What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
First edition
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| Author | Raymond Carver |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Knopf |
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Publication date
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1981 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 176 |
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a 1981 collection of short stories by American writer Raymond Carver, as well as the title of one of the stories in the collection.
In 1977, Carver submitted a story with this title to Esquire, which Gordon Lish subsequently edited and retitled "I Am Going to Sit Down", but no version ever appeared in Esquire. The story was first published in Quarterly West in Autumn 1978 and later in The Paris Review in Spring 1981. The Quarterly West version incorporated many of Lish's suggested changes, while the final version was 9% shorter. It tells the story of a drinking man overseeing his yard-sale. The reader gets the feeling that he may be selling all his possessions, looking to start life anew. A young couple stops by to select furniture for their new apartment. They haggle a little over prices and buy a TV and a bed. The drinking man tells the young girl to put a record on. When the music begins the man asks the couple to dance. Uncomfortably, they comply. Then the drinking man dances with the young girl, and she says to him: "You must be desperate or something." Several weeks later, the young girl is telling her friends about the man at his yard-sale. She mocks the record-player and records he gave them, saying: "Will you look at this shit?" The story ends with her trying to make sense of the man's situation before quitting her wondering altogether. The story was adapted in the 2010 film Everything Must Go starring Will Ferrell and written and directed by Dan Rush.
A hook-handed man takes a photograph of man's house from the street and then sells it to the home-owner. The home-owner asks the photographer in for coffee. The manuscript version of the same title appears in Beginners (2009).
A man reflects "about three years back" on his struggle to come to grips with a couple of troublesome relationships. He was surprised to see his elderly single mother kissing a man on the sofa upstairs. He says his kids were crazy and so was his wife, Myrna, who eventually fell for another man named Ross whom she met at Alcoholics Anonymous. He remembers how his father died and suggests to Myrna that they "hug awhile" and have a "real nice supper," and she responds somewhat lukewarmly. The manuscript version titled "Where Is Everyone?" appears in Beginners (2009).
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