{"id":615,"date":"2012-01-26T23:10:09","date_gmt":"2012-01-26T23:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/?p=615"},"modified":"2012-01-26T23:10:09","modified_gmt":"2012-01-26T23:10:09","slug":"what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-love-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/?p=615","title":{"rendered":"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"What<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\tauthor: Raymond Carver
\n\t\t\tname: Paul
\n\t\t\taverage rating: 4.07
\n\t\t\tbook published: 1981
\n\t\t\trating: 5
\n\t\t\tread at: 2011\/08\/30
\n\t\t\tdate added: 2011\/08\/30
\n\t\t\tshelves: short-stories
\n\t\t\treview:
The short stories in Raymond Carver<\/a>‘s collection of brief, desperate shorts read like things that should be taped to the backs of old photographs. Muted colors and slept-in clothing bought from Woolworth’s were conjured as I read, reminding me of a world filtered through the red-brown of a whiskey bottle. People speak of “Carver’s America” as if it were a place he made up, but I suspect it was as much a real location as the country I grew up in only without all the disco pop and day-glo colors and quirky cultural fads like Rubik’s cubes and video arcades. The thing is, Carver understands that it doesn’t matter when a person is, they still don’t know how to handle the life they’re handed.<\/p>\n

Carver’s stories start somewhere and end somewhere else. Often the end isn’t the ending, it’s just the place where the story stops. There are often questions, those questions aren’t answered. The writing style is bare, almost curt. But unlike fellow minimalist Hemingway, it isn’t abrupt or stilted, Carver’s writing has a rhythmic, almost percussive quality. Reading Carver is like listening to jazz, where so often the essence of a song is not in what notes are played as in what notes aren’t. As often as not, what Carver doesn’t reveal or discuss matters more than what he does. The peculiar cadence to the words and\u2014especially\u2014the dialogue gives the sense that the characters are eternally pre-occupied. Often a conversation will happen between two people not with each other or even at each other but just in each other’s presence, trading non-sequiturs because their self-absorbtion is complete enough that the other’s reply is inconsequential.<\/p>\n

Some of the stories in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love are vicious, aggressive. Others are sad and solemn, maybe even a little sweet. You feel as you meander through the pages as if you were walking through a neighborhood, stopping to look through the invisible walls along the way, catching a conversation, a fight, a beginning, an end. Certain tales resonate stronger than others: Gazebo<\/em>, a conversation between a remorseful husband and a resigned wife; The Bath<\/em>, a slice of a parent’s nightmare; Tell The Women We’re Going<\/em>, a haunting tale of two old friends who don’t really know each other at all; Popular Mechanics<\/em>, possibly the best\/worst story ever told in two pages; the title story which fogs the windows with heartaching insight. This is a readable book, but a difficult one. It makes you want to drink, or quit drinking forever. It goes quickly but it’s hard to finish. I kind of loved it.<\/p>\n

\nfrom Paul's bookshelf: read<\/a> \u2014 August 30, 2011 at 10:23PM<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

author: Raymond Carver name: Paul average rating: 4.07 book published: 1981 rating: 5 read at: 2011\/08\/30 date added: 2011\/08\/30 shelves: short-stories review: The short stories in Raymond Carver‘s collection of brief, desperate shorts read like things that should be taped to the backs of old photographs. Muted colors and slept-in clothing bought from Woolworth’s were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":616,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions\/616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}