Product Description

This collection of short stories established Raymond Carver as a master storyteller. He is the author of "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?", "Fires", "Elephants", "In A Marine Light: Selected Poems", "A New Path to the Waterfall", "No Heroics Please" and "Short Cuts".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1437106 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From the Back Cover
'Cathedral ought to establish his reputation as one of the most original new voices in fiction to appear from the United States for many years.' Bill Buford, Times Literary Supplement

'All the stories in Cathedral are different; some funny, some hauntingly sad. Each one has is own individual and curious power.' Nina Bawden, Daily Telegraph

Raymond Carver said it was possible "to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language and endow these things - a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring - with immense, even startling power." Nowhere is this alchemy more striking than in the title story of Cathedral in which a blind man guides the hand of a sighted man as together they draw the cathedral the blind man can never see. Many view this story, and indeed this collection, as a watershed in the maturing of Carver's work to a more confidently poetic style.

'Contains astonishing achievements, which bespeak a writer expanding his range and intentions. The title story, different from anything Carver has ever written, is a breathtaking metaphor of creativity.' Robert Taylor, Boston Globe

'A Small Good Thing comes breathtakingly close to perfection ... Carver is a writer of astonishing compassion and honesty, utterly free of pretence and affection, his eye set only on describing and revealing the world as he sees it. His eye is so clear, it almost breaks your heart.' Jonathon Yardley, Washington Post

Customer Reviews

Cathedral
Although I rate this 5 stars, I thought this book was less acomplished than "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love". For example, this collection has a story called "A Small, Good Thing" about a baker nuisance-calling the parents of a boy who has been run over. (This story was part of the Carver-short-story-based film "Short Cuts".) In "What We Talk About ..." there's an earlier (I presume) version of this story, which I think's more subtle, without the rather sentimental ending of "A Small, Good Thing", and which doesn't strain credulity in the way this story does (it's never explained why the baker should want to do this, other than him saying he's lonely).

But sentimentality and false notes are pretty rare in Carver's stories, and this collection is still excellent: sparse prose and suburbanity, stories that explore tenderly human failures. Carver the short-story writer was a decendent of Hemminway without the exoticism and bravado, and a contemporary of Charles Bukowski without the desire to ridicule and aspire to bohemianism.

Short stories written with great skill.
This collection captures snippets of everyday lives of everyday people (America) through phases, turning-points or upheavals. Carver's technique is such that we are an invisible observer, catching a glimpse, getting involved and reluctantly leaving the settings of the characters with a linger of poignancy, and sometimes, curiosity. His prose is plain but not bare. Feelings are never mentioned but suggested by discourse and nuances of the characters' simple actions - a look, a touch, a shuffle. Perhaps Carver is using the knowledge that the deepest and most effective emotions can only be evoked by and within the observers themselves, and it takes a deft storyteller to unlock, nudge a connection with his characters and empower simple objects and prose with an expressive quality. This, I find Cathedral refreshing and a compelling proof that, in short stories, what is not said is more important than what is said.

Simply Great
I first read Carver while I was an English major at UCLA (University California Los Angeles); it was a class on the short story in England and America. We read Checkov, Roth (Philip), and many others; but it was Carver who really moved me. In simple prose, he gets into the rhythm of the addict, the viciousness of addiction, and the reality of sobriety. There has never been a writer quite like Carver, and it's not likely that there ever will be another of his caliber in the art of the short story: reading Carver is, in itself, an act of humanity.