Customer Reviews

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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!

Raymond Carver's friend Tobias Wolff (see Carver's essay on his friendship with Wolff and Pulizer Prize winner Richard Ford in Carver's collection NO HEROICS,PLEASE) said that when he read the short story "Cathedral" for the first time he had the feeling he was levitating off the couch where he was stretched out reading. I had the same response to this essential work WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE as I emerged from my college library where I should have been studying, but was transfixed by this book I had just picked up by chance the day before. I had the feeling that I was floating across the campus toward the cafeteria for my evening meal after reading this book in one sitting. Who is Raymond Carver? Who is this guy ?, I kept saying to myself, feeling that all the persons and places I passed just NOW were the loveliest things I'd ever seen. How could anyone make me feel like that? I'm still wondering today and that was fourteen years ago! I might talk about Raymond Carver in very sophisticated terms today but my initial primal response still seems inexplicable. I have read everything I could get my hands on that Carver ever wrote or said, but this is the book in which Carver captured the solitary American experience at its heartfelt core. It shows what happens to us, the price we pay for our dreams , loves, and terrors. Or what is, perhaps, as the American poet Michael Palmer has characterized it: the "psychic cost of the American project." Carver wrote this book in the late 1970's just after alcoholism nearly killed him and he had given up everything just to SURVIVE (including, he thought back then, any sense that he might ever write again). My recommendation goes beyond the fact that this is my first and favorite Carver book. Why? This is it! This is where he did it. He stripped the prose here to its poetic core , and it was a wager, a Mallarmean throw of the dice; he would or would not write again with this book. The stories individually are astonishing, but together they become something larger, and more harrowing , and "dynamic". The stories turn into a work, That uniquely human thing we construct with our HANDS from whatever materials are there for us. Carver's whole life and attention are here , and whatever price he paid for that strange attentiveness which was uniquely his own (he's called called it "vision" in one of his essays from FIRES) it came together( ALL of it nearly) here in these pages. It is Carver, more than perhaps anyone else who did this kind of writing in the 70's and 80's who gave me the revelatory sense I have of what I would wish to care for most in my life . And how I might begin that difficult task every day that is given me. CARE. Carver must have loved that word. As the poet Robert Duncan has pointed out: "All the events, things and beings, of our life move then with the intent of a story revealing itself."

The question of authorship should be immaterial to the reading of this work. Do we care what was left out? Do we care who wrote which sentence? In the end, whatever the process that produced them, this collection contains some of the most tragically beautiful stories I've read. The prose is minimal, but masterfully minimal -- it feels like the stories form the briefest of forays across the skin of a giant animal, and though you can't tell exactly what the animal is, or where it is going, you know there is something vaguely wrong, deep down below. The style Carver employs means that the smallest of incidents become important in mysterious ways, as if each part of the story, no matter how seemingly insignificant, contains part of the clue to the whole. But because of the sparse nature of the work, the clues never sum to a complete solution -- I feel like these stories reside somewhere between the tiny fictions we invent for people we glance at in the street, and fully-fledged realism which doesn't leave us room for imagination. Carver takes this space and with deft touches makes it seem both familiar and strange. Can't say enough about him. If you aspire to writing short stories, this will either set the bar for you or make you want to give up...

Despite other reviews calling Raymond Carver 'the Hemingway of the trailer court', I am reminded of the quote by Nabokov concerning Hemingway...."Hemingway...bah! he writes books for boys!" Raymond Carver wrote about adults for adults... and, more to the point, the circumstances in which men and women find themselves when they are caught in ethical, mystical, and problematic situations that cry for release from the heart-wrenching tasks of showing compassion, friendship, and love in the willingness to choose, when faced with difficulty and despair.

Besides its title being just wonderful, this book, alongside all the others written by Raymond Carver, is a raw chronicle of modern world, of a rootless time and of the lives that live in it. These lives by people from the suburbs, meeting in crossroads and malls, tragic in their own plainness, looking for a hope that will never show up. Carver tells us of the people that are never on a TV literary debate, that do not buy the last book "everyone intelligent people should read"; thousands of miles from our decadent postmodern litterary intelligentsia. If you think litterature only should deal with "people worthy of being portrayed", never read Carver. It is not surprising why Carver was born in the USA. His stories tell us of the futur of our societies, of those faces we cross -me included- in the supermarket and that we despise because they do not look as succesful as us, of how a world of over-consumption lead to some to a hell call alcohol (or drugs, or bulimy, or addictions, or violence). Carver showed us the hidden face of the world we refuse to see, but which lies next door, car even the white trash and the poor also suffers . Thank you so much, Mr. Carver, for letting me know.

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.

What the LA "reader" does not mention is that the Gottlieb connection is highly controversial -- more of an interesting theory than a fact. Even so, why criticize a young author for being influenced -- even molded -- by an editor? The author/editor relationship is complex, contentious, controversial -- and, in this case, extremely rewarding. If Gottlieb shares any credit for shaping Carver into a short story writer who can be mentioned in the same breath as Chekov and Hemingway, then I say, "Thanks a lot, Bob!" Nothing happens in the stories? C'mon, LA reader. Carver captures that unique American disconnection and emotional emptiness as well as any author imaginable. And he still manages to be funny! (Similarly, the movie "American Beauty" does a better job of being Carveresque than Altman's "Short Cuts" did.) This book is essential reading -- although "Where I'm Calling From" offers a more complete look at his entire career.

Raymond Carver is one of my all-time favorite short story writers. This brief collection gives some of his best, and some of his lesser works. My favorite stories here include the title story, "So Much Water So Close To Home," and - perhaps my favorite - the quasi-horror story, "Tell the Women We're Going." Carver's lean style captures the feel of the America in which he is writing; his characters are usually suburban and lower-middle-class. They are cynical and frequently disillusioned by love - yet there is still hope coming through.

Some of these stories don't feel finished though. They stand merely as slices of life. ONE of them definitely isn't finished: the story, "The Bath," would later be expanded into one of his most famous stories - "A Small, Good Thing."

Carver has compiled a collection about people failing to make connections and living second hand. If "Why Don't You Dance?" doesn't break your heart, you may not have one