SOURCE: Saltzman, Arthur M. “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love.” In Understanding Raymond Carver, pp. 100–23. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988.

In the following essay, Saltzman identifies the impermanence of love as the dominant theme in “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love.”

Frustrations burn like scraped nerves throughout Carver's third collection. Every story documents the ducks and feints of couples who prefer the static of “human noise” to the rigors of more substantial contact. Carver continues to write about America's written-off—people who cannot communicate and bemoan that impairment constantly. What they talk about when they talk about love is usually anything but. As in the preceding collections Carver's characters settle for abbreviations; because the ties that bind them together are so tenuous, they are forever making long stories short.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is Carver at...