In using this 30-year-old title template, authors forfeit the chance to stamp their work with clear, representative titles. Let’s take, for instance, Abdulali’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape.

But I don’t think that other adherents of this title are so deliberate in distinguishing their topic and the wider discourse on the topic. In his title, Carver identifies the conversation, not love itself, as the center of his story. Some use this template as either a title or subtitle: Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health by Sandra Galea in 2019 What We Talk About When We Talk About Books: The History and Future of Reading by Leah Price in the same year What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About #MeToo: Essays on Sex, Authority and the Mess of Life by Joann Wypijewski in 2020. Nancy Berg and Naomi Sokoloff tack on a parenthetical in their 2018 book, What We Talk about When We Talk about Hebrew (and What It Means to Americans). Sohaila Abdulali published What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape in 2018. In 2014 there was Rob Bell’s What We Talk About When We Talk About God.

This title template is most beloved by nonfiction writers, who turned it from a literary allusion into a popular cliché. In a clever reprisal of Carver’s story, Englander substitutes Jewish identity for love as the topic of two couples’ drunken conversation. In 2011, The New Yorker featured Nathan Englander’s story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank,” which was reprinted in his 2013 collection of short stories of the same name. He asked Tess Gallagher, Carver’s widow, for permission to use the title form. In 2009, Haruki Murakami came out with What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir. While Carver’s was the first famous one, titles like this have been enjoying a heyday in the past decade. In its rhythmic lengthiness, the title hopes to suggest its author’s meditative, expert approach to the topic, but it is overused, often imprecise, and unimaginative. My issue with this sort of title is similar. ” In her husband’s lengthy phrase, Terri senses the quality of slurred speech. Terri, unwitting literary critic, queen of my heart! I share her annoyance whenever I see a title like, “What We Talk About When We Talk About. Don’t talk like you’re drunk if you’re not drunk.” As Mel launches into an anecdote, he says, “it ought to make us ashamed when we talk like we know what we’re talking about when we talk about love.” Immediately, Terri says: “Come on, now. Mel and Terri have been together for a while, and by now, their unhappiness peeks through their heroic courtship story. In this collection’s title story, two couples discuss love and relationships over a bottle of gin. Our story begins in 1989, with the publication of Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

What we talk about when we love