Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, is magnificent. It is a collection of seventeen stories that were written throughout the mid-70's. Seventeen sounds like a lot, but these are short. Being short, precise, concise, is Carver's signature and strength. What is magnificent about these stories is that, despite their conciseness, they deliver well-rounded characters, slice-of-life situations, insight and emotion. Hard to believe that after a few pages, a reader can
feel a character's struggle, witness their demise or triumph, and come out with a different perspective on life.
Most of these stories, in one way or another, deal with making decisions and suffering the consequences.Of being in control (or under the delusion of having control) and then losing it. Of being beaten up by life's everyday dramas. Themes of alcoholism and infidelity run through the collection. In Gazebo, for instance, the couple are drinking while they are exposing and confronting the husband's sexual indiscretions with another woman. The wife wants to jump out a window; she can't take it anymore, she's turned to stone, without pride. Swiftly, and skillfully, Carver has exposed personal and universal problems, and made the reader care. The couple in Gazebo seem to conclude that vices and indiscretions are an essential part of their lives, they are what make memories in their lives.
Carver has been compared to Chekhov. I connect him to O. Henry, in the way he cuts a slice out of American life, with extraordinary precision and care. He shows us there is strength behind vulnerability. Tells us we are resilient despite being fragile. And, most of all, that we are not alone making good and bad choices, there's always someone else suffering similar consequences to our own.
Raymond Carver died in 1988. He will always be considered a contemporary master.
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