'I look at all of Carver's work as just one story, for his stories are all occurences, all about things that just happen to people and cause their lives to take a turn... In formulating the mosaic of the filmShort Cuts, which is based on these nine stories and a poem, 'Lemonade', I've tried to do the same thing- to give the audience one look... But it all began here. I was a reader turning these pages. Trying on these lives' - Robert Altman in his introduction.

Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, in 1938. His first short stories appeared inEsquireduring Gordon Lish's tenure as fiction editor in the 1970s. Carver's work began to reach a wider audience with the 1976 publication ofWill You Please be Quiet, Please?, but it was not until the 1981 publication ofWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Loveunder Gordon Lish, then at Knopf, that he began to achieve real literary fame. This collection was edited by more than 40 per cent before publication, and Carver dedicated it to his fellow writer and future wife, Tess Gallagher, with the promise that he would one day republish his stories at full length. He went on to write two more collections of stories,CathedralandElephant,which moved away from the earlier minimalist style into a new expansiveness, as well as several collections of poetry. He died in 1988, aged fifty.