What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1989) - Plot & Excerpts
My fucking head hurts. I should be writing my thesis, but the math part of crunching the data is hurting my head. It shouldn't though. It should be easy math. I'm dumber than I used to be. Instead I'll procrastinate, and share a review I wrote 6 years ago for another website that I haven't written a single thing on in just about 6 years. All date references should have six years added to them. After reading MFSO's review I wanted to make some comment about a line that I really like in the first story of this book. Instead of going to find the book, and type out the line, I just found this old review that mentions this line. The old reviewAbout five years ago I read a couple of Raymond Carver on the recommendation of a friend. I hated the books. At the time I thought what was so great about very short stories where all the characters seemed to chain smoke constantly, drink hard liquor and watch their lives fall into dissolution around them. I ended up selling one of the books to a used shop for a dollar and kept the other one only because I loved the title, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.A couple of months ago I had an allergic reaction to the excessive verbosity of writers like Rick Moody. This reaction coupled with an interest as a struggling writer to see how one can write effectively and minimally I pulled out Raymond Carver again and sat him on my to be read pile of books. This time when I read Raymond Carver I didn’t get hung up on the repetitive drinking and smoking but focused on the writing itself and saw the simple genius in these pages.Take this example from beginning of the title story of the collection:My friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right.The four of us were sitting around his kitchen table drinking gin. Sunlight filled the kitchen from the big window behind the sink. There were Mel and me and his second wife, Teresa—Terri, we called her—and my wife, Laura. We lived in Albuquerque then. But we were all from somewhere else.On a quick reading this might not seem like much. In the story this is about as much space that Carver gives to the general background of the characters and setting. Looking at the passage though every single word is packed with meaning hidden behind the simplicity of the words. Carver never uses big words, he writes with everyday language. The language of people who go to work everyday, have pitiful lives, find solace in a stiff drink after work and are more likely to watch a sitcom then ever pick up a book. Going back to the passage I picked (sorry if this is starting to sound like a school paper), look at the line (my favorite in this passage), "We lived in Albuquerque then. But we were all from somewhere else." In saying nothing really this line illuminates to me a transient loneliness that places a fleeting solidarity in the afternoon drinking. (2009 interjection: holy shit was that pretentious) In the verb tenses Carver chooses he places this one moment in time as one that may never be again. I shouldn’t belabor the point though.The stories are filled with Carver being able to choose a short phrase or sentence that can capture the entire mood of a scene.The themes that Carver chooses are slightly limited. In this collection there are mostly stories about loneliness. The loneliness of married people, the ways that the disappointments in life eventually catch up and leave an emptiness, and the hopelessness of a life that needs to just be lived even after the thrill of living is gone (yeah, just like John Cougar Mellencamp). In these stories of hopelessness are the small moments of tenderness that make life worth going on for, and it’s these moments that the collection a bittersweet feeling without any syrupy sentimentality.Raymond Carver was a master. He singularly created a body of work removed from anything else in American Literature. It’s possible to compare him the Hemingway, except that the comparison falls away once you move away from the simple language both authors use with razor sharp precision. The closest writer Carver reminds me of is a stripped down version of the Russian Short Story master Anton Chekhov.
