#271 | What Can Raymond Carver Teach Us About Love—and Writing?
episode SUMMARY:
Douglas Vigliotti discusses Raymond Carver’s acclaimed short story collection, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. Vigliotti explores Carver’s literary legacy, the collection’s minimalist style, and its nuanced portrayal of love’s complexities. He reflects on the editing process behind the book, shares personal insights on writing and relationships, and draws parallels to other works. Vigliotti invites listeners, men and women alike, to connect with him for further literary inspiration.
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TOPICS COVERED IN THE EPISODE:
Introduction & Newsletter Reminder (00:09) - Douglas introduces the podcast, the featured book, and promotes the companion newsletter.
About Raymond Carver & Dirty Realism (00:01:24) - Background on Carver, his literary style, influence, and significance in American literature.
Carver’s Impact on Writing Style (00:02:46) - Douglas discusses how Carver influenced his own writing and the importance of minimalism.
Overview of the Collection & Themes of Love (00:03:58) - Summary of the short story collection and its exploration of the complexities and contradictions of love.
Personal Reflections & Related Works (00:05:22) - Douglas shares personal thoughts on love, references his own essay, and connects Carver’s work to other media.
Craft, Editing, and “Beginners” (00:06:33) - Discussion of the editing process, the “Beginners” manuscript, and the importance of writer-editor collaboration.
The Value of Editing & Literary Craft (00:07:50) - Emphasis on the significance of editing, the creative process, and inspiration for writers.
Quotes from the Collection (00:09:10) - Douglas reads and reflects on key quotes from Carver’s work about the nature of love.
Closing Remarks & Contact Information (00:10:16) - Douglas wraps up, promotes his book, shares contact info, and reminds listeners about the newsletter.
READ THE TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to “Books for Men”, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do so. This week, I am featuring a work of fiction. It is a short story collection. I haven't featured one of those in a while, and this one is titled “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” by Raymond Carver. So it clocks in at around 180 pages or so. It came out in 1981, and I will share a lot more about this collection. The author, why I am sharing this book, and why I think you should read this book, or at least a few of these short stories that are in the collection. But before I do that, I did want to quickly remind you about the companion newsletter that goes with this podcast. And that's just a once-a-month email that rounds up all of the episodes from that month, complete with full book and author information, episode summaries, all of my favorite quotes, and additional book recommendations. So if that sounds like something that you are interested in, you could find out more information about it and sign up for it on the website BooksforMen.org.
01:24 - All right, so as always, I like to share some about the author. So who is Raymond Carver? He's written mostly poems, short stories, and nonfiction pieces, which can be seen in collections that were published in the 70s and 80s, most of them anyway. Unfortunately, his career was cut short by an early death in 1988 at the young age of 50. So he died actually from lung cancer. But even with a shortened career, his impact has been felt pretty heavily. I would say many consider him one of the greatest American writers of all time, or at least one of the greatest American short story writers of all time. And I don't know if he is or isn't, but I did want to at least share with you where he falls in the pantheon of literature. I came to his work not like most, a product of an MFA program or something like that, where they feature and discuss his work as an example of what's known as Dirty Realism, a style that he sort of pioneered. But I owe a debt of gratitude to Carver because reading his short stories, along with Hemingway, taught me the power of controlled, precise, lean writing, which for me was really important progress because I had no clue about technique.
02:46 - And prior to, I don't know, a decade ago, the kind of writing that led me to writing was that of Hunter S Thompson. So uncontrolled chaos, as I would call it, something that I've talked about on this podcast before, and I share this only to say Carver, like for so many others, was a really important figure for me on my journey of learning how to write. His writing is really a lesson in minimalism and showcases the importance of what isn't there being as important as what is there. This is something that I've also featured on the Amy Hempel episode, which was also a short story collection, and I will definitely link that up in the show notes, because there is a link between those two authors as well, and I will get into that in a moment. The book that I am sharing with you today was considered Carver's watershed moment, so to speak, or his breakout collection, with the follow-up collection “Cathedral” being considered his quote-unquote masterpiece. But having said that, I am sharing the collection that I am sharing with you today for a couple of very specific reasons.
