What Do I Read Next?
- Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (1976) marked Carver's debut major collection of short stories. The narratives feature blue-collar characters grappling with issues like alcoholism, infidelity, and hopelessness. Themes that later become staples in Carver's work, such as the inability to communicate, the tendency to mismanage life, and the struggle to accept personal limitations, make their first appearance here.
- Carver held a deep admiration for Bobbie Ann Mason's work. Midnight Magic: Selected Stories of Bobbie Ann Mason (1998) compiles seventeen stories from Mason's earlier collections. Critics, like with Carver, often brand Mason a minimalist. Her stories focus on working-class life, depicting characters on the brink of poverty, often unemployed or in precarious jobs, in rural and small-town Kentucky. Known as Kmart realism, Mason's world is filled with chain stores, shopping malls, and cable TV. Her characters navigate social changes and upheavals, such as factory closures and rising divorce rates.
- Readers might also appreciate Ann Beattie's Park City: New and Selected Stories (1999). Beattie gained prominence in the 1970s with her minimalist short stories featured in the New Yorker. Some critics credit her, along with Carver, for reviving the short story form in the 1970s and 1980s. This is her fifth story collection, though only eight stories are new; the rest have appeared in previous books. Unlike Carver and Mason, Beattie sets her stories in urban, often New York, middle-class environments. Her characters frequently lack clear purpose or destiny, leaving readers to piece together the larger meaning from the accumulation of small life details.
- Tobias Wolff is sometimes associated with Carver as a minimalist. Carver, known for his generous praise of fellow writers, cited Wolff as a significant influence. Wolff also admired Carver, and they were colleagues at Syracuse University's Creative Writing Program. Wolff's collection The Night In Question: Stories (1997) has been lauded for its exploration of moral complexities, tension-building, and its depiction of how individuals cope with what fate hands them.
Get Ahead with eNotes
Start your 48-hour free trial to access everything you need to rise to the top of the class. Enjoy expert answers and study guides ad-free and take your learning to the next level.
Already a member? Log in here.
