The cringe legacy of Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver's work 'Beginners' was changed to 'What we talk about when we talk about love'. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

Raymond Carver's writing style is beloved by journalists. His terse, short and unembellished sentences which convey so much feeling in so few words are the envy of second-rate writers.

Carver's second collection, firstly titled Beginners, and later changed to What we talk about when we talk about love was a literary darling. Carver propelled into a fame cut short by his early death from lung cancer.

His legacy - however - lives on in a rather dour form. Headlines beginning with "What we talk about when we talk about.." are so numerous, it's hard not to see one every day.

The usages are, by degrees, sincere, deplorable, hilarious, or clever. Here are some of the best and worst:

"What we talk about when we talk about rape". This appeared in the LA Times as an op-ed just recently. This is a clever use - exchanging "love" for "rape" is a jarring about-turn. It has a lot more impact than, say:

"What we talk about when we talk about Helen Mirren's hot body" from the Huffington Post or "What we talk about when we talk about ad blocking" from TechCrunch.

Other bad examples include "What We Talk About When We Talk About How We Talk About Whatever We're Talking About", "What we talk about when we talk about hepatitis C" and "What we talk about when we talk about Fabio", all from the Huffington Post.

The headline may be oversaturated, overused, and overly sentimental - but that doesn't stop the big names from enlisting it. "What we talk about when we talk about black protestors" emerged on Salon earlier this year, "What we talk about when we talk about Iran" featured on the Guardian.

Daily Beast did the unthinkable and employed the headline for an article about Trump in, you guessed it, "What we talk about when we talk about Trump".

Some outlets are subverting the one-tear headline for ridicule, and it's great. "What we talk about when we talk about Deez Nutz" for instance, is the best headline ever.

The Atlantic article "What we talk about when we talk about the 'raised hands' emoji" is also fantastic.

Mostly, the usage is incredibly banal: "What we talk about when we talk about the middle class" and "What we talk about when we talk about Hillary Clinton's achievements".

There's a time and place to employ the headline (see above), it can - in typical Carver fashion - convey a lot of meaning and sentiment. "Overused" would be too much of an understatement for it, however.

Full disclosure: I'm guilty of it too.