What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Raymond Carver

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All this, all of this love we're talking about, it would just be a memory. Maybe not even a memory. Am I wrong? Am I way off base? Because I want you to set me straight if you think I'm wrong. I want to know. I mean, I don't know anything, and I'm the first one to admit it.” Mel’s job is also rich with symbolism, but also irony. He is a heart surgeon, but by his own admission he’s just a ‘mechanic’ who fixes things that people have physically wrong with them. Other ‘matters of the heart’, we might say, such as love, are as mysterious to him as they are to the others.

The group continues drinking, talking about knights and Ed and Mel's ex. Mel says he wants to call his children, but Terri reminds him he would have to talk to his ex-wife, Marjorie. Marjorie reportedly only stays single to torment Mel and Terri and take their money. Terri says Ed took rat poison when she left him but that he survived. Mel says he’s dead now. Terri says he shot himself, but he “bungled it.”

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" - Key takeaways

Shortly before his death, Carver arranged the publication of his own selection of 37 of his stories, Where I'm Calling From: Selected Tales. He included some stories as edited by Lish, some restored from his original manuscripts, and some unpublished stories. I really wanted to hang in there for the long haul. I thought I could outlast the drinking. I'd do anything it took. I loved Ray, first, last, and always.²

I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been.”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 couples in the story are in their second marriages after the failure of their first ones. As is clear from Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” analysis, each person claims to have loved his or her former spouse. For example, Mel says he once loved his first wife, Marjorie, maybe even more than his own life but now hates her and wishes she would die. He also says that if one of them was to die, he was sure the other would remarry after mourning for a while. One then wonders what love is if you love somebody today, and tomorrow you loathe them. Brutal love Originally published in 1981, the prose is lean and the general mood somewhat disturbing as Carver explores the nature of life and love. As I worked my way through the collection the stories seemed to increase in length and complexity. Many of the characters were not easy to like - many were alcoholics and adulterers – but there was a compelling darkness and variation that seemed to draw me, urgently, from one story to the next. Raymond Carver is the writer who uses minimalism in his writing style to set up the tone of the story from the very beginning. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” by Carver explores the subject of love. Love is a word that one hears in everyday life. Talking about love, people mean different things. People talk about loving their parents, cars, pets, movies, books, ice cream, children, spouses, and so forth. However, love is different in each instance, and the concept of love puzzles many people. In contemporary pop culture, the word love has been overused, and it is not easy to tell what the word actually means. Love means different things to different people. The essay shall examine major themes and main characters of the story and their attitude to love and relationships. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Summary