Tell It All

by Raymond Carver, Tess Gallagher

Tell It All brings together an unexpected selection of Raymond Carver's unpublished writings. Poems that read like short stories and two one-act plays written with Tess Gallagher are included. Tell It All also features Raymond Carver recollected by other writers, translators and friends from around the globe. Also included is a rich album of rare previously unpublished photographs of Raymond Carver.

Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Carver was born into a poverty-stricken family at the tail-end of the Depression. He married at 19, started a series of menial jobs and his own career of 'full-time drinking as a serious pursuit', a career that would eventually kill him. Constantly struggling to support his wife and family, Carver enrolled in a writing programme under author John Gardner in 1958. He saw this opportunity as a turning point.

Rejecting the more experimental fiction of the 60s and 70s, he pioneered a precisionist realism reinventing the American short story during the eighties, heading the line of so-called 'dirty realists' or 'K-mart realists'. Set in trailer parks and shopping malls, they are stories of banal lives that turn on a seemingly insignificant detail. Carver writes with meticulous economy, suddenly bringing a life into focus in a similar way to the paintings of Edward Hopper. As well as being a master of the short story, he was an accomplished poet publishing several highly acclaimed volumes.

After the 'line of demarcation' in Carver's life - 2 June 1977, the day he stopped drinking - his stories become increasingly more redemptive and expansive. Alcohol had eventually shattered his health, his work and his family - his first marriage effectively ending in 1978. He finally married his long-term parter Tess Gallagher (they met ten years earlier at a writers' conference in Dallas) in Reno, Nevada, less than two months before he eventually lost his fight with cancer.

Reviews

[Blowersdaughter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Letto più per dovere che per piacere, ha momenti impagabili (i frammenti inediti scritti da Carver con la moglie) e parti alquanto noiose (scritte da altri).

[Roberto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Le edizioni con il testo originale a fronte hanno tutto un altro sapore, perché puoi seguire e mischiare le due lingue e divertirti a interpretare le parole originali in un altro modo. Le testimonianze dirette mi sono piaciute (soprattutto quella di Duranti, che testimonia con un raccontino più che con una serie di aneddoti), le poesie e i due atti danno un assaggino di chi è Carver.
Ma mi sarei aspettato tutt'altro. Il Raymond Carver inedito è ridotto a poche pagine rispetto al totale, è più un libro sullo scrittore che dello scrittore. Proprio per questo, malgrado la qualità delle traduzioni e dei testi, mi sento un po' preso in giro da quel "Tell it all" del titolo.