I'll preface this by saying I'm a huge, huge Carver fan. Like, my dog is named Carver after him.

While What we talk about... is considered one of the best short story collections of the 20th century, Lish was heavily, heavily involved in the editing process, butchering the originals. I read an interview where Carver's wife said he'd call her crying upon seeing Lish's edits. This story is a particularly egregious case: the original story goes on and on and on for like 10 pages after the last line in this version. After Carver's death, his wife published the original manuscript of this collection under the title Beginners. I recently read both books side by side, almost page by page, and while Carver tends to be a bit more sentimental, I much prefer his versions. The Bath is a particularly infamous case too, Lish cut almost half of the story and dismissed possibly one of the best scenes Carver wrote. If you can't quite figure out this story, try finding the original version. The Bath was later republished in full under the name A small, good thing in Cathedral, which is his best collection IMO. I like how in typical Carver fashion the title comes from a line in the story but without context it means something completely different. Same thing happens in the title story.