What We Talk About: THE AUTHORITATIVE CUT

by Nicole Cliffe · November 6, 2013

51nLRerQ9tL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

What We Talk About When We Talk About Prince

What We Talk About When We Talk About Girls

What We Talk About When We Talk About Ecocriticism

What We Talk About When We Talk About Metadata

What We Talk About When We Talk About Football Concussions

What We Talk About When We Talk About The South

What We Talk About When We Talk About Networking

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cyberwar

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cloud Network Performance

What We Talk About When We Talk About The Tube

Screen Shot 2013-11-04 at 2.31.47 PMWhat We Talk About When We Talk About God

What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip-Hop

What We Talk About When We Talk About Online Education

What We Talk About When We Talk About Mad Cow Disease

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cordova

What We Talk About When We Talk About Sex

What We Talk About When We Talk About Money

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cancer

What We Talk About When We Talk About Melancholy

What We Talk About When We Talk About Content

What We Talk About When We Talk About Haruki Murakami

What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

What We Talk About When We Talk About Bubbles

Screen Shot 2013-11-04 at 2.31.09 PMWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank

What We Talk About When We Talk About Doves

What We Talk About When We Talk About Rob Bell

What We Talk About When We Talk About The Debt Ceiling

What We Talk About When We Talk About Public Libraries

What We Talk About When We Talk About Privacy

What We Talk About When We Talk About Lorde

What We Talk About When We Talk About The State Fair

What We Talk About When We Talk About Bargs

Screen Shot 2013-11-04 at 2.33.08 PMWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Stealing

What We Talk About When We Talk About Monsters

What We Talk About When We Talk About Editing 

What We Talk About When We Talk About Torture

What We Talk About When We Talk About The Olympics

What We Talk About When We Talk About Giving

What We Talk About When We Talk About Social Mobility

What We Talk About When We Talk About Programmatic

What We Talk About When We Talk About College

What We Talk About When We Talk About Drones

What We Talk About When We Talk About Collaboration

What We Talk About When We Talk About New iPhones

What We Talk About When We Talk About China

What We Talk About When We Talk About Writing

Honourable Mention:

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Honourable Mention 2:

The Adrian Chen piece I saw after I had already written 88% of this and had no interest in stopping.

Honourable Mention 3:

Nicole – Oh, c’mon, Elon. I’m going to go drown myself now. I’m stopping. What’s the point? Why do we even have blogs? With Adrian, I could at least say, “well, I mean, he didn’t LIST them.” I did list way more than you? Did you see his post before you did yours?

Elon Green – I did not! I set to do a sort-of found poem (I’m still not sure what to call these things) and wasn’t going to let Adrian rain on my parade. Anyway, at least to some degree I was making light of–or drawing attention to–the phrase’s ubiquity. But, unlike Adrian, I’m okay with this! Maybe it’s true, as he says, that “the joke is only funny if you have some knowledge about the minimalist short story writer Raymond Carver.” But so what? That’s what being a writer is all about; hoping some infinitesimal percentage of the reading population (which itself is already infinitesimal) appreciates what you do.

Nicole – Yeah! I got the idea because I had JUST changed an author’s reasonable title to “What We Talk About When We Talk About Prince,” and then was filled with self-loathing, but somewhere between “Mad Cow Disease” and “Bargs,” I started liking the formulation again. Elon, do you know what a barg is?

Elon – Nope. I assume it has something to do with Star Trek, Breaking Bad, everything by Jane Austen, The Walking Dead or the current season of Parks and Rec–a few of my cultural blind spots. (Am I close?) Despite my ignorance, I’d like to see it spelled ‘bargh’, similar to Williamsburgh circa 1827.

Nicole – It’s a technical thing, apparently! Okay, can you tell me what you would have done if you’d made a beautiful post that linked to forty-nine different variants on that headline before seeing a shorter version?

Elon – I’d publish it! Not only that, I’d emphasize the length. Like, “What We Talk About When We Talk About: THE AUTHORITATIVE CUT.” Link to the shorter one, of course, but only to airily note the lack of thoroughness.

Nicole – You don’t say.

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Nicole Cliffe

Nicole Cliffe

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26 Comments

  1. chickpeas +2

    I will here admit that this is one of my most hated title conventions and I intentionally did not read the piece about Prince because I loathe it so much.

    Sorry.

  2. stuffisthings +2

    Is barg a cyclist thing? Or are you referring one of the two villages in Khorasan region of Iran? Why does either fill you with self-loathing?

    1. NicoleCliffe +3

      Oh, I see! No, I was mad at myself for changing my own author’s piece’s title to “What We Talk About When We Talk About Prince”! But then I just accepted I was part of the problem and moved on to sin no more.

      1. stuffisthings +2

        Haha I lose at reading comprehension. For some reason I thought you were locating your level of self loathing as somewhere between “Mad Cow disease” and “bargs”… which makes no sense…

      2. dakimel +3

        You are an innocent victim of the zeitgeist.

        (Run, Nicole, run! The zeitgeist is out to get you!)

    2. haleycrain +6

      what we talk about when we talk about what we talk about when we talk about

      what talk about talk what about what what talk what about talk WHAT

  4. meanchelled +6

    A) I’m so glad this exists
    B) I couldn’t tell you the plot of the Carver story (I mean, beyond “feelings?”), but I LOVE that the title has worked its way into online discourse as if anyone uses it without at least 15% flaunting the fact that they, too, once read a 20th century American short story. LOVE IT.

      1. meanchelled +5

        Raymond Carver is the sphinx you must defeat to succeed at parties.
        Raymond Carver is the ace in your hand that will let you win the big poker tournament being held in a 19th century steamboat on the Mississippi.
        Raymond Carver is Michael Sheen’s gentle If I’m not mistaken every 5 minutes in Midnight in Paris.
        Raymond Carver is your tweed jacket… and mine.

    2. vmartinipie +3

      Sometimes I think people don’t even know the original story. Nothing confirms this but a vague suspicion, which in my view is enough.

      1. meanchelled +8

        I hope in the decades to come nothing remains of that story except the title.

        Read more in my upcoming eyeroll WHAT DO WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT THE CANON

  6. Canard +1

    Sadly, the New Yorker’s great parody “What We Talk About When We Talk About Doughnuts” is behind a paywall.

  7. vmartinipie +3

    Yes, finally, a list to prove What I Talk About When I Talk About How Every Damn Piece Is Titled Like This. Thanks for doing the dirty work for me!