03:58 - So I think it's probably a good time for me to just pivot right into that. Basically, this collection is 17 short stories that share the complexity and often contradictory ways that we express love in our lives, or maybe more importantly, the lack of love in our lives. What we wish love could be. So it's messy, it's trivial, it's abusive. It's fulfilling, it's desperate. It's hopeful, it's healing, it's hurtful. And it often doesn't look like love at all, at least not in the real world. And nothing brings this to a head more than this collection does. And specifically the title story: “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. So that is actually the name of an essay in the collection, which is basically two married couples sitting around a table drinking a bottle of gin, discussing the complicated nature of love, and in some loose form, it tackles these questions that are really important, like what is love? Really? What does it drive us toward? What is the fine line between love and hate or love and pain? Or are they synonymous with each other? I think if you're a living, breathing human being, you have to wrestle at some point with what love is or what you want love to be.
05:22 - Is it the idea of love that you really love, or do you love love itself? This is also something that I tackled in a special edition episode with an essay that I wrote to love, and I could link that up in the show notes. It's definitely a topic that I think of a lot, because I do believe it to be a really important aspect of human life. So other than that, what led me to wanting to share this collection with you, or a reminder, I should say, to share this collection with you, because it's something that I read quite a long time ago at this point, I saw recently an Off-Broadway production of “Let's Love”, which is a play that was written by Ethan Coen—yes, of the Coen Brothers—also featured “No Country for Old Men” on this podcast, which was a Coen Brothers adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel. I could link that up in the show notes. But anyway, it reminded me a lot of this short story collection. Not a dead ringer, of course, but just the irony and the gritty, realistic, and somewhat troublesome look at love as opposed to its more prevalent romantic Hollywood cousin look at love, so to speak.
06:31 - But secondly, for the craft enthusiast, not just writers, but for people who truly want to get a look behind the curtain, this is a great example of what writer-editor collaboration can look like. And the reason why I say this is because this collection was actually republished posthumously in 2009, titled “Beginners”, which, in a nutshell, was just the original manuscript of the collection. What we talk about when we talk about love, as in the non-edited version of this collection, and the editor of this collection. Gordon Lish was also the editor and champion for Amy Hempel, someone whom I just mentioned previously. That's the link that I was referring to earlier. But I think that if you are really interested in seeing the nitty gritty of what writing actually is and the challenge of it, especially to say, lean something out into truly its best form, there's probably no better example than to read beginners and read the then published version of what we talk about when we talk about love.
07:50 - And of course, what makes this so amazing is that Carver is considered to be one of the greats. So to see him in his raw form, unedited, really is a testament to the craft that writing is, and the necessity of the preservation of the craft. Great Writing is hard, and it is an achievement. And this raw, unedited version and then finished version shine a spotlight on not just the power of editing, which it definitely does, and the importance of editors and collaborators, but also the amount of work it truly takes. And I'm not aware of any other book that can offer a behind-the-scenes look at the craft from a master in a way that this one does. And for any writer out there, or creative person in general, it can be quite inspiring. All right, so instead of me blabbering on about Raymond Carver in this collection, I think you get the point. I will wrap it up with just 1 or 2 quotes. The first one is an excerpt from that self-titled essay, and it goes …
09:14 – “We say we love each other, and we do. I don't doubt it. I love Terri, and Terri loves me. And you guys love each other too. But sometimes I have a hard time accounting for the fact that I must have loved my first wife, too. But did I? I know I did. 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 somebody could tell me.” And if that doesn't say enough, then maybe this short little one-liner will. “It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.” All right. That's all I've got. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did. I want to quickly remind you to please click subscribe on whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on, because it is the best way to help more listeners find the show and, in return, inspire more men to read.
10:16 - If you'd like to reach out to me, maybe tell me how I'm doing. Maybe tell me what you thought about this episode. Then there are two ways that you can do so, on Instagram @DouglasVigliotti. It's the only social media that I have or via my website DouglasVigliotti.com. I do have a new book out, and I promise I will stop saying that after it's been out for a year. But we still have one month for that. And it is titled “Aristotle for Novelists: 14 Timeless Principles on the Art of Story”. If you are interested in learning more about that, there is a very simple way that you can do so. Just visit the website AristotleforNovelists.com. Last but not least, I wanted to thank you so much for listening and remind you that if you want more information on this podcast specifically, which includes signing up for that newsletter I mentioned at the top of the episode, then all you have to do is visit the website BooksforMen.org.
