![]() A vanguard figure in the 1980's, Carver has become establishment fiction. At a New York City memorial service, Robert Gottlieb, then the editor of The New Yorker, said succinctly, ''America has just lost the writer it could least afford to lose.'' Carver is no longer a writer of the moment, the way David Foster Wallace is today, but many of his stories - ''Cathedral,'' ''Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?'' and ''Errand'' - are firmly established in the literary canon. When he died at age 50 from lung cancer, Carver was considered by many to be America's most important short-story writer. The eccentric editor is up against an American icon. It's understandable that Lish's assertions have never been taken seriously. ![]() ''I started reading the folders,'' she said, ''but then I stopped when I saw what was in there.'' I thought she was going to reprimand me for some violation of the library rules. As I was reading, one of the archivists came over. It looked as if a temperamental 7-year-old had somehow got hold of the stories. What I found there, when I began looking at the manuscripts of stories like ''Fat'' and ''Tell the Women We're Going,'' were pages full of editorial marks - strikeouts, additions and marginal comments in Lish's sprawling handwriting. So I decided to visit the archive myself. I'd heard about this scholar's work (and its failure to be published) through a friend. When one tried to publish his conclusions, Carver's widow and literary executor, the poet Tess Gallagher, effectively blocked him with copyright cautions and pressure. Since then, only a few Carver scholars have examined the Lish manuscripts thoroughly. Seven years ago, Lish arranged for the sale of his papers to the Lilly Library at Indiana University. Maybe he had rethought what his contribution had been - or simply moved on. Maybe he was choosing silence over people's doubt. Lish had written fiction, too: If he was such a great talent, why did so few people care about his own work? As the years passed, Lish became reluctant to discuss the subject. Basically it was Lish's word against common sense. Carver, who died 10 years ago this month, never responded in public to them. No one quite knew what to make of his statements. The details varied from telling to telling, but the basic idea was that he had changed some of the stories so much that they were more his than Carver's. Knopf who is now retired, has been quietly telling friends that he played a crucial role in the creation of the early short stories of Raymond Carver. For much of the past 20 years, Gordon Lish, an editor at Esquire and then at Alfred A.
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