Raymond Carver Reading London 1987
October 03, 2006
Previously I wrote about a tape recording of a reading by Raymond Carver, Richard Ford and Jonathan Raban. The event took place at The Pan Bookshop on the Fulham road, London, on a Saturday afternoon sometime in the summer of 1987.
Raymond Carver reads five poems from In a Marine Light, and two poems from Fires. You can download him reading these here.
Or you can listen to it here.
Beautifull...and a hell of a lot better than any of the events I organized at Pan (Alain De Botton was never the same after)
Posted by: Matthew | October 04, 2006 at 03:35 PM
The Fulham road was such a great place back then. William Burroughs, Oliver Sacks, Gilbert and George, Robert B Parker, Alice Munro, Angela Carter, to name but a few.
Brian Eno's brother putting up the stereo.
And Michael Herr bringing in Matthew Modine to say hi.
And Little Richard asking God to bless me.
Ha. Different days.
Posted by: JonathanM | October 05, 2006 at 05:35 PM
It's a fascinating recording, and the poems themselves are beautiful. But I have to say that - like most writers - he reads terribly. The question I always ask myself when I hear a writer reading aloud so badly is "I wonder how it sounded inside his head as he wrote it ? Surely not like this ?" Thanks so much for sharing this, though.
Posted by: Waterhot | October 05, 2006 at 10:42 PM
The bottom line (for me):
1. The stories as they originally appeared, with Gordon Lish’s inputs, are the stories.
2. However, the stories, the ideas for the stories, are Carver’s, so no matter how much Lish changed them, Carver still gets the credit.
Posted by: derek | December 22, 2007 at 06:59 PM
The bottom line (for me):
1. The stories as they originally appeared, with Gordon Lish’s inputs, are the stories.
2. However, the stories, the ideas for the stories, are Carver’s, so no matter how much Lish changed them, Carver still gets the credit.
Posted by: derek | December 22, 2007 at 06:59 PM