Raymond Carver
Principianti

Among tissues, mercury, and aspirins, these two hundred pages have captivated me. Maybe it's because I'm not used to reading short stories, but I was left like an idiot who doesn't get a joke and stands there with his mouth open, borrowed from a fish at the market. So, I found myself going back and rereading passages, trying to give the right weight to phrases, words. Punctuation.

Because this author doesn't put in fireworks, neon signs. He hides the hints and invitations to take the right direction. He buries them. He omits everything unnecessary, and so you drink the story with gusto, damn he writes well, but the sense and the ending at first escape you. Or rather, it escaped me.

Everything I've read so far has one thing in common. It enjoys a start and a finish; sometimes the conclusion is loud and bubbly, other times silent and sad in its drama, sometimes even pointless and stupid. It doesn't matter. It's still an ending, something that closes what was opened with the first page. Here, however, several times I had the feeling of being left in the middle of the street; as if someone had given me a good kick in the ass, enough to make me fly out of a bus in motion. With a suitcase of dust in the middle of the desert.

I strongly doubt that, over time, I will remember the plots of the various stories. Perhaps the most violent one that talks about a rape born by chance will remain, and the one that gives the collection its title: a treatise of rare sweetness mixed with cynicism on love and its mysterious twists. If it's certain that the stories will fade, it's equally certain that the sensation of having spent my time very well will remain etched.

In these pages, Carver captures a handful of situations that could belong to the past or the future of our lives. It doesn't matter if we will ever live them: the framework he constructs in such a small space is solid as rock, weighing words with maniacal care and weaving a strikingly realistic lexicon. It's not made of boastful, smile-inducing remarks, rhetoric, or gratuitous vulgarity. These are dialogues that, as we flip through them, we realize we have said or heard at least once. I didn't believe it was possible to write like this, but at times it felt like being in a cinema, watching the scene and the actors move paragraph by paragraph.

The majority of these dozen heterogeneous stories in terms of length, intensity, and themes, share the desire to capture the odd loss of equilibrium in a previously stable situation. The proverbial calm before the storm. The vast majority of authors I've read, to brutally summarize, fool around and dawdle to amaze and astonish the reader in the finale. Carver does exactly the opposite. The only glue between the successive titles is the passion for hunting, the obsession with alcohol. An unsatisfied atmosphere, heavy and sad, permeates these pages, not at all pleasant and accommodating even in the happiest moments, but with a rare emotional impact for a reading that borders on the sublime.

Examining the back of the cover, I learned that the version I read of "Beginners" should be a must because the original edition from 3 decades ago was mutilated by the publisher of that time, who deemed it appropriate to modify, cut, and distort almost all the stories to make them more accessible to the public.

It reminds me of an image of my mother. Perhaps she wanted to be a teacher: the fact is that one day I found her at the desk intent on correcting the rough draft of my thesis. I get angry, curse a bit, stomp my feet, throw the papers, and shut the door with a cartoonish slam because I had already explained that I didn't want any help or corrections. Then I read and start laughing like crazy; I go downstairs and whisper to her, giving her a kiss on the neck, "Mum, you are surely right but do you know that among other things, you've gutted and corrected even a couple of quotes?"

There are so many users who have given me reading recommendations on this site that I no longer know to whom my specific thanks should go. Sincerely grateful for having introduced me to this writer. But I'm not full, you know? Rather, opening my greedy hand, I smile at you and beg for another.