PORT ANGELES — Tess Gallagher is finally ready to shed some light on her late husband, short story icon Raymond Carver’s legacy.
The question now is whether the literary world is willing to listen.
“Ray went through many drafts of his work,” she said Thursday from her Port Angeles home.
“It took a great deal of research to uncover the original text.”
Nearly 10 years after a rift was exposed between Carver and his editor Gordon Lish over extensive revisions of his iconic collection of short stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Gallagher has compiled her own collection of his unedited stories for the book.
The collection is gleaned from a tireless effort to uncover the original manuscripts of Carver’s work.
The latest version — the version she says is the closest to her late-husband’s true style — has been entitled Beginners, after the collection’s original title.
It’s all part of a busy year for the Port Angeles native.
She feels healthy again, she said, having recently reached the five-year milestone of being free of the breast cancer she had battled.
Launched a book
Her book, a collaboration with Josie Gray of Western Irish tales, Barnacle Soup, was launched in Ireland in September to critical acclaim.
And she is working on a project, with Lawrence Matsuda, about Washington state residents of Japanese descent who were placed in internment camps during World War II.
During the last few months, she has been attending book signings and conferences in the United Kingdom and the Pacific Northwest.
On Thursday, Gallagher said she was looking forward to a few rare moments at home to “rake my leaves” before heading to Seattle for another promotional event.
It’s a welcome change for the poet who was so sick from chemotherapy after the completion of her lauded collection of poems, Dear Ghosts in 2006, that she was unable to travel to promote it.
But this fall, while she toured to her promote her own projects, her work to uncover the real Raymond Carver has made national headlines.
She quickly pointed out that the controversy over her late husband is nothing new.
“None of this has been a secret,” she said.
“It has just not been something that we have wanted to comment on until we had a cogent manuscript.”
Carver and Gallagher were married in 1988, 10 years after they met at a writer’s conference in Texas.
He died six weeks later in Port Angeles and is buried at the Ocean View Cemetery.
Carver is considered to be a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s.
He has been held up as a model of the minimalist style for years.
But speculation that Lish, his Alfred E. Knopf editor, unduly influenced his style began after a 1998 New York Times Magazine article highlighted the collaboration.
“He hated being called a minimalist,” Gallagher said.
He pleaded with the publishers of his collection of short stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, to halt its publication after Lish’s extensive editing in 1981.
The collection went on to become a sensation.
Replacement difficult
“I think it’s very hard to replace something once it exists,” Gallagher said.
“It’s as if you built a house and someone bought it and made renovations. There may be many things in that house that still belong to you. But is that house still yours?”
Now Gallagher is awaiting word from Knopf, What We Talk About’s publisher, whether the company will pick up a collection of Carver’s unedited version of the collection.
There is no timeline for a reply, although Gallagher said she, as the executor of Carver’s estate, is pursuing a number of options.
The poet’s research into her late-husband’s writing has led her to rethink the process that each writer goes through.
“What kind of writer was he?” she asked. “Was he moving toward minimalist?
“You can look through [Lish’s] edits in the manuscripts and see good suggestions, and in other places you may see him overstepping. You can see it unfolding in its process.
“The scope and shape of the work has been modified.”
Gallagher said she hopes the unedited versions of the stories that appeared in What We Talk About will lead to more respect for Carver and his work.
When it comes to the published version of the stories, Gallagher said she thinks of it as the product of a collaboration of Carver, Lish and the publisher.
“I think of it as an artifact.”
