"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" by Raymond Carver

Though focused on the mundane rather than the fantastic, Carver's short story collection reminded me most of Haruki Murakami's short stories. They're concise to the point of the reader feeling like she's missing something. I'd finish a story and feel like something had happened--I just wasn't sure what.

I started Ottessa Moshfegh's short story collection Homesick for Another World immediately after (a bad idea, short story collections shouldn't be read back to back. Good ones demand percolation), and I felt almost revolted by her focus on the grotesquely detailed inner workings of her characters' minds. That's not a criticism of Moshfegh, but rather an awareness of how sparse Carver is in comparison. He sets the stage (and does so well), but then the reader is put to work. Characters' lives remain largely hidden, open to enigmatic glimpses, not revelations.

In an apt comparison to Moshfegh, there's an undercurrent of violence and anger in Carver's stories, particularly against women. There's a sense that heterosexual relationships require an intensity of feeling that inevitably manifests itself violently. That's most true in the titular story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," where married couple Mel and Terri debate whether a violent ex-husband's abuse was love. Terri is certain it is, but I was struck by the tension between Mel and Terri. He doesn't appear to be abusive, but there's a level of violence there too. Not all the stories end violently--"Everything Stuck to Him," by comparison, has a fight that appear to resolve lovingly. Yet even the most positive ones, including "Everything...," ultimately have an unresolved edge.

One of the most frequent topics brought up when Carver stories are discussed today is his contentious relationship with his editor, Gordon Lish, who cut considerably from Carver's stories against Carver's wishes. I know little about the drama involved, but it does give an increased sense of mystery to the stories themselves. What did Carver want? Is the story better or worse for the editing? Perhaps their tension is manifested in the stories itself (or maybe that's too Freudian).

Ultimately, I'd recommend Carver's stories, though they're somewhat of a paradox. They're very short, and thus appealing to readers wary of length. On the other hand, they're probably too enigmatic for impatient readers. Maybe perfect for literary readers with not a lot of time. :)