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Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Bookmarked
A haunting meditation on love, loss, companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark, Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is one of the most important and influential short story collections in contemporary literature. In his entry in the esteemed Bookmarked series, acclaimed author Brian Evenson offers his personal and literary take on this classic Carver collection.
184 pages, Paperback
First published March 23, 2018
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248 people want to read
About the author
Brian Evenson
265 books1,504 followersBrian Evenson is an American academic and writer of both literary fiction and popular fiction, some of the latter being published under B. K. Evenson.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
December 19, 2025
A very personal loo at how Raymond Carver's early work (the collections heavily edited by Gordon Lish) influenced the writing of Brian Evenson. Evenson reacts to each story in What We Talk About When We Talk about Love, but also explores his attempt to publish a research paper years ago that discussed the editing of those early stories of Carver (those included in 'Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?' and 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Love'). Evenson talks about his own experience with being edited by Lish and the concept of authorship as it relates to both editors and spouses. Evenson blends the academic with the personal with the literary in this blend of memoir and literary criticism.
February 23, 2021
https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/ra...
What a multi-faceted memoir and critical review focusing on the work of Raymond Carver as well as the writing career of the author Brian Evenson. This engaging work highlights the parallels and genesis devolved within both their somewhat parallel literary relationship with the infamous editor Gordon Lish. Learning the history of Evenson’s development as a writer and scholar, and being privy to a few of the trials he sustained while maturing to become the elder Evenson of today, by turns, is an interesting story. And much will still come to be written of Gordon Lish. Other writers who have worked under the tutelage of this great teacher and editor will also add their personal experience to an already growing oeuvre.
Brian Evenson’s fiction was first introduced to me in seasonal increments discovered in the Lish-edited litmag titled The Quarterly originally published by Random House beginning in 1987. That early work of Evenson’s scared the bejeezus out of me as I recognized a budding genius perhaps the measure of another favorite writer of mine going by the name of Cormac McCarthy. Unfortunately (and perhaps unfairly) I eventually tired of Evenson’s fiction but always kept his character and personage in high esteem due to his extensive Lilly research into the Carver-Lish relationship as well as his own struggles with the Mormon church. This book not only details his Mormon troubles but eventually describes a segment of his important scholarly research regarding the Carver-Lish relationship. Evenson’s eventual discarding of this critical study he had for so long revised and attempted to have published has now been acquired and stored in academia for other scholars to one day have a go again regarding the primary subject of ethical editing.
If you visit the Lilly Library in Bloomington, Indiana as I did several years ago, it is surprising to see first hand the actual re-writing of Carver’s manuscript by Lish’s own pen. The collection that made Carver a household name, highlighted within the title of this very book, can be fairly credited to the editing and revisions of Gordon Lish. It was perhaps unfair to Carver that Lish did what he did. Perhaps the overzealous Lish had ideas of his own on his way to being famous in his own right. I can attest that Gordon Lish as my editor and teacher never re-wrote anything of mine. However, he did teach me how to more critically read and to write. The most he ever did as my editor was circle a word and tell me to beat it. He may have crossed out a line or even an entire page he felt was not strong enough and marked the spot in which I might start over, or a few times suggest a possible word or two as teacher, but never did he write words for me and let me call them my own. And as time crept on the majority of my submitted poetry was accepted by Lish as written, he adding no marks nor demands for me to better it, just adding his customary ✔︎ as approved or his occasional word of Great! or Yes! written in the margins. It was not long after I had finally gained his predictable approval of my submitted work that I grew restless to try my hand at other literary endeavors. Subsequently our relationship began to evanesce without the constant mutual nurturing that previously existed.
Evenson details similar editing practices in his own personal relationship with the editor Lish. To Evenson’s credit he admits to sometimes happily, and at times reluctantly, accepting a Lish revision, but he also had the courage to resist him. Carver did not exhibit the same courage in confronting the great Lish until Carver was already famous. Raymond Carver holds his own personal place setting strapped into the yoke and hardware of sin of their collaborative endeavor. And as much as I love and admire the fiction of Raymond Carver, he was not exactly honest in his portrayal of what really did occur. His sin of omission exists for all interested parties to witness for themselves. Meanwhile, Brian Evenson lives to tell us his most fascinating story regarding this piece of literary history.
What a multi-faceted memoir and critical review focusing on the work of Raymond Carver as well as the writing career of the author Brian Evenson. This engaging work highlights the parallels and genesis devolved within both their somewhat parallel literary relationship with the infamous editor Gordon Lish. Learning the history of Evenson’s development as a writer and scholar, and being privy to a few of the trials he sustained while maturing to become the elder Evenson of today, by turns, is an interesting story. And much will still come to be written of Gordon Lish. Other writers who have worked under the tutelage of this great teacher and editor will also add their personal experience to an already growing oeuvre.
