The Real Raymond Carver
Literary arguments over the authenticity of rival texts are nothing new, certainly not in the TLS. But there is no modern case as strange as that of Raymond Carver, whose miniature masterpieces, with the spare style that was to be so imitated and iconic, were first published only after his editor, Gordon Lish, had removed more than half of the author's words. Carver's second wife, Tess Gallagher, came to believe that the “un-Lished” originals were superior and, as James Campbell describes this week, it is now possible for admirers to compare the two and make up their own minds. Only those who do so, he says, can claim “in the fullest sense to have read Raymond Carver.”
Beheading Hindus
“People lose their heads quite often in Hindu mythology…” In publishing her new book, The Hindus: An Alternative History, however, the American scholar Wendy Doniger has not lost hers. As our reviewer, the historian David Arnold puts it, this is a "courageous and scholarly" work—and one that is the summation of a lifetime's work, in the face of vituperative criticism. "I've labored all my life in the paddy fields of Sanskrit," she has said. The result is this celebration of Hindu mythology in all its inventive glory.
Doing Business with Franco
Biography is not an art much practiced in Spain, writes Ronald Fraser. So a scholarly biography of a business tycoon, even one who created a diesel-engine industry for both General Franco and Fidel Castro, is “a significant event.” The author of E duardo Barreiros and the Recovery of Spain is the great British historian, Hugh Thomas, adding to his lengthy catalogue of works that have explained and illuminated the Hispanic world.
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Peter Stothard is editor of the Times Literary Supplement. He was editor of The Times of London from 1992-2002. He writes about ancient and modern literature and is the author of Thirty Days, a Downing Street diary of his time with British Prime Minister Tony Blair during the Iraq war.
