There’s a battle brewing over a plan by Raymond Carver’s widow to publish a book of 17 Carver stories, The New York Times reports.

Tess Gallager wants to publish the stories from Carver’s breakout 1981 book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love as Carver originally wrote them.

Largely as a result of that collection, which became a literary sensation, Carver was credited with popularizing a minimalist style. But many of his fans have been aware of reports that Gordon Lish, Carver’s first editor at Alfred A. Knopf, had heavily edited, and in many cases radically cut, the stories before publication to hone the author’s voice. At the time, Carver begged Mr. Lish to stop production of the book. But Knopf went ahead and published it, to much critical acclaim.

Ms. Gallagher, who is also a novelist and poet, wants to see the original stories published as a volume called “Beginners,” the title that Carver gave to the story that became the title story in What We Talk About.

“I just think it’s so important for Ray’s book, which has been a kind of secret, to appear,” Ms. Gallagher said by telephone from her home in Port Angeles, Wash. But, she added, “I would never want to take What We Talk About out of publication.” Those versions of the stories, she said, “are now part of the history.”

Ms. Gallagher’s plan has created controversy. Carver’s later editor, Gary Fisketjon of Knopf, which holds the copyright to What We Talk About, is deeply opposed to the idea.

“I would rather dig my friend Ray Carver out of the ground,” he said. “I don’t understand what Tess’s interest in doing this is except to rewrite history. I am appalled by it.”

Knopf has warned Gallagher that if she tries to publish with another house, it will consider the book an illegal, competitive edition.

It’s a thorny issue that calls into question everything from Carver’s reputation as a master of minimalism to the metaphysical problems of determining what a late author really thought and would want.