What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories | 
 enlarge | Author: Raymond Carver
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $12.95
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Rating:  36 reviews
Sales Rank: 23898
Media: Paperback
Pages: 176
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0679723056
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780679723059
Publication Date: June 18, 1989
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Amazon.com
"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is not only the most well-known short story title of the latter part of the 20th century; it has come to stand for an entire aesthetic, the bare-bones prose style for which Raymond Carver became famous. Perhaps, it could be argued, too famous, at least for his fiction's own good. Like those of Hemingway or any other writer similarly loved, imitated, parodied, and reviled, these stories can sometimes produce the sense of reading pastiche. "A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house." "That morning she pours Teacher's over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window." "My friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right." What other writer ever produced first sentences like these? They are like doors into Carverworld, where everyone speaks in simple declarative phrases, no one ever stops at one beer, and failure or violence are the true outcomes of the American dream. Yet these stories bear careful re-reading, like any truly important and enduring work. For one thing, Carver is one of the few writers who can make desperation--cutting your ex-wife's telephone cord in the middle of a conversation, standing on your own roof chunking rocks while a man with no hands takes your picture--deeply funny. Then there is the sheer craft that went into their creation. Despite their seeming simplicity, his tales are as artfully constructed as poems--and like poems, the best of them can make your breath catch in your throat. In the title piece, for instance, after the gin has been drunk, after the stories have been told, after the tensions in the room have come to the surface and subsided again, there comes a moment of strange lightness and peace: "I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark." Much of what happens in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981) happens offstage, and we're left with tragedy's props: booze, instant coffee, furniture from a failed marriage, cigarettes smoked in the middle of the night. This is not merely a matter of technique. Carver leaves out a great deal, but that's only a measure of his characters' vulnerability, the nerve endings his stories lay bare. To say anything more, one feels, would simply hurt too much. --Mary Park
Product Description
In his second collection of stories, as in his first, Carver's characters are peripheral people--people without education, insight or prospects, people too unimaginative to even give up. Carver celebrates these men and women.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 31 more reviews...
 Master of 'the moment' June 17, 2003
Steven Reynolds (Sydney, Australia)
48 out of 48 found this review helpful
I used to hate Carver. "Nothing happens in these stories!" I would say. "What does it MEAN, for God's sake?!" It took me a while to realise that Carver's genius isn't for the grand epiphany, the convoluted plot, or the surprise ending. His genius is for moments of pathos; for moments of carefully observed humanity; for human foibles unflinchingly, but never unkindly, revealed. You really have to read him for yourself to understand, but here's an example: the story "Gazebo", which is one of my favourites from this collection. The story works because what 'the gazebo' means to the couple in the story is something most of us have felt: a dream of future happiness that is now lost to us; lost because we don't see how we might escape the banality of our own lives; lost because we fail to see how close we are to achieving it, if only we could slightly change the way we see things, or the way we live. None of this is overtly stated in the story - and that's Carver's genius. It is simply implied by juxtaposition. Thematic statements and grand epiphanies undermine so many stories (even some of Carver's earlier ones) because they are embarrassing. I don't mean embarrassing for the writer, I mean embarrassing for us, the readers: to have these slightly pathetic, vaguely shameful, and yet very human moments which are recognisably our own shoved in our faces feels like an accusation, and one we understandably reject. But to have them placed before us, gently, apparently undeliberately, so that we might see them for ourselves is wonderful. It engages OUR powers of observation and reflection, not just the writer's. We see ourselves reflected there in the story, and it's a private moment of self-revelation, of self-understanding. And more often than not, this is NOT a life-changing experience for us. No, the effect is much simpler, more realistic and more honest. It's a feeling of: "Oh, thank God. Other people feel this way, too. I'm not alone." It's a moment of empathy, not of explanation. Carver gives us this gift many times, and so well. Go read everything he's written. Especially if you're interested in writing your own stories. Carver's small body of work has as much to teach us about writing as it does about our lives.
