Vladimir Nabokov refused a request to see his revisions. "Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts," he said. "It is like passing around samples of one's sputum."
But others, such as Carver, Yeats, W.H. Auden and Walt Whitman -- who continually revised and expanded "Leaves of Grass" throughout
his lifetime -- leave a published record of their drafts, proof that they never do stop while they are alive. For them, writing is ongoing, a reflection of the ebb and flow, the mutability, of existence itself.
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Assuming the quote from VN is accurate, some readers may think it relevant to the current debate
about the publication of Laura. But the point I want to make is that since, for Carver, nothing was set in stone, he felt free, when he put together his selected works in 1986, to choose between different versions (as opposed to "rough drafts") of some of the stories. He did this at a time in his life when he was sane, sober, and financially secure. It's therefore significant that he chose to keep so many of the Lish-edited stories in what he intended as his main legacy. In my opinion, he made mostly wise choices, though I greatly prefer "The Bath" (Lish) to the longer version of the story called "A Small, Good Thing." Although I'm in the minority on this particular story, it's interesting to compare the telephone call at the end of "The Bath" with VN's use of the same device in "Signs and Symbols." And didn't VN himself publish different versions of some of his own work?
In any case, with the publication of the Library of America Carver volume, we have, in addition to the Lished stories, the versions preferred by his second wife, Tess Gallagher. Ulin is right, surely, that too much can, and has, been made of the differences.
Jim
Twiggs