Having finished What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, I can understand why Carver smoked and drank himself to death. Reading the collection felt like a walk on the darker side of human nature. Please don't misunderstand, I think the man was responsible for making the story story a credible literary genre but he was tragically troubled.I approached this book knowing that Carver is widely known for writing candidly about the blue-collar experience in his trademark minimalist (and often autobiographical) style. I felt that this collection of stories features some of Carver's best work.This wasn't a particularly long book nor did it require hours of analysis. Nevertheless, it took me a long time to read. I tried to read a few stories each time but found my mood significantly dropping after each one. The two stories that will stay with me no matter how much time passes have to be "Bath" and "Tell the Women We're Going."The story "Bath" is about a boy who is hit by a car on his birthday and subsequently goes into a coma. With his father and mother by his side, his chest rises and falls but his eyes stay closed. The story truly broke my heart. Upon finishing it, I couldn't read any further. I felt like I needed to walk around a little and clear my head. I regret having already forgotten the little boy's name.The most disturbing story of them all is Carver's pseudo-horror story called "Tell the Women We're Going." Two friends, both married, who've been friends for a long time decide to leave their wives at the intimate picnic so they can go drive around for a while. Somewhere along the way, they spot two girls on a bike and decide to strike up some conversation. They figure out where the girls are going and go there ahead of them. One guy is seriously interested in cheating on his wife with the girl. The other states no intent. However, he ends up bashing their heads in with a rock...Something about the way that the story was presented to me, disturbed me profoundly. I'm accustomed to reading about killers and horrendous murder scenes, but it sprang up on me unexpectedly. I hadn't realized the man was a monster. Probably because he seemed like a husk of a man. What I enjoy about Raymond however, is that he does not try to tell us that this is good or bad, instead he doesn't say anything. This is what makes him the author that he is - his ability to show us true life, the sad picture in the mirror looking back at mankind.I think this is a book that I will come back to and one meant to be re-read.
What do You think about What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1989)?
Few years ago I saw Jindabyne, movie based on Carver's story 'So Much Water So Close to Home' and I loved it. It left me numb and a bit disoriented. I started reading Carver more than five times during the last ten years, but I didn't find him any good. Of course, reading Carver is all connected with the right age and coming back to full circle. When you can understand segments of marginal psyche of people with whose life you can easily identify yourself with. Carver is not a smooth writer. I read somewhere that he described his stories as a skeleton architecture. Which is why I think his voice is still so strong and I don't think this collection will ever be outdated. There is this depressing and black, drowned in booze minimalism and you despise most of these people because they bite and remind you of yourself and many people around you. This has probably been said so many times already, but Raymond Carver really is an amazing short stories writer.
—Jana
I'll announce the cliche of my loving this book before you beat me to it.I'm an overeducated, mock-contemplative early-twenty-something with a penchant for strong male voices (despite my feminist leanings) and a distaste for anything too sentimental. I was raised in the tradition of "Show, Don't Tell" and hold this closer than even my favorite teddy (whose name is Atticus.) My middle name is "Minimalism." My other middle name is "Ooh, that sounds pretty."With that out of the way, yes, of course I loved this volume, and probably for the reasons you'd expect. Raymond Carver's name should be in lights. Everyone who likes this book is going to tell you that one of Carver's strengths is his knack for understatement. I'm guessing what they're getting at is Carver's ability to keep all the mechanics of his stories imperceptible beneath the surface, with maybe a few out-of-character exceptions (the alcohol device in the title story being one). There's also the fact that Carver seems to accomplish things in the span of one page that so many authors would kill many more trees (and possibly small children, and maybe even a puppy or two) to achieve; see the opening page of "Tell The Women We're Going" to see what I mean. How many authors can convincingly sum up the entire personal history of two characters in only one paragraph?Beneath the tightness of each story there seems to be a distinctive pulse. Not the rhythm of the language. Rather, the kind of pure life energy that all artistic works strive for (or at least they should.) When stories took turns ("for the worst" is implicit), what startled me more than each outcome was often the fact that I was so moved by them each. It's because of this pulse that characters who existed for only 3 or 4 pages still seemed to walk off the page and become real. And that's probably what will make these stories linger in my memory.People often seem to speak of "Raymond Carver's America" when they're trying to grasp these stories. I don't know what that means, or if Raymond Carver's America is anything like mine. Whatever it is, it's tortured and beautiful. And I like it.
—KFed
In friendshipIn affectionIn loveIn lustIn perpetuity In memoriamIs this what we talk about when we talk about love? Carver's stories are short, pared down love stories, stripped of everything but the necessary words and the skeletal, frequently all too human frame upon which to hang them. Some of his work doesn't seem like a love story at all, think Hemingway, if he left out the toros, marlin fishing and drinking. Carver is a landlocked Hemingway in fact. You might be left wondering, where is the love? But Carver has crafted a work which tells of love in its many multi faceted guises, without ever having to directly speak its name. To read these stories might even be a little light on the heart of the human condition. Bravo Mr Carver, bravo.
—Shovelmonkey1
