Birdman—winner of three Oscars on Sunday night, including Best Picture—is doing good things for Raymond Carver. The film, which chronicles an actor's attempt to reinvigorate his career with a stage adaptation of Carver's short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," has driven sales of the author's same-titled short story collection. Now Carver's U.S. publisher has more releases by the author, who died in 1988, in the works.
Carver's short story collection What We Talk About When Talk About Love has, according to Vintage, seen print sales jump 121% in the 12 weeks since the film opened, in October. Now, Vintage is planning to release the first standalone U.S. print edition of Beginners, the unedited manuscript version of What We Talk About, in September 2015. Vintage will also release e-book editions of both titles, marking the first time any of Carver's works have been published in digital editions.
Literary agent Andrew Wylie, who represents Carver’s literary estate, told PW that the author’s widow, writer Tess Gallagher, is both a friend and collaborator of Birdman director Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Wylie said Gallagher worked with Iñárritu to structure the film around parts of Carver’s short story. Iñárritu even thanked Gallagher, on stage, after receiving the Oscar for Best Picture.
Wylie emphasized that Gallagher “supported the film from its inception" and that she admired Iñárritu’s "film tribute to her late husband." The film, Wylie added, is something Gallagher sees as "a true mirror of the artist's struggle against even himself, which Carver also experienced.”
Now, Vintage intends to publish the first standalone U.S. edition of Beginners in September. (The title of the book is the original one Carver assigned to the collection that was ultimately published as What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.)
Beginners, which was published by Vintage in the U.K. in 2009, has been an ongoing source of controversy. The original, unedited version of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, the collection removes the extensive edits and textural additions made by Carver's first editor, Gordon Lish.
Gallagher's push to publish Beginners sparked, at the time, a broad discussion about the role an editor should play in deciding the final version of an author’s work.
Aside from the U.K., Beginners was as a standalone in 22 territories internationally, according to Wylie. But in the U.S., Beginners has only been released as part of the Library of America’s 2009 publication of Raymond Carver: Collected Stories.
Birdman enacts sections of Carver's short story and the collection's title is also seen frequently throughout the film on the marquee of Broadway’s St. James Theater, the venue of the play within the film. Birdman received 9 academy award nominations, winning for best picture, best director and best screenplay.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled the last name of agent Andrew Wylie.