Brian Evenson’s fiction was first introduced to me in seasonal increments discovered in the Lish-edited litmag titled The Quarterly originally published by Random House beginning in 1987. That early work of Evenson’s scared the bejeezus out of me as I recognized a budding genius perhaps the measure of another favorite writer of mine going by the name of Cormac McCarthy. Unfortunately (and perhaps unfairly) I eventually tired of Evenson’s fiction but always kept his character and personage in high esteem due to his extensive Lilly research into the Carver-Lish relationship as well as his own struggles with the Mormon church. This book not only details his Mormon troubles but eventually describes a segment of his important scholarly research regarding the Carver-Lish relationship. Evenson’s eventual discarding of this critical study he had for so long revised and attempted to have published has now been acquired and stored in academia for other scholars to one day have a go again regarding the primary subject of ethical editing.
If you visit the Lilly Library in Bloomington, Indiana as I did several years ago, it is surprising to see first hand the actual re-writing of Carver’s manuscript by Lish’s own pen. The collection that made Carver a household name, highlighted within the title of this very book, can be fairly credited to the editing and revisions of Gordon Lish. It was perhaps unfair to Carver that Lish did what he did. Perhaps the overzealous Lish had ideas of his own on his way to being famous in his own right. I can attest that Gordon Lish as my editor and teacher never re-wrote anything of mine. However, he did teach me how to more critically read and to write. The most he ever did as my editor was circle a word and tell me to beat it. He may have crossed out a line or even an entire page he felt was not strong enough and marked the spot in which I might start over, or a few times suggest a possible word or two as teacher, but never did he write words for me and let me call them my own. And as time crept on the majority of my submitted poetry was accepted by Lish as written, he adding no marks nor demands for me to better it, just adding his customary ✔︎ as approved or his occasional word of Great! or Yes! written in the margins. It was not long after I had finally gained his predictable approval of my submitted work that I grew restless to try my hand at other literary endeavors. Subsequently our relationship began to evanesce without the constant mutual nurturing that previously existed.
Evenson details similar editing practices in his own personal relationship with the editor Lish. To Evenson’s credit he admits to sometimes happily, and at times reluctantly, accepting a Lish revision, but he also had the courage to resist him. Carver did not exhibit the same courage in confronting the great Lish until Carver was already famous. Raymond Carver holds his own personal place setting strapped into the yoke and hardware of sin of their collaborative endeavor. And as much as I love and admire the fiction of Raymond Carver, he was not exactly honest in his portrayal of what really did occur. His sin of omission exists for all interested parties to witness for themselves. Meanwhile, Brian Evenson lives to tell us his most fascinating story regarding this piece of literary history.
June 2, 2021
I've been an admirer of Brian Evenson's writing for a very long time (as a teenager, I had experiences with his work similar to what he describes with Carver here), but still, I hadn't expected to like this book so much. Like other reviews mention, it's not really a study of Carver; even the one chapter dedicated specifically to "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love", which offers a brief reading of each story, really tells us more about Evenson than the collection. But that's the appeal of this book to me.
Evenson himself has always appeared as a hidden, shadowy presence in his work, but here he writes clearly and lucidly about himself. I particularly enjoyed an early description of his experience suffering a collapsed lung (which has all the gristly, clinical detachment of his fiction), as well as details of his experience leaving the Mormon Church. But most importantly, his love of reading infuses every page of the book, as he traces Carver's influence on his early artistic development and the way specific stories have lingered with him.
This book gives a very strong sense of the pleasures literature genuinely offers us--one completely unrelated to ideology or larger causes, but a sort of private, unexpected, life-long dialogue that happens both on and off the page. Again and again, Evenson tells us something interesting about his life, and quickly jumps to how Carver (or another author) helped him reflect on it. This very private aspect of the reading life has always seemed very important to me, but it just isn't mentioned very often and can be difficult to put into words. I doubt that Evenson plans to write more nonfiction, but I wouldn't have minded if this went on another three hundred pages, as just hearing him talk about books he likes is a pure joy.
Of course, I may have approached this book from an odd angle, as I've got a very limited appreciation of Carver and "What We Talk About....", which I read for the first time in my late twenties--a reminder that the age at which we discover an author can often be the most important part of the experience. I love the title story and have taught it multiple times, but the rest of the collection alienated me for many of the same reasons Evenson appreciates it: the emptiness of the characters, the huge amount that's missing from the page, or the fact that the collection's huge influence has, in fact, changed the way many will read it today. Every story in the collection reminded me of a dozen others I'd encountered (and grown increasingly weary of) in grad school, which may have been my biggest struggle when I finally sat down to read it.
