What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

"What attracted me to Raymond Carver was his minimalism. It was partly his, and partly his editor Gordon Lish’s suggestions. But there’s something in the way that Carver tells a story that reminds me of the way my mother told stories. My mother was a child of the Holocaust, and when she told stories, they were never contextualized. She would say, “During the war, I was once in a room, and this guy with a very long coat—a tall man—came in and started talking in this funny language.” I’d say, “Which city were you in? Was it German? Was the coat a military coat?” She would reply: “Is this important? If I said it was in Krakow, would it help you with the story? Come on, I’m telling you a story!” This created for me a model of storytelling in which the most important thing is the emotional anchor. In Carver’s stories, the characters have no name. We’re in the suburbs, but you don’t know which city. Carver’s claim for something being real is not an ontological claim. He’s saying, “This is how a guy who drank two bottles of whiskey would talk to his overachieving brother.” That’s what’s important. Not that one man’s name is Stanley, and the other guy is called Jake. Carver is always saying, “I’m taking a layer off, so we’ll be closer to the flesh, we’ll be closer to the nerves. We’re going to leave formal structure behind and deal with the real stuff.”"