in his personal chaos Al decides he has to get rid of the dog - an act that puts him into an emotional turmoil of facing his inner self.
These stories are "short cuts" of life, which can be ugly and beautiful but is never dull.

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A mixed Bag

Raymond Carver may have been a master short story writer, but with this collection it's apparent that he wasn't quite there yet. Every story is well written, and there are flashes of brilliance, but for every good story here there is a corresponding dull one. Standouts include Neigbours; Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes; Put Yourself In My Shoes; They're Not Your Husband; Are You a Doctor? and the title story.

On the whole, I do really what Raymond Carver does with short stories. He can be fairly accused of writing stories in which "nothing happens" but that's the point really. The reader is supposed to dig in and get to the heart of the matter. For me, however, a lot of the stories just weren't worth the effort to do so. Finally, I love his stripped down language. There aren't many writers who say so much with so little.

Recommended for any Raymond Carver or Short Story afficianado.

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Very good

The book was in very good condition, with no missing pages or any markings that I could see.

A Clean, Well-lit, Declarative Sentence

When it comes to narrative or a clean, well-lit, declarative sentence, no one can match Raymond Carver. He epitomizes the American voice in modern fiction.
Carver's dialogs and scene structure brought a new 'bare bulb' lyricism to the short story. Sort of an American Gothic as envisioned by Edward Hopper filtered through Dorthea Lang with a smart twist of Ionesco.

Buy all. Read any.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

With this, his first collection, Carver breathed life into the short story. In the pared-down style that has since become his hallmark, Carver showed how humour and tragedy dwell in the hearts of ordinary people, and won a readership that grew with every subsequent brilliant collection of stories, poems and essays that appeared in the last eleven years of his life.

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