Still, Evenson's enthusiasm was enough to get me interested in Carver again. In particular, I'm curious to test myself by reading Lish's minimalist rendition of "The Bath" side-by-side with Carver's intended version of the same story, "A Small, Good Thing". (Ten years ago, like Evenson, I would have preferred "The Bath"; now, I suspect it will be the opposite.) I'm also curious to compare the title story with its original version in "Beginners", and if I like that I might move onto "Cathedrals".
Evenson finishes with a fascinating meditation on how our feelings towards an author's work can transform throughout our lives. When he describes returning to Carver in his 50s, I can't help reflecting on how it feels to read old favorites such as Borges, Pynchon, Joyce, Delany, or Evenson himself a few weeks from my 31st birthday. Once-familiar works from these writers feel very different now than they once did, and I suspect they'll be almost unrecognizable in another twenty years. There's something deeply uncanny about seeing those same words on the page, but realizing the person who once read them is gone. And the same, of course, goes for the one reading them today.
Evenson himself has always appeared as a hidden, shadowy presence in his work, but here he writes clearly and lucidly about himself. I particularly enjoyed an early description of his experience suffering a collapsed lung (which has all the gristly, clinical detachment of his fiction), as well as details of his experience leaving the Mormon Church. But most importantly, his love of reading infuses every page of the book, as he traces Carver's influence on his early artistic development and the way specific stories have lingered with him.
This book gives a very strong sense of the pleasures literature genuinely offers us--one completely unrelated to ideology or larger causes, but a sort of private, unexpected, life-long dialogue that happens both on and off the page. Again and again, Evenson tells us something interesting about his life, and quickly jumps to how Carver (or another author) helped him reflect on it. This very private aspect of the reading life has always seemed very important to me, but it just isn't mentioned very often and can be difficult to put into words. I doubt that Evenson plans to write more nonfiction, but I wouldn't have minded if this went on another three hundred pages, as just hearing him talk about books he likes is a pure joy.
Of course, I may have approached this book from an odd angle, as I've got a very limited appreciation of Carver and "What We Talk About....", which I read for the first time in my late twenties--a reminder that the age at which we discover an author can often be the most important part of the experience. I love the title story and have taught it multiple times, but the rest of the collection alienated me for many of the same reasons Evenson appreciates it: the emptiness of the characters, the huge amount that's missing from the page, or the fact that the collection's huge influence has, in fact, changed the way many will read it today. Every story in the collection reminded me of a dozen others I'd encountered (and grown increasingly weary of) in grad school, which may have been my biggest struggle when I finally sat down to read it.
Still, Evenson's enthusiasm was enough to get me interested in Carver again. In particular, I'm curious to test myself by reading Lish's minimalist rendition of "The Bath" side-by-side with Carver's intended version of the same story, "A Small, Good Thing". (Ten years ago, like Evenson, I would have preferred "The Bath"; now, I suspect it will be the opposite.) I'm also curious to compare the title story with its original version in "Beginners", and if I like that I might move onto "Cathedrals".
Evenson finishes with a fascinating meditation on how our feelings towards an author's work can transform throughout our lives. When he describes returning to Carver in his 50s, I can't help reflecting on how it feels to read old favorites such as Borges, Pynchon, Joyce, Delany, or Evenson himself a few weeks from my 31st birthday. Once-familiar works from these writers feel very different now than they once did, and I suspect they'll be almost unrecognizable in another twenty years. There's something deeply uncanny about seeing those same words on the page, but realizing the person who once read them is gone. And the same, of course, goes for the one reading them today.
September 3, 2019
What better than treat for anyone who cares about writing, reading or editing than a masterful book that carefully and thoughtfully addresses all three written by the one-and-only Brian Evenson, who will go down in history as one of the all-time greats in fiction?
And what's more, he's written a moving writer's memoir/academic study of another of the greats in fiction, Raymond Carver.
This book is invaluable for anyone who cares not only for Evenson or Carver, but for anyone who wants to be or is a writer. The way Evenson examines the craft and language of Carver's fiction shows not just a deep appreciation but a clear understanding of what makes Carver's fiction work. Not only this but Evenson expounds on the importance of editing in the craft through his discussion of the great editor Gordon Lish, who shaped Carver's stories into the distinct works they're known for today. Showing the major difference of Carver's original drafts compared with Lish's final, published drafts. The difference is night and day in tone, language and ultimately emotion and ideas expressed.
Evenson takes us on a journey, showing us how he came to Carver's writing, the impact on him and his work, and how these stories still resonate with him in his own career. The way he so movingly writes about his experiences with the writers who inspired him and influenced him and his own evolution in the craft of writing feels very intimate, like a writer having a one on one about his favorite writers.
