Word: book
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Apart from his wife, the pivotal figure in Carver's adult life was Gordon Lish, an influential fiction editor at Esquire magazine who later became a power in book publishing. In 1970, when Carver was 32, Lish gave him his first crucial exposure in Esquire--but at a price. He revised Carver's manuscripts extensively, cutting out whole pages, changing titles, expelling lyrical passages and moments of uplift. The result was a set of stories more terse and elliptical than the originals, more "minimalist," which was how Carver's early style came to be known...
Carver had very mixed feelings about all that, especially when he saw the heavy changes Lish made to What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Carver's second volume of stories, published in 1981. At the last minute he even pleaded with Lish to withdraw the book, then relented, possibly because he felt that Lish was still the gatekeeper at fame's door. But Carver may also have sensed, and maybe even feared, that the darker register Lish summoned from those stories made his voice more distinctive and would secure his reputation--which it did. Before long, honors...
...eventually married the poet Tess Gallagher, who would see him through his last, highly productive years before his death in 1988 from lung cancer. These are the years of his crowning achievement, Cathedral, a magnificent story collection with greater emotional range than his earlier published work. Lish edited that book too, but lightly. By then Carver was too big to be revised by anybody...
Turns out that bus travel, at least in the Northeast and Midwest, has become a hip, and hiply budget-conscious, mode of transport. Book early enough on some of the sleek new lines, and you can travel from city to city for as little as $1. And forget the images of desolate bus depots; the post-Greyhound generation of buses often pick up passengers at convenient curbside locations. A bunch of coach lines now compete for fare-surfing customers on BusJunction.com by touting such amenities as power outlets and free wi-fi. Some even show movies...
That, and the jaw-dropping prices. The British-owned MegaBus, which arrived in the U.S. in 2006, offers a $1 fare to at least the first passenger to book a seat on each bus. BoltBus, a joint venture launched last year by Greyhound and Peter Pan that covers Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City and Boston, offers the same $1 deals as MegaBus, whose routes include the Northeast corridor and major college towns in the Midwest. BoltBus caps fares at $25 each way. This means a weekday ride from New York City to Boston costs about a third as much...