What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

1st edition (publ. Knopf)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is the name of a 1981 collection of short stories by American writer Raymond Carver, as well as the title of one of the stories in the collection.

The Stories

Why Don't You Dance?

In 1977 Carver submitted a story with this title to Esquire, which was subsequently edited by Gordon Lish and given the title "I Am Going to Sit Down," but no version ever appeared in Esquire. The story was first published in Quarterly West in Autumn 1978 and later in The Paris Review in Spring 1981. The Quarterly West version incorporated many of Lish's suggested changes, while the final version was 9% shorter.

The Bath

"The Bath" is an early version of "A Small, Good Thing," one of Carver's most famous stories. It is much shorter than the later story, ending on an ambiguous note with Scotty's mother going home from the hospital to take a bath (which is where this version of the story gets its name).

Tell the Women We're Going

The story chronicles the lifelong friendship between Bill and Jerry. It focuses on how marriage alters their friendship and the disparate ways the two friends are affected by this change.

Popular Mechanics

titled "Little Things" in Where I'm Calling From (1988); manuscript version titled "Mine" appears in Beginners (2009).

Everything Stuck to Him

Originally published in Chariton Review, Fall 1975, as "Distance"

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Main Characters

Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, 45 years old and is married to Teresa. Nick describes Mel as tall and rangy with curly soft hair. Teresa also known as Terri is Mel's second wife and they live in together in Albuquerque. Terri is described by Nick as bone-thin with a pretty face, dark eyes, and brown hair. Mel and Terri have two friends named Nick and Laura. Nick is 38 years old and is the narrator of the story. Laura is 35, married to Nick and works as a legal secretary.

Plot

The story is about four friends—Mel, Teresa (Terri), Laura, and Nick. The setting is Mel's house, around a table with a bucket of ice in the middle. A bottle of gin is inside it. They soon start to talk about love (as the title suggests). Terri has had an abusive relationship, the abuse, she says, deriving from love. Ed, Terri's former abusive boyfriend, "loved her so much he tried to kill her." Ed would beat Terri, he dragged her around the living room by her ankles knocking her into things along the way. Terri believed that Ed loved her and his abuse was his way of showing it. No matter what Terri said, Mel refused to believe that was "love." Ed would stalk Mel and Terri. He would call Mel at work with threatening messages. At one point Mel was so scared he bought a gun, and made out a will. Mel even wrote to his brother in California saying that "if something happened to him" to look for Ed. Her abusive boyfriend eventually committed suicide after two attempts (as Terri sees it, another act of love). Ed's first attempt at suicide was when Terri had left him. Ed had drank rat poison, but was rushed to the hospital where he was saved. Ed's second attempt and success was shooting himself in the mouth. A person heard the shot from Ed's room and called the manager. Terri and Mel argued about whether she could be in the room with him when he died. Terri won and was with Ed as he died, as Terri put it, "he never came up out of it." Soon afterward Mel begins a story about an older couple and a drunk driver. The drunken driver was a teenager and pronounced dead at the scene. The elderly couple survived the car accident because they were wearing seat belts. Mel was called into the hospital one night just as he sat down to dinner. Once he got there he saw how badly the elderly couple had been injured. He said that they had "multiple fractures, internal injuries, hemorrhaging, contusions, and lacerations." The couple were in casts and bandages from head to toe. Mel's point in telling the story was that when the elderly couple were moved into ICU, intensive care unit, the husband was very upset. Mel would visit the couple every day and when he put his ear to the husband's mouth hole he told him that he was upset, because he could not see his wife through his eye-holes. Mel would stray from the topic with more talk about Ed, his own personal thoughts on love, hatred toward his ex wife, and life as a knight. Mel felt that even though you love a person, if something was to happen to them, the person still living will grieve but love again. After finishing the second bottle of gin, they talk about going to dinner, but no one makes any moves to proceed with their plans.

Symbolism

The obvious symbol in "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is love. The story illustrates that love can be viewed in many different ways. Mel believes that real love is nothing less than spiritual love. Terri believed that even though Ed beat her up, that was his way of showing his love. Both Nick and Laura know what they think of love, but are not sure how to express their opinions(http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=12386 Miksanek, Tony).

The more important symbol in the story, though, is talking. Throughout the story, the characters attempt to put into words just what love means to them, and find themselves growing increasingly inarticulate as they attempt to do so. This symbolism reaches a climax when Mel tells the story of the old couple, whose greatest connection is simply seeing each other; they only need eye contact to reestablish their connection, rather than proclamations to one another of how they feel.

Earlier version

Carver's original draft of the story, Beginners, was heavily edited by Gordon Lish, who cut out nearly half of Carver's story, adding in details of his own. Carver's original draft, released by his widow Tess Gallagher and published in a December 2007 issue of the New Yorker reveals the extensive edits. For instance, the character Mel was originally named Herb, and the abusive boyfriend, renamed Ed by Lish, was originally named Carl. In addition, Herb's story about the old couple was cut nearly in half, with Lish removing the story of the old couple's home life, love, and reunion in the hospital. In Carver's original version, the two had separate rooms, which caused them to pine for each other and eventually led to a scene when they met again. Lish removed all of this, rewrote the couple into the same room, but in body casts that prevented themselves from seeing each other, and then explained the old man's distress thus:

"I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn't everything. I'd get up to his mouth-hole, you know, and he'd say no, it wasn't the accident exactly but it was because he couldn't see her through the eye-holes. He said that that was making him feel so bad. Can you imagine? I'm telling you, the man's heart was breaking because he couldn't turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife." Mel looked around the table and shook his head at what he was going to say. "I mean, it was killing the old fart just because he couldn't look at the fucking woman."

Lish also cut out eight paragraphs at the end in which Terri communicates her worry over Herb's depression to Laura and Nick, and another aspect of love is shown as Laura comforts Terri, tying together all the types of love discussed in the story.

Editing

There was some contention between Carver and his editor Gordon Lish over several stories in the collection, where the author complained about the "surgical amputation and transplant that might make them someway fit into the carton so the lid will close." Eventually, the book was published with Lish's extensive alterations, and received critical acclaim.

Carver's widow Tess Gallagher fought with Knopf for permission to republish the 17 stories in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love as they were originally written by Carver. These original versions eventually appeared in Beginners, published by Jonathan Cape in 2009, and also in the Library of America volume Collected Stories.

Links to other works

• The stories "So Much Water So Close to Home" and "Tell the Women We're Going" were adapted for Robert Altman's feature film Short Cuts.
• The story "Why Don't You Dance?" serves as the basis for the award-winning short film Everything Goes as well as for the feature film Everything Must Go.

The title of the story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," has been paraphrased by several writers and artists, including:

• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Haruki Murakami's memoir centred on running
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop - book by Tricia Rose
• What We Talk About (When We Talk About Love) - song by Deus