Carver's a Champ July 20, 2003
M. Hori (Urayasu, Chiba Japan)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
I've been using this book in literature classes in Japan, and I have to say that these stories have lost none of their power in the twenty-odd years since they first appeared in book form. Carver was a master at presenting the disillusioned and the lost in terse, understated, colloquial English that still is as crisp and fine as when it was first minted. Like Hemingway, Carver developed a method to freight the simplest words and sentences with a depth of meaning that can skew the whole story in an unexpected way, even in the very last sentence. This takes craft and talent, both qualities that Carver exhibits in the highest degree.Some may find his choice of subject matter rather limited. His characters, too, often exhbit the same strengths and the same weaknesses (booze for instance)--and this may signal a kind of narrowness of vision to some. Certainly Carver does not have the breadth of a Tolstoy or a Doestoyevsky, or even of a Faulkner or a Hemingway--yet these limitations, I would argue, are also his greatest strengths. Though he does not have a universal sweep, Carver knows his territory well, and mines his subject in all kinds of fascinating ways. All in all, this book is a fine introduction to Raymond Carver's work. Carver's a champ in my book and I predict that some of these stories will find their way into the American canon right next to Melville, Poe, Emerson, and all the rest. What a chuckle for Ray when he looks down from his writer's heaven and notices the gold stamping on the spine!
What we talk about when we talk about a fantastic book October 5, 2000
Catherine Kunz (Il)
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
Raymond Carver is the most incredible story teller of all time. I have read and re-read this book many, many times, and each time I enjoy it more than the time before. The story that shares the name of the book is the single best short story that I have ever read and I have read gaggles of short stories. The characters that he describes are interesting and so well- developed that you will look at everyone you ever meet with new perspective. You will see that there is the potential for profoundness in even the most seemingly simple situation. The language he uses, the situations he illustrates, and the dialogues presented are perfectly synchronized, so much that you forget that you are reading and find yourself totally submerged in the experience and the thought provoking world that you have entered.
One of best short story collections of the century August 21, 2000
Mr. Egregious
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The absurd scenarios that we find ourselves in when we read Carver force us to reevaluate ourselves and the world around us. No other collection achieves this as well as WHAT WE . . . highly recommended.
So heartrending, so beautiful! August 27, 2000
Xavier Mercier (Galway Ireland)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
I already knew some poems of Raymond Carver, notably those gathered in "Where Water Comes Together With Other Water". Impressed by his style and his way to reach people's heart, I wanted to read a few of his short stories, and I chose that collection thanks to the enthusiastic reviews.Well, well... I'm speechless, now! Frankly, never in my 30 years of life have I read with so much passion and excitement such a beautiful and desperate work. No author has touched me so deeply so far. In this collection, Raymond Carver will tear your heart apart, he will call the best that exists in you, he will make you sympathize and even empathize with his characters. Just be warned: some stories are very hard to live. Mysterious, weird, crazy, dismal, gloomy, violent, ironic, cynical, all of them will make you react somehow, all of them will slap you at the end and I do say all of them! No heroes with big muscles in these stories, no villains, just everyday women and men in tragic or disturbing situations that in practice we prefer to ignore because they disrupt our life, our comfort, our conformism. Subsequently, you'll be invited to an uncommon yard sale ("Why don't you dance?"), a meeting with a severely maimed photographer ("Viewfinder"), a night in a motel held by a torn couple ("Gazebo"), a nocturnal walk in your gown ("I could see the smallest thing"), a drink with your father by the airport ("Sacks"), a tragic riding ("Tell the women we're going"), the terrible decay of your father's best friend ("The third thing that killed my father off"), a strange and riveting discussion about what love is ("What we talk about when we talk about love"), a moving reconciliation ("Everything stuck to him"). Despite their short length (most of them only count a dozen pages or even less), the stories never lost their impact. My 3 favorites are "The bath", "Popular mechanics" and "One more thing". Whether you have already experimented parenthood or not, I guess everybody should be highly sensitive to "The bath". So, prepare your handkerchief. I don't have a son (not yet) but if I had one and it happened to him the same thing that happened to Scotty, I guess I would experiment the same awful anguish as his parents'. It's a very human story, far from naivety, touting and demagoguery. "Popular mechanics" is disgusting and revolting. It's probably the shortest short story of the collection but what a blow in the face! It's so sad to see how life compels some people to behave in such an egoistic and criminal way. Omigod, you can prepare your handkerchief again! Finally, "One more thing" concludes the book in a very funny way. The tone is grim but the mood is paradoxally jolly. All things considered, it creates such a contrast with the rest that it even makes me laugh. When you'll reach the very last line, you'll understand why the conclusion is so witty and can be applied not only to the story itself but also to the whole book. Raymond Carver dares to dig in human mind and forces us to dig with him. In opposite with what you can see in some movies or books, he doesn't try to convince us that people are born good or evil. He shows us instead what true life is, he offers us a spitting image of what we are, or might be, within. I've given this masterpiece 5 stars because I sincerely found the stories exceptional. Raymond is a writer America can be very proud of. He's maybe dead now but what he gave us in this collection deserves immortality.
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