What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
by Raymond Carver

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Genre 1 key example

Genre
Explanation and Analysis:

“What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” is a short story that belongs to the genre of Realism, meaning that it tries to capture people as they really are rather than romanticizing them. Some consider Carver’s work to belong to a subgenre of realism called “dirty realism,” a term often applied to the work of specific North American writers in the 1970s and 1980s. Dirty realist literature often featured minimalist language, mundane subject matter, working- or middle-class characters, and a lack of growth or resolution for said characters.