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

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And this seems to be the essence of it. Life’s miseries are not sugar coated here. The stories are uniformly melancholy. But overriding this is the feeling that as long as life includes the precious opportunity for us all to experience love then maybe it’s all worthwhile. Mel is a cardiologist whose life revolves around fixing people’s hearts. In hand, this represents his role in the story as the character driving the conversation about what love is. He approaches the topic in a very matter of fact way and views love through a lens of practicality where quantity equates quality and where after you fall out of love, you simply find someone else to be with. When he talks about his relationship with Terri, the first thing he mentions is how long they have been together rather than an emotional connection they share. His education has caused him to view life as a series of questions that need answers and problems he must solve. He presents his beliefs in a very blunt and logical manner, yet his bizarre speech ends with him stating that he knows nothing. He brings up this topic of discussion because he is searching for an answer to his question. Despite his apparent knowledge from experience, Mel is able to recognize that there is a side of love he does not understand. Indeed. If one wanted to distill the stories within this collection down to a pithy, inverted, Hallmark-style aphorism, this would be a top contender.

The White Knight and His Kids: Mel says how he wants to be like those medieval knights in their armor where nothing can hurt them. Then, tipsy with gin, Mel wants to speak with his kids. Terri cautions him that his Marjorie (Mel’s ex) might answer the phone. Mel becomes extremely angry and upset, tells everyone how Marjorie is bankrupting him, how she doesn’t marry her goddam boyfriend since she wants to still continue to collection money from him. Knowing Marjorie is allergic to bees, Mel swears he will show up at Marjorie’s front door wearing the white suit of a beekeeper and let loose a hive of bees to kill her. Sidebar: Echoes of Ed and the spirit of Dionysius as Mel is possessed with the mad desire for destruction and killing. Nobody corrects Mel because they themselves don't know how to communicate their thoughts. The deficiencies of communication is also symbolically shown when they argue over the distinction between vessels and vassals. Although they were all talking about the same thing, the intricacies of language inhibited the conversation. I sure as hell wouldn’t call it love,” Mel said. “I mean, no one knows what he did it for. I’ve seen a lot of suicides, and I couldn’t say anyone ever knew what they did it for.” It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power.”What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is told using a first-person point of view, but the character that controls the majority of the dialogue and subsequently the discussion is not the narrator. Mel is the main contributor in terms of dialogue, followed closely by Terri. There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I'd like to know. I wish someone could tell me.” Little men have their own little vices: drunkenness, unfaithfulness, spitefulness… And little men have their own little handicaps: stupidity, silliness, incompetence… I have read this volume several times, and this time listened to it. So it’s very important to me. In a former life I got an MFA in short fiction, in the eighties, and at that time the premier living short story writer, or certainly the most stylistically influential, was Carver. He himself, a minimalist, would seem to have been himself influenced by Ernest Hemingway. And maybe noir fiction: Very simple, straightforward prose. Carver was particularly a working class fiction writer, an alcoholic writing about booze and the effect of booze: Symbolism: a person/place/thing is a symbol for, or represents, some greater value/idea. Sunlight and Darkness

Rejecting the more experimental fiction of the 60s and 70s, he pioneered a precisionist realism reinventing the American short story during the eighties, heading the line of so-called 'dirty realists' or 'K-mart realists'. Set in trailer parks and shopping malls, they are stories of banal lives that turn on a seemingly insignificant detail. Carver writes with meticulous economy, suddenly bringing a life into focus in a similar way to the paintings of Edward Hopper. As well as being a master of the short story, he was an accomplished poet publishing several highly acclaimed volumes. it ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love. Set in a roomy upstairs suite, motel managers Holly & Duane discuss the disintegration of their marriage. Duane has been having an affair with a cleaning lady, Juanita. Duane tries to convince Holly that their love can be rekindled and reconciled but Holly does not agree. Duane is left hopelessly bemoaning the future he had envisioned with Holly. Though he is self aware that it might not have really been the future he wanted himself. The manuscript version of the same title appears in Beginners (2009).My friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right. Iubirea era atunci cînd Ed mă tîra pe jos și mă dădea cu capul de podea; iubirea era atunci cînd mă făcea tîrfă”, mărturisește în extaz o doamnă (Teresa) după cîteva păhărele de alcool.