Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book! As the title suggests, the stories are about love in all its’ various guises and is as bold an attempt to capture what love really is, as opposed to what we expect it to look and feel like. The White Knight and His Kids: Mel says how he wants to be like those medieval knights in their armor where nothing can hurt them.
I would think any good writer must be able to do those things as requirements — but he has to go beyond that and maybe even have a point to the story. Loading interface Everyone who likes this book is going to tell you that one of Carver’s strengths is his knack for understatement. Themes and Style All the stories involve sad, dysfunctional people: a vivid glimpse of people at a troubling time in their lives. This material got into my bones. I say “magic” in both in the colloquial, metaphorical sense of “pleasant,” “enchanting,” and so on—and also, more so, in the sense of literal magic tricks. A collection of slice-of-life short stories that mostly go nowhere and end ambiguously, and for some damn reason I loved them.
I expected and hoped for big conclusions, finality, and instead I got dudes driving away from confrontations holding ashtrays. Mine is about possession, rather than excavation: a separating couple dividing the spoils – including their baby! Being a writer of short stories myself, naturally I was interested in reading a master I had previously not known about. A vida de Carver refletia os temas de dificuldade e luta evidentes em sua obra; ele enfrentou dificuldades familiares, financeiras e pessoais, incluindo batalhas contra o alcoolismo. Often matters are exacerbated by problems with drink and fidelity. Short-story telling at it’s grandest.
Do que falamos quando falamos de amor
Que queres que te diga, além trans de programa salvador que te amo, se o que quero dizer-te é que te amo? Amor é aquele sentimento maravilhoso que é compartilhado com as melhores pessoas que encontramos ao longo da nossa vida. Amor incondicional é o sentimento mais bonito que alguém pode oferecer para você.
Diagramming Sabbateanism J. Horizonte Educativo. Francovich e G. Noyé, Firenze , pp. Similarities and differences in underlying beliefs of socio-cognitive factors related to diet and physical activity in lower-educated Dutch, Turkish, and Moroccan adults in the Netherlands: a focus group study Lilian Lechner. And I like it. Jason Koivu. Author 7 books 1, followers. A collection of slice-of-life short stories that mostly go nowhere and end ambiguously, and for some damn reason I loved them.
Carver gets mileage out of yard sales, photographers offering their services, accidental death, a night of bingo, doing things and doing nothing, talking yet saying nothing.
As a reader, I was frustrated when some of the stories went nowhere. I expected and hoped for big conclusions, finality, and instead I got dudes driving away from confrontations holding ashtrays. But then there would be subtle moments of human nature revealed, true revelations of our unnecessarily complicated lives, that would make me catch my breath. I read this over 20 years ago and I’m afraid some of the particulars of the collection escape me. However, what I’ll not soon forget is the quiet desperation Carver made me feel for everyday people whose lives had derailed.
I was in college and full of life. Middle-aged regret is not something kids of that age tend to fully understand, yet Carver made me feel that horrid indecision, that deep-seated pain. These are emotions worth enduring for the price of reading this beautiful prose. When you open my letter you will recall those days and how much, just how much, I love you. Capturing bliss in one word, crystallising tenderness and love at once into a precious gift and a delicate act of remembrance, Hummingbird , the affectionate poem closing this collection, charmed me in its endearing simplicity and ended up as my favourite – reading this short poem magically transporting to the moment of receiving and later cherishing of a letter or a postcard dear, the one you keep close to you and take with you until it is ragged, almost perished, the words barely discernible anymore, a four-leaf clover in your heart for the rest of your days.
A few of these poems strike as miniature stories, vernacular in tone, narrative and direct in style, the nightly atmosphere and a certain rawness at times reminding me of some of the songs by Tom Waits, hanging out in a bar like in the long opening poem You Don’t Know What Love Is an evening with Charles Bukowski , or at the ramshackle party of booze and despair in Union Street: San Francisco, Summer The simple pleasures of love.
