Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

After writing "Errand", the last story in the book, Carver was diagnosed with lung cancer. He underwent surgery in October 1987 in Syracuse, New York, where doctors removed two-thirds of his left lung. When the cancer returned in his brain in March 1988, Carver underwent a seven-week course of radiation therapy from April to May. There was some contention between Raymond Carver and his editor Gordon Lish over several of Carver's stories; the author once complained about the "surgical amputation and transplant that might make them someway fit into the carton so the lid will close." Several of his stories in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love were published with extensive alterations by Lish. In ''Where I'm Calling From'', Carver included some stories as edited by Lish, some restored from his original manuscripts, and some unpublished stories. In the 2000s, Carver's widow, Tess Gallagher, fought with Knopf for permission to republish the 17 stories in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love as they were originally written by Carver. These original versions eventually appeared in Beginners, published by Jonathan Cape in 2009, and in the Library of America volume Collected Stories. ==Contents==

Selected stories • "Nobody Said Anything" • "Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes" • "The Student's Wife" • "They're Not Your Husband" • "What Do You Do in San Francisco?" • "Fat" • "What's in Alaska?" • "Neighbors" • "Put Yourself in My Shoes" • "Collectors" • "Why, Honey?" • "Are These Actual Miles?" • "Gazebo" • "One More Thing" • "Little Things" • "Why Don't You Dance?" • "A Serious Talk" • "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" • "Distance" • "The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off" • "So Much Water So Close to Home" • "The Calm" • "Vitamins" • "Careful" • "Where I'm Calling From" • "Chef's House" • "Fever" • "Feathers" • "Cathedral" • "A Small, Good Thing" New stories • "Boxes" • "Whoever Was Using This Bed" • "Intimacy" • "Menudo" • "Elephant" • "Blackbird Pie" • "Errand" ==Reception==

Publishers Weekly wrote, "Carver has the ability to render graceful prose from dreary, commonplace, scraping-the-bottom human misery." The publication also praised the new story "The Errand" as having "more affecting and finished prose than ever before". Paul Skenazy of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "The book that results is austere, impressive and weighty with the authority of a writer whose attention to language, and the people who live within and by it, rarely wavers." On November 27, 1989, the English-Speaking Union awarded the book its Ambassador Book Award. and the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. ==References==