Published alongside Robert Altman’s film of the same name, Short Cuts gathers the Carver stories and poem that Altman rearranged into his sprawling portrait of Los Angeles.

Unlike the film, Carver’s world is smaller, colder and more intimate, built from marriages wearing thin, money running short, casual cruelty, baffled desire and the strange violence of ordinary conversation.

Carver’s great subject is not catastrophe itself but the moment before or after it, when people continue making coffee, driving to work or speaking badly because language has failed them. His prose is stripped back without being empty; beneath its apparent plainness sits an exact understanding of shame, class, dependency and the damage people do while trying not to be alone. Robert Altman’s introduction adds useful context on how these separate lives were translated into one cinematic network.

Harvill film tie-in paperback with introduction by Robert Altman. Light edgewear, corner rubbing and minor creasing; internally clean.