In the spring of 1990, a friend suggested if I liked J.D. Salinger, I should read Raymond Carver. It would seem this recommendation and my subsequent falling in love with Carver’s style would come a bit too late. My “discovery” of him came two years after his death. I read everything by Carver I could find. I even turned down plans with friends to stay home and read his stories. Years later, the controversy of Carver and his editor, Gordon Lish, became public and many voiced their thoughts on the process of such heavy editing of a writer’s work. I felt strangely betrayed. I wondered if I had read more Lish than Carver in all those stories. Yet, when I read what Tess Gallagher gave to The New Yorker as the first draft of “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” which Carver had titled “Beginners,” I could honestly say the story was better for the editing. I also found it intriguing an editor would suggest a longer title. In 2009, it was because of t...