The Archives
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12.03.09you’ve got questions, I’ve got answersAs oracular devices go, Internet search engines are a little better than reading sheep entrails and a little worse than the I Ching. The Internet is so full of bad and misleading information, that unless you already know what you're looking for you'll be easily duped. And because most search engines add a little "wisdom of the crowds" (or the "none of us is as dumb as all of us" principal) to their algorithms, bad information tends to reinforce more bad information. In most cases, you're better off asking a person--your father (who might lie to you), ...
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05.16.09A Small, Good ThingFrom a shopkeeper who has to contend with barbarians, to a shopkeeper who acts (unwittingly) like a barbarian, until he learns the story behind the stale cake that was never picked up and acts like an angel. We always get the boys' birthday cake at A Baker's Wife, a local pastry shop run by a Plaza Hotel chef. Their cakes are rich and dreamy, and I always volunteer to pick it up because then I can secretly grab a chocolate croissant or a miniature pecan pie. But I can never order the cake without thinking of Raymond Carver's "A Small, Good ...
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01.11.08Gordon’s ScalpalThe recent New Yorker fiction issue included an interesting piece: Raymond Carver's original version of "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love", titled "Beginners". Even more interesting, the New Yorker offers the story in its edited format, with the insertions and deletions that Gordon Lish made to turn the story from the longer version Carver wrote to the shorter version that has been widely anthologized as perhaps the quintessential "Carveresque" story (along with "A Small Good Thing" and "Where I'm Calling From"). Reading the two versions side by side, or the mark-up on-line, is quite an ...
