What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories by Raymond Carver Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories
Book Review: Wonderful Carver
Summary: 5 Stars
Carver's texts are pure American, and in their purity his characters and stories become a universal experience. His language, strong, concise and to the point is charged with emotion. He uses only the necessary words to describe and each word is there for a purpose.
This is my second book by Carver. I started with Fires and I'm anxiouslly awaiting the arrival of recently purchased Cathedrals.
Book Review: reinvented the short story
Summary: 5 Stars
this has been said many times before, but Carver reinvented the short story as a credible litterary genre. I recommend reading this first then diving into Cathedral. It's a delicious showcase of the author as editor and revisionist. As he ages and perspectives change, Carver adds a richness to many of the stories. Book Review: A Mixed Collection...
Summary: 3 Stars
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."
Book Review: Carver's a Champ
Summary: 5 Stars
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!
Book Review: Master of 'the moment'
Summary: 5 Stars
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.