"One cannot imagine the late Raymond Carver as a first baseman, or as financier, or as Cromwell's foreign secretary," wrote Lee Oser in World Literature Today. "His writing explores a narrow bandwidth in the spectrum of human life, and his world is a...

Appreciative of Anne Tyler's description of him as a "spendthrift," Raymond Carver said during an interview with Kasia Boddy (in Conversations with Raymond Carver, 1990), "I think a writer ought to spend himself in whatever he's doing. If a writer...

Raymond Carver's success derived as much from the renewed interest in the short story brought about by the publication of The Stories of John Cheever in 1978 and the backlash against 1960s metafiction as it did from Carver's own genius....

Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the...

JINDABYNE Running Time 123 minutes Directed by Ray Lawrence Written by Beatrix Christian Starring Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney In Jindabyne, a suspenseful Australian tale of moral ambiguity based on a Raymond Carver short story, four men on a fishing trip in the picturesque...

Last night, NBC gave America exactly what it thought the country wanted: Jerry Seinfeld, the man who perfected the sitcom and ruined it in the process (like Raymond Carver and the short story). As a guest star on 30 Rock, he served us a moment...

Robert Olmstead always considered his war the Revolutionary War, when he was growing up on a farm in New England.It was not until he was teaching at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania did the novelist first visit Gettysburg, where he was transfixed by another great American...

Amy Hempel, short story writer, is spending a rainy morning at a Madison Avenue diner.She is 55 years old. Her flowing hair is silvery-white. Her speech is clear, but careful. She sometimes edits herself as she talks or advances her thoughts as if placing one...

In the excerpt below, Runyon examines the connecting elements and recurring themes in the short stories from Cathedral.

In the following excerpt, Saltzman compares such stories as "Feathers," "Chef's House," and "The Compartment"—which reflect hopelessness and despair—with "A Small, Good Thing" and "Where I'm Calling From" in which Carver allows his characters more compassion and choice.

In the following interview, Carver reflects on his childhood, his writing methods, and his literary influences.

In the stories "The Bath" and "A Small Good Thing," Raymond Carver's subtle, minimalist writing style reveals the way in which people emotionally connect. The reader can see himself in the text because Carver taps into the human experience.