Fires is the best introduction to the full range and humanity of Carver's writing. It contains four essays, including a moving memoir od his father's working life in the saw-mills of the Pacific Northwest, a tribute to his mentor John Gardner, and the title essay about the influences on his writing life; fifty poems, many of them not collected elsewhere; and seven stories, including three from the early collection Furious Seasons.
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"Carver is a master; his stories are word perfect. His sentences stalk out meaning, following a trail of clues with patient care and painful anticipation. Fires [is] an indispensable volume and provides further proof of Carver's stature as a major American writer" (New Statesman )
"These stories are perfect in pitch and tone. However harrowing their subject, or broken their characters, all of them revive one's faith in the redemptive power of straight story-telling" (Bruce Chatwin )
"Carver's poetry is non-metrical, free as prose... It works well and reads beautifully" (Independent )
"These stories are perfect in pitch and tone. However harrowing their subject, or broken their characters, all of them revive one's faith in the redemptive power of straight story-telling" (Bruce Chatwin )
"Carver's poetry is non-metrical, free as prose... It works well and reads beautifully" (Independent )
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'Here is a writer of astonishing compassion and honesty, utterly free of pretence. His eye is so clear, it almost breaks your heart' Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Because this contains essays it could also be 'non-fiction' but let's put it here nevertheless because the majority of the work in the book is either poetry or short stories. I have some of Carver's other collections What We Talk About When We Talk About Love and Cathedral and these two collections defined and altered my understanding of what constitutes a short story, an unsurprising revelation considering the effect that critics believe Carver's writing has had on subsequent writers.
Anyway, Fires brings together a diverse set of works, some of which appear in the collections I already own, others, the essays particularly, that I had not seen before appear in his Carver: collected and selected work. I appreciated the essays particularly as they revealed a side of Carver's writing that I had not encountered before, a part of him that shows his appreciation for his family and one of his mentors, John Gardner. Carver cannot display this appreciation in his short stories and poetry, but seeing an honest personal evaluation of his writing and to those he owes his debts was fantastic. I found his discussion of influences particularly apt - he differentiates between those writers, musicians and other artists whose work appeals to us and whose work and thinking we try to incorporate into our own, from the physical and emotional influences that affect us more than anything else, in Carver's case an early marriage and having children when he was a teenager. Please read the essay because my summary does not do his ideas justice.
If you have not encountered Carver before, either his prose, poetry or essays, then this is a good place to start to begin a relationship with a great writer.
Anyway, Fires brings together a diverse set of works, some of which appear in the collections I already own, others, the essays particularly, that I had not seen before appear in his Carver: collected and selected work. I appreciated the essays particularly as they revealed a side of Carver's writing that I had not encountered before, a part of him that shows his appreciation for his family and one of his mentors, John Gardner. Carver cannot display this appreciation in his short stories and poetry, but seeing an honest personal evaluation of his writing and to those he owes his debts was fantastic. I found his discussion of influences particularly apt - he differentiates between those writers, musicians and other artists whose work appeals to us and whose work and thinking we try to incorporate into our own, from the physical and emotional influences that affect us more than anything else, in Carver's case an early marriage and having children when he was a teenager. Please read the essay because my summary does not do his ideas justice.
If you have not encountered Carver before, either his prose, poetry or essays, then this is a good place to start to begin a relationship with a great writer.
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