"A Small, Good Thing" (1981)

It's possible this Raymond Carver story with its suite of many versions is the best example of editor Gordon Lish's troubled relation to Carver's writing. First there is the Beginners version as originally submitted. It took a few significant changes from what Carver ultimately settled on for the later versions in Cathedral and Where I'm Calling From, adding back some of the weaknesses Lish had been likely trying to fix, but these three versions are reasonably consistent. Lish's version appeared as "The Bath" in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. It is barely recognizable and easily the most severe of all Lish's edit jobs. He slashed it from about 25 pages down to less than 10, basically just cutting out what are arguably the most important parts. It's really not even the same story and feels chaotic and pointless, especially when read with the other versions. Acknowledging Lish's overreach, however, does not mean I don't understand where his impulse came from. The story, which is used in the movie Short Cuts, might be Carver's single most famous, about an 8-year-old boy who is hit by a car on his birthday in a hit and run accident. His mother has ordered a special cake for his birthday but she never picks it up because she rushes to the hospital and forgets it after the accident. The baker gets mad and harasses them with crank calls. In the end, after the boy has died, the mother figures out who has been calling them and she and her husband go to the bakery to confront the baker. He apologizes and offers them rolls and bread fresh from the oven. Suddenly it is all a mellow introspective scene—the only thing left to hope is that the butter is freshly churned. It doesn't help that Lyle Lovett played the baker in the movie. And I think sentimentalizing hot bakery products is exactly what Lish was trying to push off the tracks here. It's frankly unbelievable. Lish may have been going about it all wrong—because ultimately such significant factors in a story are the author's call, however addled, and they should get final word (as Carver finally did). But I think Lish had the right impulse. The final version shows Carver taking many of Lish's other edits to heart, but obviously he liked and could not let go of the scene with the rolls and apology from Lyle Lovett and so forth. I think there might have been other, better ways to fix the story. But it remains interesting anyway for all these reasons and because the first two-thirds is actually prime and excellent Carver.

Raymond Carver, Where I'm Calling From (Library of America)