What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories PDF
Preview What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories
RAYMOND CARVER'S What We Talk About When We Talk About Love “Is there a better contemporary writer of short stories than Raymond Carver? Perhaps a handful as good, but none bet ter__Nearly 200 years ago, Wordsworth and Coleridge started a revolution when they proclaimed their aim to write in ‘the language really used by men.’ Neither of them quite achieved that. In [this collection], Raymond Carver has. And it is terrifying.” —Robert Houston, The Nation “In Raymond Carver’s stories, it is dangerous even to speak. Conversation completes the damage people have already done to one another in silence. It is not safe to form a sen tence or even to speak a name. To say ‘Duane’ or ‘Holly’ is to pronounce yet another doom. This is the fiction Carver writes, and I know of nothing stronger in its kind.” —Denis Donoghue “Masterful— The first impact of all the stories is sharp and visceral. Only afterward, as the skeleton of each one keeps rattling in the mind, does the painstaking intelligence of their designer become apparent.” —Meredith Marsh, New Republic “I’m nuts about Raymond Carver’s new stories. They’re real as discount stores, time clocks, the franchises in small towns, bad marriages. His rumpled men and ragged women will break your heart.” —Stanley Elkin “A book of fables for this decade.” —Jayne Anne Phillips, New York BOOKS BY RAYMOND CARVER FICTION Where I'm Calling From Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? Furious Seasons What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Cathedral POETRY A New Path to the Waterfall Winter Insomnia At Night the Salmon Move Where Water Comes Together with Other Water Ultramarine PROSE AND POETRY , No Heroics Please Fires Vintage Books Edition, June 1989 Copyright ©1974, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1981 by Raymond Carver All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conven tions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Orig inally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in April 1981 and in softcover by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., in March 1982. Most of the stories in this work have been previously published in Antaeus, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, New England Review, North American Review, The Paris Review, Perspective, Quarterly West,and Tri-Quarterly . “So Much Water So Close To Home,” “Everything Stuck to Him” (originally “Distance’*), and “The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off” (originally “Dummy”) are from Furious Seasons, copyright 977 by Raymond Carver. Cl Reprinted by permission of Capra Press, Santa Barbara. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Carver, Raymond. What we talk about when we talk about love. I. Title. PS3553.A7894W4 1982 813’54 81-52447 ISBN 0-679-72305-6 (pbk.) AACR2 Display typography by Stephanie Bart-Horvath Manufactured in the United States of America 579C864 FOR TESS GALLAGHER The author is pleased to acknowledge receipt of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. He also wishes to express grateful acknowledgment and appreciation to Noel Young of Capra Press. C ontents WHY DON'T YOU DANCE? 3 VIEWFINDER 11 MR. COFFEE AND MR. FIXIT 17 GAZEBO 21 I COULD SEE THE SMALLEST THINGS 31 SACKS 37 THE BATH 47 TELL THE WOMEN WE'RE GOING 57 AFTER THE DENIM 67 SO MUCH WATER SO CLOSE TO HOME 79 THE THIRD THING THAT KILLED MY FATHER OFF 89 A SERIOUS TALK 105 THE CALM 115 POPULAR MECHANICS 123 EVERYTHING STUCK TO HIM 127 WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE 137 ONE MORE THING 155
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