SOURCE: B&N Review
There's a moment in Raymond Carver's imperishable story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" that might be described as one of unregistered revelation. Two middle-aged couples perch at a kitchen table consuming an anesthetizing amount of gin while trying to converse about the fundamentals of love. Mel McGinnis, a cardiologist and the table's chief discourser, for whom "gin" is literally a middle name, offers a heuristic anecdote: He once administered to an elderly husband and wife, married for eons, who were almost snuffed out in a heinous car wreck. Supine in the same hospital room as his wife, the old man despairs not because of his own injuries but because he can't see his wife through the eye holes in his full-body cast. "Can you imagine?" Mel asks. "I'm telling you, the man's heart was breaking because he couldn't turn his head and see his wife."
Carver's story is less a narrative than Mel's monologue, his inebriated apologia on amore, and one that perhaps would have been better served by the title "How We Talk When We Talk About Love," since the how is Carver's real concern: in circles, platitudes, and tautologies, and always without certainty or complete comprehension, drunk or otherwise. Mel concludes his anecdote by asking, "Do you see what I'm saying?" But of course none of the four does see, least of all Mel himself.
Carver's story is less a narrative than Mel's monologue, his inebriated apologia on amore, and one that perhaps would have been better served by the title "How We Talk When We Talk About Love," since the how is Carver's real concern: in circles, platitudes, and tautologies, and always without certainty or complete comprehension, drunk or otherwise. Mel concludes his anecdote by asking, "Do you see what I'm saying?" But of course none of the four does see, least of all Mel himself.
In the title story of Nathan Englander's charismatic new collection, What We Talk About when We Talk About Anne Frank, revelations abound. Two Jewish couples -- one secular and American, the other Hassidic and Israeli -- spend a Sunday afternoon in the former's Florida home downing vodka and sparring over Jewishness. The Israeli husband, Mark, is a convincing example of exactly what we find obnoxious and, worse, outright yawnful about religious zealotry: chauvinism and moral superiority wedded to a fondness for bullshit and the very pressing need to spread it. The narrator oscillates between acceptance of and contempt for this oaken blowhard, though alcohol and marijuana help ease the afternoon. Read more...
