Аннотация:egory of minimalism. Indeed, during the turbulent debates of the eighties the term appears to have been ruined for literary criticism, as it was increasingly used to denigrate what was deemed second-rate workshop prose merely turning into lot less (Aldridge 45).1 As a result, critics intending to prove Carver's literariness often feel compelled to preface their arguments with disclaimers, emphasizing that he is first and foremost an original storyteller and only tenuously related to the minimalist trend. There is a tendency in criticism to reclaim him for a more traditionally realist poetics and argue that his minimalist leanings were merely part of a brief phase, too insignificant to be taken seriously. A. O. Scott's New York Review of Books article Looking for Raymond Carver is an eloquent and representative example of this opinion.
