[Many] of the stories of Raymond Carver [are woven into] a double strand of voyeurism and dissociation. The term "voyeurism" is used advisedly here, to mean not just sexual spying, but the wistful identification with some distant, unattainable idea of self. Dissociation is a sense of disengagement from one's own identity and life, a state of standing apart from whatever defines the self, or of being unselfed. As his dissociated characters tentatively reach out toward otherness, Carver ambushes them, giving them sudden, hideously clear visions of the emptiness of their lives; even the most familiar takes on the sharp definition of the strangely unfamiliar. They become voyeurs, then, of their own experience.

While it can't be said that each of the twenty-two stories in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (the very title suggests a backing off from involvement) incorporates voyeurism and dissociation, most contain elements of one...