Cutting Carver

Here is a link to the story as Raymond Carver wrote it. This is the longer version that we are reading.

Here is a link to the story as it was edited and cut.

You can actually see the way the story is changing here, sentence by sentence. It's a good example of editing and re-writing and correcting. In the process, the story's title was also changed from "Beginners" to "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love."

Here is "the story of the story," The New Yorker's telling of how Carver's story was cut up.

And here is Carver in 1984: