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.{{cite book | last=Carver | first=R. | last2=Gentry | first2=M.B. | last3=Stull | first3=W.L. | title=Conversations with Raymond Carver | publisher=University Press of Mississippi | series=Literary conversations series | year=1990 | isbn=978-0-87805-449-7 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y0uhb9ERrjsC&pg=PR27 | access-date=November 2, 2023 | page=27}} When the cancer returned in his brain in March 1988, Carver underwent a seven-week course of radiation therapy from April to May.

The book does not collect all of Carver's stories. In an interview with The New York Times, Carver said, "There are some I'm not particularly fond of and would not like to see reprinted again. I just picked up ones that I felt I could live with." Where I'm Calling From was edited by Gary Fisketjon, an employee of the Atlantic Monthly Press at the time. In Carol Sklenicka's biography of Carver, Fisketjon is quoted as saying, "The main reason Ray and I wanted to do a 'new and selected' with Where I'm Calling From was to show how steadily his work had evolved and to shuck the moronic 'minimalist' label." Fisketjon declared, "Where I'm Calling From is the definitive edition of Ray's stories. Those are the stories that Ray wanted to restore."{{cite book | last=Sklenicka | first=Carol |author-link=Carol Sklenicka | title=Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life | publisher=Scribner | year=2009 | isbn=978-1-4391-6058-9}}

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."{{cite news|last=Wood|first=Gaby|author-link=Gaby Wood|date=September 26, 2009|title=Raymond Carver: the kindest cut|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/27/raymond-carver-editor-influence|newspaper=The Observer|access-date=November 2, 2023}} 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I'm Calling From, Carver included some stories as edited by Lish, some restored from his original manuscripts, and some unpublished stories.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.{{cite news|last=Rich|first=Motoko|author-link=Motoko Rich|date=October 17, 2007|title=The Real Carver: Expansive or Minimal|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/books/17carver.html|url-status=live|newspaper=The New York Times|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201109034709/https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/books/17carver.html|archive-date=November 9, 2020|access-date=November 2, 2023|url-access=limited}} These original versions eventually appeared in Beginners, published by Jonathan Cape in 2009, and in the Library of America volume Collected Stories.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/books/review/King-t.html|title=Raymond Carver's Life and Stories|first=Stephen|last=King|author-link=Stephen King|work=The New York Times|date=November 19, 2009}}

• "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"

• "Boxes"
• "Whoever Was Using This Bed"
• "Intimacy"
• "Menudo"
• "Elephant"
• "Blackbird Pie"
• "Errand"

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".

In a lengthy review for The New York Times, author Marilynne Robinson wrote that the last seven stories are "written in more elegant prose and more elegiac" than the previous stories in the collection. Robinson continued: "Carver stands squarely in the line of descent of American realism. His weaknesses are for sentimentality and sensationalism. His great gift is for writing stories that create meaning through their form. [...] He should be famous for the conceptual beauty of his best stories, and disburdened of his worst." Robinson, however, went on to lament the difficult and "uncongenial" experience of reading Carver.{{cite news|last=Robinson|first=Marilynne|author-link=Marilynne Robinson|date=May 15, 1988|title=Marriage and Other Astonishing Bonds|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/15/books/marriage-and-other-astonishing-bonds.html|url-status=live|newspaper=The New York Times|at=Late City Final Edition Section 7; Page 1, Column 3; Book Review Desk|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200806094126/https://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/15/books/marriage-and-other-astonishing-bonds.html|archive-date=August 6, 2020|access-date=November 2, 2023|url-access=limited}}

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."{{cite news|last=Skenazy|first=Paul|date=June 26, 1988|title=Peering Through the Keyhole at Gloom : WHERE I'M CALLING FROM New and Selected Stories by Raymond Carver (Atlantic Monthly Press: $19.95; 393 pp., ISBN 0-87113-216-8)|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-06-26-bk-8506-story.html|newspaper=Los Angeles Times|access-date=November 2, 2023}}

On November 27, 1989, the English-Speaking Union awarded the book its Ambassador Book Award. The book was also a finalist for the 1988 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction,{{cite news|last=Swisher|first=Kara|author-link=Kara Swisher|date=December 3, 1988|title=CRITICS CIRCLE NOMINEES|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1988/12/03/critics-circle-nominees/753a7e9d-83e4-4b96-996c-a9f6df92a510/|newspaper=The Washington Post|access-date=November 2, 2023}} and the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.{{cite web|url=https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/raymond-carver-0|title=Where I'm Calling From, by Raymond Carver (Atlantic Monthly)|website=The Pulitzer Prizes|access-date=November 2, 2023}}

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Category:1988 short story collections

Category:Ambassador Book Award–winning works

Category:American short story collections

Category:Atlantic Monthly Press books

Category:Short story collections by Raymond Carver