Hear the Only Recording of Raymond Carver Reading “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”

This is surely worth a quick mention: Today we added to our list of Free Audio Books a recording of Raymond Carver reading his most famous story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” Taped in a Palo Alto hotel room in 1983 for a new radio series called Tell Me a Story, it’s the only known recording of Carver reading his signature story. The reading itself starts at the 6:00 mark. Start listening here (or stream it above).

In 2009, Stephen King called Raymond Carver “surely the most influential writer of American short stories in the second half of the 20th century.” If you’d like to get deeper into his literary world — a literary world that explores “the dim ache in the nondescript lives of aspiring students, down-and-outers, diner waitresses, salesmen, and unhappily hitched blue-collar couples,” as Josh Jones once put it — you can refer back to a previous post where we featured Richard Ford, Anne Enright, and David Means reading several other Carver stories.

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