Thoughts on a book

This is a blog about music.

I am a blogger who blogs about music.

This is not a blog post about music.

This past week saw the publication of Collected Stories by Raymond Carver, with whom I’ve been a bit obsessed lately. In particular, I’ve been obsessing over the edits Gordon Lish famously made to Carver’s draft of a story called “Beginners,” which would eventually become a story celebrated and studied as among of the finest of its century.

Collected Stories contains unedited drafts of even more stories, and I have for some time been looking forward to seeing them.

As a listener of much music, it’s almost strange to consider that not all art-forms lend themselves to variation, cover, remix, etc. To hear a recording of Townes Van Zandt playing his best songs live and solo is ear-opening indeed, but it is expected. To hear “Kids” transformed by some unknown DJ or "Where It's At" mutated by beck himself can be exciting and even a bit enlightening, perhaps, but it’s no big deal. That’s what happens with music. Jose Gonzalez covers The Knife, Iron and Wine reinterprets The Postal Service and you have some chilled out adaptations of what might be modern classics to throw on your fancy Nano.

“Car Crash While Hitchhiking” cannot be chilled out.

To hear Tobias Wolff read Denis Johnson’s “Emergency” is interesting, and to hear him discuss it is quite edifying. But the story is the story, and it ends the same whether Johnson or Wolff or I read it, whether silently or aloud. It’s the same each time and we don’t get to know it as anything else. And that’s cool; that’s the way we interact with most published literature.

Only occasionally will an author’s notes, edits or early drafts see light beyond some library’s archives. But this week is such an occasion. Debate over whether the stories benefited from Lish’s extensive edits to Carver’s rather less cynical voice will likely burn on for some time. What's striking is how heavy Lish's pen was. It's almost as though the Carver stories we've come to love were just cover versions of Carver's stories. “What We Talk About…” starts stronger—and surprisingly more minimalist—than “Beginners.” But I like Herb’s lengthy narrative about the elderly couple, and I prefer the original, somewhat indulgent ending as well. On the other hand, I think Lish’s truncation of the ending of “One More Thing” makes a great story profound… But I’m years removed from my study of English, and have little to offer anyhow but unformed opinions and the sentiment that I’m glad to see this book arrive. It may not be the unblemished collection that Tess Gallagher has been pushing for, but it’s damned close.

At risk of stretching it, reading Carver’s unedited drafts is similar to hearing Dylan’s varying verses of “Mississippi” on Tell Tale Signs (excepting that Dylan presumably made his own edits). Since that’s the best musical connection I can come up with right now, here are some earlier versions of that tune, as well as the final cut.

Bob Dylan: "Mississippi" (version #1):


Bob Dylan: "Mississippi" (version #3):

Bob Dylan: "Mississippi" (album version):