The sweet comfort of holding hands giving strength to endure time consuming us Through the Boughs. Hips, thighs and loosened hair celebrating in the dark sensuality of liberty This Word Love. The traces on a lip left after a wild night Yesterday. The house where trees are laden with fruit.
Where phlox, forsythia, and marigold grow. The woman who loves you. Vit Babenco. The world is a hierarchical structure… It is a pyramid… The serfs never had it good. But I guess even the knights were vassals to someone. But then everyone is always a vassal to someone. Little men have their own little vices: drunkenness, unfaithfulness, spitefulness… And little men have their own little handicaps: stupidity, silliness, incompetence… It might seem a little man is capable to have just a little tragedy but to every little man his tragedy is biggest in the world.
Sometimes a thought is lost and never found. I may have pulled the above quote from “Gazebo”, one of the seventeen shorts in this collection, but it pretty well sums up how I felt when I turned the last page. The paradox here, however, lies in the fact that I loved nearly every single story. On top of this they had great ambitions. They were always talking about the things they were going to do and the places they were going to go.
I used to believe her when she uttered those words. Raymond Carver knew this. For the most part, his characters lead difficult lives. Lives torn apart by alcoholism, violence, infidelity, disease, and mere drudgery. How did these men and women plunge to such depths? Did the alcoholism precede the unhappiness or vice versa? Did boredom pave the way to infidelity? These stories are short, to the point, and jolting. The dialogue is precise and authentic. People talk just like this!
Glenn Russell. However this is 20th century Carver county America, so the object of love remains always women for men and men for women — not even close to seeing the opposite sex as the first step on the ladder leading to a more generalized universal love of philosophic wisdom. Dionysius, One: Terri lived with Ed before she lived with Mel.
Sidebar: Ed embodies the ancient Greeks myth of Dionysius, the frenzied, drunk intensity of unbridled passion gone wild. Dionysius, Two: Mel relates how Ed would call him up on the phone to threaten his life and once actually tried to kill him. Terri, in turn, says how when she left him, Ed drank rat poison causing serious facial deformities. Sidebar: Raymond Carver noted how a little menace is good for the temperature, good for a short story. Very true, Ray! Since Mel and Terri were personally so threatened by Ed, the whole tone of the discussion on love takes a much more serious turn.
Terri tells them they are still on their honeymoon, even after being together for nearly two years, but just wait. As an afterthought, Terri tells them how she is just kidding about that “just wait. Probing Question: Mel waxes philosophical when he acknowledges how he loved his first wife very much but now he hates her guts.
Same thing with Terri in her love for Ed, same thing for both Laura and Nick since they both were married previously. What happened to that love? And if anything tragic happened to any of them, their partner would find someone else to love.
Sidebar: Good question. Why is such a powerful, all consuming emotion for one person alive within us for a time then it either dies or turns to an equally negative emotion? Why is this? DOA: Mel relates a story of love that really impressed him, a story where a drunk teenage driver at high speed slammed into the car of a seventy-year-old husband and wife.
The White Knight and His Kids: Mel says how he wants to be like those medieval knights in their armor where nothing can hurt them. Then, tipsy with gin, Mel wants to speak with his kids.
Sidebar: Echoes of Ed and the spirit of Dionysius as Mel is possessed with the mad desire for destruction and killing. Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book! Community Reviews. Search review text.
Displaying 1 – 30 of reviews. In versione editata oppure originale, small size o full size, strada o gran turismo, naked o con optional, Carver rimane un maestro. Il maestro del racconto. Di quanti si potrebbe dire la stessa cosa? Non ho niente contro Gordon Lish, il famoso o famigerato editor di Carver: questi racconti erano bellissimi dopo la cura dimagrante Lish. Tess Gallagher e Raymond Carver.
