Raymond Carver's short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” leaves the reader with the feeling of having sat down at the table with a bottle of gin and experienced firsthand the effects of alcoholism and depression. In the original version of this story, “Beginner” Carver carefully creates the multiple sides of an alcoholic personality by developing strong, relatable characters. The core personalities are left fairly intact from the original version. It should be noted that the sensations the reader is left with are due at least in part to the severe editing of “Beginners” done by his publisher and friend Gordon Lish. With this collaboration, Carver's personal struggles continue to shine through, but his hopes for hope and recovery from alcoholism have been left mostly on the chopping block. Through numerous interviews and articles Raymond Carver clarifies his personal struggles with alcoholism and how this had an effect on his writing. INTERVIEWER: So where do your stories come from? I mostly ask about stories that have something to do with drinking. Carver: “At least it's referential. Long or short stories don't come out of nowhere." (The Paris Review) The inner dialogue and downward spiral of an alcoholic is experienced through the interaction between these personalities as they discuss the topic of love. JA: I recently noticed that you use cliche in your characterizations, and I wonder if you're simply observing or recording the way a mind works RC: It's there for a purpose; it works for me, not against me. Nick is the narrator and observer of the story. The only information about him is that he is Mel's best friend, Laura... middle of the paper... probably fails to do so that you consider as the standard for what you are looking for. Carver never describes self-love, perhaps it is left out because this is the elusive love that Mel McGinnis is struggling to find and that in this story he at least fails to find instead just self-hatred. The last two sentences suggest that this story could concern anyone, including yourself. “I could feel my heart beating. I could feel everyone's hearts. I could hear the human noise we made sitting there, none of us moved, not even when the room went dark. “What creates tension in a piece of fiction is partly the way in which concrete words are linked together to constitute the visible action of the story. But it's also the things that are left out, that are implied, the landscape just beneath the smooth (but sometimes broken and unstable) surface of things.: (ShopTalk)