bnw: i have to agree with you: short stories do in fact kick my ass. raymond carver is indeed fine, "where i'm calling from" is my favorite. (tangential question: "raymond carver: the joy division of short fiction"?) his work is more like painting than writing; he has very few quotable lines, and his sentences are as spare and seemingly harmless as a solitary brushstroke. but when it's all assembled, when the piece is complete, the effect is devastating and almost always catches you off guard.
― Dom Passantino, Saturday, 1 September 2007 21:37 (seventeen years ago)