The region to which much of [Raymond Carver's Furious Seasons and Other Stories] is affixed is, roughly, the Pacific Northwest—magnificent scenery notwithstanding, never prime stomping grounds for a major writer. (Kesey, you might say, but he's too much the Merry Prankster to rest easy in the Willamette Valley; likewise Tom Robbins, bard of Puget Sound, who in the end appropriates the entire universe as his private, and cosmic, pinball machine.) Carver, though, has roots somewhere, or most places, between northern California and the Washington-British Columbia border. Not that he has erected his own version of Yoknapatawpha County; one gets a name only here and there (Wenatchee, Yakima, Eureka), and many of the locations go unidentified.

More importantly, Carver has a remarkable feel for the pace of life in these parts. He knows these small one- or two-horse towns, which possess neither the splendor and neuroses of the...