January 2005 Cutter Benchmark Review: What We Talk About When We Talk About IT Spending

by Bill Walton

In Raymond Carver's short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," two couples have a few predinner drinks and talk about love. But, as with many complex ideas, the story's characters cannot talk directly about love. Instead, they try to communicate through an emotional and conversational triangulation; each character offers multiple points of reference, which taken together converge as their ideas of love. In talking about love, the characters reveal, directly and indirectly, more about themselves and their relationships with one another.