Raymond Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" Commentary by Karen Bernardo Raymond Carver's short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" takes place in one sitting, or more precisely, one pre-dinner drinking bout. It is told in first person, with one of the four characters referring to himself as "I," but ironically this is the character about whom we know the least; he is merely the mouthpiece for the action, and all we know about him is that his name is Nick and he is married to Laura. His friend Mel is a cardiologist, married to Terri, and initiates the conversation of what love means. This conversation provides the central focus of the story. Mel, Nick tells us, thinks "real love [is] nothing less than spiritual love." He cannot comprehend that his wife's abusive ex-husband, Ed, could possibly have loved her while he was dragging her around the room by her ankles. "That's not love, and you know it," Mel says. "I don't know what you'd call it, but I sure know you wouldn't call it love." Terri, on the other hand, insists that it was. She has led a much less sheltered life and is also much less self-righteous than Mel; she understands that while objectively Ed could be regarded as sadistic, dangerous, and pathological, he operated out of a reservoir of strong emotion that was simply incapable of channeling itself in socially-acceptable ways. This strong emotion, when turned toward other human beings, erupted in violence. This is why he beat his wife and eventually committed suicide. Ed, in fact, functions as a pivotal character in the story even though he is dead by the time the action occurs. He stands out in stark contrast to the little group drinking around the table, for, crazy as he was, he had life in him. Terri seems to look back to her days with Ed with a kind of nostalgia, because for all his crackling violence, she thinks he is more man than Mel will ever be. Mel, for his part, presents the story's central question -- what is love -- because like the rest of the group he is imbued with a sense of loss, of regret, of unutterable sadness, for reasons he can not quite describe. He feels instinctively that it has something to do with love, and he's right in a way; it has everything to do with passion. The little group sees in alcohol a way to inflame the passion they once felt for living, or the passion they think they should feel. Mel notes that as much as they love each other, if they were all married to someone else, it would make no difference in their lives; one empty person is as good as another. In fact there is in fact no passion in these people; the alcohol makes it worse, and at the end, when Mel says the gin is gone, Nick concludes the story with the words: "I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark." They can't move because they suddenly realize the fact that none of them have ever moved; their lives have always been, and will always be, empty and dark, and they no longer have gin to cover this up.

這本書收集的是美國作家卡佛的短篇小說（共十篇），全是歷年來評價最高的「精品」，其電影在台灣上演時譯為「銀色．性．男女」。 卡佛作品中快樂的成份不多，充其量是讓人想笑又笑不出來的黑色幽默。卡佛要告訴我們的是，人生對大多數人而言，不是什麼冒險，而是一股莫之能禦的洪流。凡夫俗子所能做的就是隨波逐流，正如「釣魚」的女主角所說的，人生發展到某個階段，一切就已成定局，不論再發生什麼事，「都不可能造成真正的改變」。

「我在描寫人生微妙、難解卻又真切人性的細節上，多數來自瑞蒙‧卡佛的啟發。」──村上春樹「我覺得我們只是愛情的新手而已。你們知道我現在說的那種愛吧，肉體的愛，那種吸引你接近某人的衝動，愛上另外一個人，不論是男的女的都一樣。肉慾的愛，你可以說它是多愁善感的愛，就是對另一個人日復一日的關懷。你們認識彼此之前也可能愛過別人，就像我們一樣，你知道什麼事很可怕嗎？當然這也可能算是好事，那就是我們之中有一個人萬一發生了什麼事──很抱歉我要這麼說──如果明天我們其中一個發生了什麼事，我覺得活下來的那個人會悲傷一陣子，嗯，但他最後還是會繼續戀愛，很快就會找到別人。這所有的一切，我們談的這所有東西，都只是一種回憶，說不定連回憶都談不上。我說錯了嗎？我有神智不清嗎？如果你們覺得我說錯了，你們要糾正我。我是說，我什麼都不知道，而我是第一個承認這件事的人。」瑞蒙‧卡佛的短篇小說被譽為繼海明威之後最傑出的小說家之一，本書更以詩化的散文筆法狀寫日常生活，在乏味的生活中找到悚人的新意，被視為二十世紀後半最重要的文學作品之一。名導演勞柏˙阿特曼曾將其作品改編成電影《銀色 性男女》（原著小說《浮世男女》），村上春樹亦曾將他的作品翻譯為日文。卡佛精於冷調的敘事筆法，卻不時潛伏著隨時可能爆發的張力，深獲國內名家的推薦及佳評。