Event overview
Catherine Humble (Goldsmiths): 'A Talkative Affair: Intimate Edits in Raymond Carver's Beginners'
This paper examines the different presentations of intimacy in Raymond Carver's unedited story ‘Beginners’ and the edited version ‘What We Talk about When We Talk about Love’, along with the intimate relationship between author and editor. In a controversial move last year, Carver's widow Tess Gallagher published some of the author's original stories, revealing the extent to which his editor Gordon Lish cut and shaped his prose. Lish slashed 70% of several stories, rewrote endings, and changed the overall tone. Carver is famed for his minimalist prose, but 'Beginners' is a more garrulous affair. Drawing on Lacan's seminar XX, this paper will read the unedited and edited stories in light of the psychical and sexual distinctions forged by different forms of language - capacious and meandering on the one hand, taut and clipped on the other. It is my contention that both versions of the story express the inexpressible nature of love; but where love is narcissistic fantasy in the edited, with the unedited, it is ethical openness to the other.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 2 Dec 2010 | 6:30pm - 8:00pm |
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