Raymond Carver revivalism has become as tiresome as Ernest Hemingway idolatry. Sensitive high school and college creative writers thrive off of both authors’ simple prose style. Whereas Hemingway’s stories and novels have a hard-boiled journalistic integrity, Carver’s stories reveal the redemptive nature of human cruelty. Easy to recreate formally but more difficult to thematically execute, Carver’s stories underwent intensive revisions by his longtime friend and editor Gordon Lish, who oversaw Carver first at “Esquire” and then at Alfred A. Knopf. Lish encouraged Carver to use to the fewest number of words possible; manuscripts with Lish’s comments reveal omitted paragraphs and manipulated dialogue. The Carver readers find that his published volumes have been severely dampened by the editor he chose to trust.
These elisions, however, do not overtly detract from the distinctive way in which Carver deals with the stark beauty of American society’s emotional and economic underbelly. His 1974 short story collection, “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” (Vintage; $11.95), is most notable for the title story in which two gin-soaked couples reveal their past indiscretions and philosophies concerning different modes of love. The wry, cynical tone Carver takes throughout the story reflects a slight natural discord, as well as the unity and disunity of the various relationships the story describes. As the group’s discussion reaches higher peaks of psychological resonance, beginning with internal experiences and expanding to touch upon love shared by other absent couples, the mood darkens and the physical light dims. None of the characters move to affect change in their surroundings; rather, they remain in emotional stasis after making one another raw with talk. As Nick, the narrator, concludes, “I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.” Carver juxtaposes emotional discourse with movement and progression. The concept of “noise” for Carver connotes an often inarticulate, repetitious sound, produced by the bottle of gin and heavy subject matter.
Mel, the most outspoken of the four characters, believes in “spiritual love,” a perfect state of amour that has undoubtedly led to his dissatisfaction with one marriage and immersion in a second. Mel appears worn down by his life experience and his labors. He takes this drinking experience as an opportunity to contrast his everyday behavior, “precise” and “very careful.” Mel’s disdains for his first wife indicates the malevolence, cruelty, and homicidal desires that emerge from an ended love. His desire to harness her physical composition, in an analogy involving bees, alludes to the disorderly nature of his sentiments towards her.
Mel’s second wife, Terri, presents the second type of love. Her ex-husband, Ed, was driven to suicide after Terri left him. Ed expressed his passionate, ill-tempered love through physical abuse. Carver suggests such love is as real, if not more so, than the ease of Terri, Mel, Nick, and Laura’s suburban loves. A description of Laura’s nails contrasts the tumult of Terri’s relationship with Ed, “the nails polished, perfectly manicured.” This reflection demonstrates Carver harnessing his simple prose style to manipulate his reader. The ease of these four characters’ current lives may not have always existed; however, the surface level beauty of their lives makes it difficult for them to discern cruelty in one another. The continued consumption of liquor contributes to this commentary, indicating that resentment and hollowness lies underneath these characters’ claims of contentment.
Carver frames Laura and Nick’s relationship as a concession in comparison to Mel and Terri’s marriage: “in addition to being in love, we like one another and enjoy one another’s company.” The simplicity of their shared daily life opposes Mel’s frustration with Terri’s frequent interruptions. Whereas the newer couple still revels in the bliss of having found one another, the more established couple devolves into common patterns of emotional abuse. Although Mel’s hostility could be read as alcohol driven, Carver’s intent is unmasking the pathos these characters hide under the veneer of their appearances.
Mel’s glorification of medieval knights overlooks the entrenched social hierarchy of the period and the physical exhaustion produced through the labor of jousting, fighting, and chivalry. Carver suggests Mel has never considered the fallacy of his own argument or the possibility of encountering difficulty in acquiring his desires. Despite the rebellious love of his first wife, Mel serves as an emblematic male character with little to no understanding of the human heart. Ironically, his professor intimately ties him to the biological concerns of men and women, yet his daily proximity to bodies has deadened him.
The spiritual love Mel claims to believe and feel is proven false by his own example of a septuagenarian couple involved in a nearly fatal car wreck. Both husband and wife survive the crash, but Mel finds the husband weeping, “because he couldn’t see her through his eye-holes.” Masks remove us from those we love. Carver typifies the art of mask making with his characterization of Mel. As the story unfurls, the layers of each character’s psyche are revealed through their opinions on love. The ugliness of human intent is exposed after the pretense of valor is explained.
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