This piece has been five-starred by two topnotch authorities in Raymond Carver Land: Carver’s son, Vance Lindsay, as well as Carol Sklenicka, whose new biography, “Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life,” was today listed among the New York Times Book Review’s ten best books of 2009.

After such stellar endorsements, here are my two cents:

Carver was, as a man and in terms of his writing, a major person for me. His short story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” is part of the American literary canon. As usual—consider the case of “Julia Child and M. F. K. Fisher”—Leet-Ford and Litwin’s production of this piece is a kind of national treasure.

PDs may want to consider the significance of “love” in this story. If it’s true that, as four Liverpudlians sang, “All you need is love,” this story’s protagonist Mel, a cardiologist, has plenty to say about essential matters of the heart. His tipsy tip sheet abounds with unfoolish inconsistencies in subplots you will chuckle and frown over. The two married couples sitting down for drinks before dinner in Albuquerque discuss what it means to “love one another” in terms no one—certainly not Hemingway—ever brought out of the woodwork. In fact, the four main characters in this story, plus another quartet of characters mentioned “offstage,” are part of a late twentieth-century wallpaper design every American will recognize as part of his or her unique and solitary home.

I don’t agree with the host Herbert Gold’s statement that parental discretion is advised when airing this piece. I think young people need to know more about Shakespeare’s notion that the course of true love never did run smooth. I think people of all ages will want to make space in their day to listen to this piece and give it five stars.

Okay, it's a Lish-edited Carver but in the version that Carver was content to see published. Those who want to know more about the editing of this great, great story can read about it in my biography, Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life.