I think anyone who reads this study of Raymond Carver's works will come away with a lot--even those who read it just as a casual read who may not have a deep passion for writing or reading. It's a book that I'll be going back to again and again because it's one of those books that keeps on rewarding with each read.
And what's more, he's written a moving writer's memoir/academic study of another of the greats in fiction, Raymond Carver.
This book is invaluable for anyone who cares not only for Evenson or Carver, but for anyone who wants to be or is a writer. The way Evenson examines the craft and language of Carver's fiction shows not just a deep appreciation but a clear understanding of what makes Carver's fiction work. Not only this but Evenson expounds on the importance of editing in the craft through his discussion of the great editor Gordon Lish, who shaped Carver's stories into the distinct works they're known for today. Showing the major difference of Carver's original drafts compared with Lish's final, published drafts. The difference is night and day in tone, language and ultimately emotion and ideas expressed.
Evenson takes us on a journey, showing us how he came to Carver's writing, the impact on him and his work, and how these stories still resonate with him in his own career. The way he so movingly writes about his experiences with the writers who inspired him and influenced him and his own evolution in the craft of writing feels very intimate, like a writer having a one on one about his favorite writers.
I think anyone who reads this study of Raymond Carver's works will come away with a lot--even those who read it just as a casual read who may not have a deep passion for writing or reading. It's a book that I'll be going back to again and again because it's one of those books that keeps on rewarding with each read.
June 17, 2023
Great blend of memoir and analysis. Didn't know that Evenson had been so out front on the Lish editing Carver story. Good comparison of the two versions of the stories.
November 23, 2020
I really enjoyed this blend of analysis (which is why I've included it on my academic shelf) and memoir. I was especially drawn into Evenson's discussion of writing from the American West. I'm not Mormon like Evenson, but I did grow up in New Mexico, and have only lived in Western states, so I understand both the mental (attitudinal might be a better word) and geographical landscapes of this book. I will definitely look into more of the Bookmarked series. Evenson's discussion of Carver as a write who influenced him is informed and intellectual, like listening to your favorite professor talk about a book they love.
February 3, 2022
Read this having only read 2 stories in "What we Talk About," and more because I'm a huge Evenson fan. Great stuff-- like a 33 and a 1/3 book about books, how it incorporates memoir (it's strange but cool, to see Evenson in this mode), and close reading, and historical background material. I'll probably write more about it once I actually read "What We Talk About" (LOOK OUT FOR MY BLOG! IT'S COMING, PEOPLE!). For now, let's just say it's as intellectually stimulating and creatively wrought as most Evenson stories, but with a sort of human heart that isn't always apparent in his stories (unless it's, like, being stabbed).
October 26, 2019
Fascinating writer in that any individual sentence analyzed on its own merits seems so simple, so unadorned, that it might flummox you as to why the author is so legendary - read on to a second and third sentence and you are increasingly disarmed by the cumulative weight of the narrative, made all the more powerful by the matter-of-fact packaging. Truly gives meaning to the colloquial phrase "a good yarn," as all the threads pull powerfully taut, the simple text cunningly belied by resonant subtext.
August 5, 2018
As a big fan of Raymond Carver I found this book captivating and could not put it down until I was finished. Evenson provides a lot of information about Carver's writing and the aggressive editing done to them by Carver's editor, Gordon Lish. But Evenson's own experiences at BYU and elsewhere are just as interesting. A great read.
May 11, 2022
One of the best extended essays about Carver ever--maybe the best. I've read them all. Evenson's thoughts about this iconic author and watershed work echo so much of my own feelings. His personal experiences are woven into evaluations and reflections of each story. Much to admire here. Indispensable to any serious Carver scholar.
April 16, 2021
It's fascinating to hear more about the implications of Lish's editing of Carver's stories--even more so because it is organically built from the author's relationship to Lish and the deep impact of Carver's stories. Thoroughly involving.
November 2, 2021
This is like listening to a friend of yours, who is a good storyteller, gush over a favorite book of theirs! The most captivating parts of the book are what you learn about Brian Evenson and his involvement in uncovering the dirty truth about Gordon Lish practically rewriting Raymond Carver.
July 19, 2024
I enjoyed the commentary as much as the stories. I was surprised about the commentary on the writer and editor, which was superb. We don't often think of writing as a collaboration, but the best writing is almost always the product of collaboration.
April 14, 2018
A thoughtful, seamless braiding of the deeply personal and the reflectively critical - bringing out the best and most imperfect of both.
October 28, 2024
The Venn diagram of weird fiction and Raymond Carver coming together in this beautiful long form essay by Brian Evenson.
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