Raymond Carver made his fame in a golden age of modernism. In fact, to many readers he is the epitome of what has been called "Dirty Realism." His stories feature characters who are living in the margins of their lives. Very often, they are characters for whom there is no silver-lining.
He was born in Oregon in 1938 to a very blue-collar family. Unfortunately, he inherited the gene for alcoholism from his father. The disease would take his life in 1988 at the very young age of fifty. Carver moved to California after high-school with his high-school girlfriend/wife and their two children. He was twenty-one and he had a mountain of responsibility with almost no real education or money. In fact, he spent most of those years working dead-end jobs. These experiences and the people he met populated the stories he would write at this time. After publishing two poetry collections, he published his first short-story collection, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, in 1976. The collection has since become one of his best-known works. His poetry and fiction received much critical praise, and he began teaching writing at the college level.
He is best known for his minimalist approach to writing. Because of this, he has been compared to Hemingway and Chekhov. Most notably, he is credited for developing the modernist writing technique that has come to be known as the "zero ending." A zero ending is an ending that doesn’t neatly tie up the strands of a story. It may not even seem like an ending—in some cases, the writer may seem to have left off in the middle of a thought or idea. Instead of tacking on a conclusion that leaves everyone satisfied, Carver abruptly ends his stories at the moment when his characters are faced with a realization, glimmer of hope, or wall of confusion. Ernest Hemingway favored the zero ending in many of his short stories. Like Hemingway, Carver wrote in a spare, "masculine" style. This, along with his favored method of ending a story, has prompted many readers to compare the two writers.
The abrupt ending to the story leaves many questions unanswered, such as how exactly the narrator has changed, if his relationship with other characters will change, or how his opinions have changed. But the answers to these questions are not the point of the story.
Carver's stories remind us that it is not the end that matters most. At times, it is the journey that is the point of the story.
Themes?
The central theme of this story is love. The two couples that populate the story spend the evening drinking and discussing the nature of "real love." The narrator explains that "we somehow got on the subject of love." It is Mel who insists on returning to the topic of love. He believes that "love was nothing less than spiritual love." They then turn to the topic of Terri's abusive former husband Ed, who eventually shot himself in the head and died. Terri and Mel, both of them married for the second time, debate whether or not Ed really loved Terri. She claims that Ed "loved her so much he tried to kill her." Mel insists that "that's not love."
Carver (like many writers in the last half of the 20th century) seemed obsessed with the idea that language was failing people. He seemed to champion the idea that people spend most of their time filling the air with language that doesn't really go anywhere or address anything that really mattered. He even goes so far as to suggest that words can't describe real love. The readers is left to ponder the idea that love is undefinable because it means to different things to everyone. Often, people can't articulate their feelings about love, resigning themselves to go with gut feelings. People often talk about their intuition/instinct.
In fact, one of the characters can only articulate what he believes love is not. When pressed, he is unable to express what he believes love is, or what he is looking for.
The curious end of "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" seems to reinforce the idea that words often fail people in their intellectual pursuits. Some things are not meant to be explained or understood. Some of life's mysteries are bigger than us. In the act of defining them, we often find our own unhappiness.
