BY: JERRY P

Tess Gallagher, the widow of Raymond Carver, whose short stories had quite an impact in the 1980s, is trying to get the original version of her husband's well-considered book, "What We Talk About," into print.

According to her, and some of Carver’s friends, he talked about the travesty he had experienced around the publication of the book. The original title was "Beginnings," and the manuscript he handed to editor Gordon Lish was drastically cut and restyled. When Carver saw it, he pleaded with the publishers not to print the edited version because it was not in line with his vision. But they went ahead, figuring they knew best, and the success that followed makes it seem they were right to do what they did. The book did well and Carver became know as the “Minimalist Master.” End of story - but not quite.

The situation sounds parallel to what Thomas Wolfe experienced with Maxwell Perkins, the elebrated editor of Charles Scribner and Sons who changed the nature of the manuscript Wolfe called "O Lost! The Story of a Buried Life"; it was drastically reduced in size, cleaned up, and came out with a new title "Look Homeward Angel" (1938), another ‘masterpiece’ deeply influenced by its editor. If the original manuscript had not been reduced, it would have been 825 pages long - not impossibly long when you consider that "Gone With the Wind" (1936) was 1,037 pages. Length, obscenities, vulgarities, and criticisms of the South were cut from the body of the book. "Angel" ended up 625 pages. That’s a cut of considerable magnitude - like a body with one lung and one kidney. Sure, you can make do, but it is far from an ideal situation. Wolfe suffered terribly with each cut and finally, in 2000, the original book was published under the title Wolfe gave it. I haven’t checked what scholars have said about the book, but I certainly thought it was a more complete and satisfying telling of the tale.

I am currently reading a book that it has taken 50 years to get into print and that is the original version - the ‘Directors Cut’ - of "On the Road," which is on a continuous scroll that Jack Kerouac produced in three weeks; he was known as a very fast typist. There are no divisions by paragraphs, the grammar is fast and loose, and eccentric word play is untouched, as are the real names of the characters, his entourage of friends and the strangers he met on the road. I can’t believe what the fuss was all about; it is not more difficult to read. Why was it such a big deal? Because it was thought it would sell better trimmed to contemporary tastes and critics' formal preferences. Editors have a tendency to think they know best, and their say-so to the publisher usually overrides the writer’s complaints and pleas.

God bless Tess Gallagher, I hope she is successful in getting "Beginnings" out there for readers to make up their own minds about the book, as written by the author.

For JERRY PFAFFL, writing about movies is an act of love and exaltation. Once a week while growing up he and his brother were taken to the neigborhood theater by thier parents to see second-run movies. He remembers sitting in the dark and being utterly mesmerized by noir thrillers, technicolor musicals, Westerns, and Biblical epics. When he was a college student he discovered the wonder of foreign movies and how more daring subject matter was possible. When he was teaching at UNLV he founded CINEMA X, a film society devoted to the showing of contemporary experimental films. When he was working at Bookmans on Ina he was in charge of the Video and DVD department and his nametag read "The Movie Guy." In sum, movies have always been his passion.