Raymond Carver's personal story as a writer became publicly known through an unu­su­ally intense co­op­e­­ration with his literary agent Gordon Lish. Carver’s career can be viewed as the story of a fight for the control of his writerly voice in which he is doomed to fail due to the heterogeneity characterizing the ge­nesis of his works.  The paral­­­­­­­­lel ver­­­­sions of the same stories in the Carver canon not only pose a threat to any attempt of a sim­plistic evaluation of his li­te­­r­ary legacy but also raise qu­es­tions about the authority of the wri­ter. The au­thor of the present book considers the choices Carver, Lish and other editors made part of the collective social act of manufactur­ing and at­­­­tempts to carry out a neutral anal­­­ysis of the various versions.