What We Talk About When We Talk About Writing

Any fan of Raymond Carver knows the title of this post is taken from one of his signature stories, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love."

Or is it his story? Or his title?

I just got around to delving into a December issue of The New Yorker that explores this.

Fascinating stuff.

The article prints a series of heart-wrenching letters between Carver and his editor at Alfred A. Knopf, Gordon Lish.

Lish suggested the famous title. He also evidently cut up to 40% of some of Carver's early stories. The stories were critically acclaimed and famous for being minimalist ("Kmart realism"). But it appears the minimalism came from Lish. Later, Carver began to insist on something more expansive, and the letters chronicle this struggle between writer and beloved editor (and an editor who was instrumental in success); between authenticity and artifice.

The New Yorker elicits an intriguing literary debate by printing the expanded version, you might say the unedited version, of the now-classic "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," as urged by Carver's widow, the poet Tess Gallagher. The expanded story is called "Beginners" (Carver's title). Let's just say the story is markedly different. I don't quite know what I feel, or think, since I'd have to re-read the edited, famous version, and I haven't yet done that. (It would make for a challenging lit class to compare the two versions.) [BULLETIN: After initially posting this, I discovered The New Yorker provides the two versions, complete with edits! Here it is. Very cool! Decide for yourself.]

A few personal connections and observations:

1. Carver wrote many of the letters while he was here in Syracuse, while on the faculty of Syracuse University.
2. During this time, the 1980s, I was living in New Jersey. Around 1984 or -85, I met Gordon Lish by the copier, while I was working for the Random House School Division (no longer exists). My boss and publisher, Charlie Selden, knew Lish pretty well, so I used that as an excuse to introduce myself.
3. I wrote a memoir-essay piece about baseball, fathers, and sons and shared it with Gordon. He was very positive about it and encouraged me to send it to The New York Times Magazine, for a column they ran in those days, called About Men. (The piece wasn't accepted; they had already selected something similar, but the rejection was also very supportive.) Charlie Selden assured me that Gordon Lish would not have said such good words about my writing if he didn't mean it. Cool.
4. Once, several years later, I spied John Updike coming into the building at 201 East 50th Street. I engaged him in conversation and got his autograph in the lobby. It was Gordon Lish who interrupted me and Updike, whereupon I bowed out.

Editing is intimacy. Carver says frequently that Lish was closer to him than a blood brother.

Alas, blogging lacks editing, lacks that other eye, that elbow-to-elbow challenging, critiquing, and nurturing.

For that, we are all the poorer.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Hiatus

(Fans of the short-story meister Raymond Carver will recognize a spoof of one of his signature stories in the title of this post.)

Here's a random, desultory report of what I did on my blogatory sabbatical (thank you for your patience):

1. I completed a short story (last night), which was my main purpose for taking leave. It's nearly 3,000 words and is titled "The Willie Mays Chronicles." I suppose I'm satisfied with it, but it's hard to tell. The urge to tinker with it is strong. A September 30 deadline for submission (sub-dom?) to Glimmer Train Stories forced at least temporary closure. I was enormously pleased to get a very encouraging review from GT, an accomplished author-friend. (I can't publish the story here yet, because of contest rules.)

2. I continued to read a whole book about "um" and "ah" and other verbal pause fillers. Can you, um, believe it? Er, yes. It's called Um: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean by Michael Erard. (Thank you, Dr. Erard, for the serial comma in the book's title and consistently in the text.)

3. Spent most of this past Saturday cleaning out years' worth of Stuff on the front porch. Threw toys, tapes, and pillows in the trash; recycled cardboard boxes. Said something like this to our neighbor Joe (who appears in my poem "Mowing the Last Lawn," posted a year ago): "Clearing junk out for my son's wedding next week . . . at the zoo." Joe: "As good a place as any." Something like that. We both laughed.

4. Learned Sunday, at church, through a call from my wife, that those would be the last words Joe and I would ever exchange. He was killed Saturday night by a drunk driver.

5. Later on Sunday, I spied a small white spider sliding downward on invisible thread. It landed on the white wood of the back of a chair in the kitchen. I cupped the spider in a tissue and tossed it outside on the back porch, the porch's green paint already worn away to bare wood (distressed wood is the trendy term) after last summer's paint job. The winters are long and harsh in these parts. There was a time I'd have casually crushed the spider, given how fearful of spiders my little one is. Not this day. No, enough death for one day.

6. I was relieved to have the San Francisco Giants get this dreadful season over and done with. (Bye, bye, Barry.) However, as my friend Steve watched his Mets cascade to calamitous collapse at my house, I was spared the burden of any tension and free from the bonds of hope or expectation.

7. I administered the ministrations of "Doctor Sleep" to an insomniac beloved daughter, invoking the sound of rain on the roof as an incantation.