Forse Lish ci teneva a entrare nella storia letteraria, a brevettare il minimalismo ecc. Solo che il minimalismo è durato poco, è sparito presto, in pochi se ne sono accorti, e nessuno ha sentito la sua mancanza. Mentre di Carver e della sua scrittura io sento una forte mancanza. La sua assenza determina quel genere di silenzio impressionante nel quale è possibile sentire cadere la neve. Teso, come la fatidica corda di violino.
E come la corda dello strumento, tagliente, manco fosse la lama di un rasoio. E sdrucciolevole, bagnato: di sentimento, e umanità – di vodka, gin, e anche rum. Perché non ballate? Anche se Michael Peña è sempre un piacere da vedere. Allora, in queste sei pagine la capacità di rendere lo struggimento, la malinconia, la dolcezza del passato, è potentissima, inarrivabile.
Senza spiegare nulla di quello che precede, lasciando il lettore pressoché al buio quali sono effettivamente le storie personali dei personaggi? Luca Ambrosino. But this is frowned upon by Carver: «I don’t like it. There is something in that “minimalist” looking like a miserable picture, or a hasty execution. And I don’t like it» Impossible to think, hasty execution is the complete opposite of the meticulous Carver’s writing, who struggles in his novels for the best choice of words.
However, to be honest, Lish makes also good choices in his revisions, as emphasized by Carver in some letters to the editor. But in the same letters there is also some desperation, the despair of an author assisting to the mutilation of his work, the distortion of what he perceives as the primary sense of his novels.
Vote: 8 «Un uomo senza mani si è presentato alla porta per vendermi una foto di casa mia» Si, perchè il protagonista di Mirino, uno dei racconti più brevi di questa raccolta, possiede degli uncini al posto delle mani. C’è qualcosa in quel minimalista che dà l’idea di una visione misera e di un’esecuzione frettolosa. E non mi piace» Figuriamoci, esecuzione frettolosa è proprio l’opposto del modo di scrivere meticoloso di Carver, che fa della scelta del vocabolo giusto una questione essenziale.
Tuttavia, ad essere sincero, Lish è anche efficace in alcune sue scelte, come sottolinea Carver stesso in alcune sue lettere all’editore. Voto: 8. Differences: Edited and Unedited Some of the versions here are more than double the length, and most of them are darker and with more ambiguous endings.
I would like to believe that Carver’s words were butchered by an over-zealous editor, and many say that is the case, but I’m not sure that’s entirely true. The two versions of each story are often quite different, but it is hard to say which is better. In some cases, shorter is pithier, but in others, the originals contain backstory that adds depth and richness.
Themes and Style All the stories involve sad, dysfunctional people: a vivid glimpse of people at a troubling time in their lives. Most concern recent or imminent loss, whether a partner, child, friend or home. Often matters are exacerbated by problems with drink and fidelity. But there is often a glimmer of hope.
Many are beguiling, a few are grisly, but towards the end of the collection I lost the impetus to continue, so I put it aside for a while.
I’m not sure what the problem was. A few stories are positively disturbing e. Some of the characters are keen to explore these matters overtly “There was more to it, and she was trying to get it talked out” and “We’d reached the end of something, and the thing was to find out where new to start” , but others are victims of circumstance or just go, unthinkingly, with the flow.
One of the early stories contains the line “Booze takes a lot of effort if you’re going to do a good job with it” and one expects that to sum up the collection, but they’re more varied than that.
Characters There are few really likeable characters; more references to fishing than might be expected; misogynistic aspects and not much humour, yet they were fascinating to read. The Stories The summaries are more to jog my memory in future than to add great insight for anyone reading. O que você encontra nelas, quando vê algo apaixonante, é literatura. A história mais importante desta coletânea, a mais expressiva, talvez seja o próprio conto que empresta o título do livro.
Terri entra no assunto e diz que seu ex-marido batia nela enquanto dizia que a amava. Como explicar isso? É amor. Nascemos com ele. Ele cresce connosco, espalha-se com nosso ser e influencia tudo o que possamos tentar.
Deveria nos envergonhar quando falamos como se soubéssemos do que estamos falando quando falamos de amor.
