While reading fiction, I mark passages that strike me in a writerly way, but this didn’t happen while I was reading the collection Cathedral. I do think Carver’s a brilliant writer, but his genius is in pacing, dialogue. I admire his use of profanity. He has a way of inserting “Goddamn” that’s so funny.
People talk about Carver in terms of realism, telling working people’s stories in a realistic way, but I always thought his world is stranger, more dislocated than that. Take the story “Feathers” about a couple going to another couple’s house for dinner – there are the grotesque teeth sitting on the TV, there’s a peacock named Joey, there’s a hideously ugly baby. Oh, there’s a good line: “Even calling it ugly does it credit.” Or “Fever”, a story of a man whose wife has left him, left him alone with their two young kids. He makes her sound a little crazy when she calls on the phone, yes, but she is also genuinely psychic in a way. The bereft husband never questions how she knows what she knows – this is a conscious move on Carver’s part, it makes it eerie, almost, or more about the man’s psyche than what’s happening in reality.
Stories about marriages ending. A recurrent theme of children spoiling relationships (“Feathers”, “The Compartment”). The grip of alcoholism: in “Vitamins” it’s still kind of a lark, turning dark; “Where I’m Calling From” & “Chef’s House”, fully in the dark side. The couple seems to be the central figure, the couple relationship is at the heart of all of the stories, in a way.
Hard to pick a favourite, I guess “Cathedral” is the obvious choice, it may be Carver’s single best story – so funny, effortless, effervescent. The way he establishes the relationship between the couple – the husband (narrator) is doing his best, “on notice”. He loves his wife, he often disappoints her. She really wants her blind friend to like him, is hoping her husband doesn’t do anything embarrassing. The narrator places you on his side from the beginning, & it feels comfortable there (“A beard on a blind man! Too much I say.”) The use of exclamation marks. It suddenly goes to a metaphysical place, but from this wise guy’s perspective. How do you describe a cathedral to a blind man? It leads to a connection he didn’t think himself capable of.
Full ranking in order of preference:
“Cathedral”
“Feathers”
“Vitamins” (Hard to forget this story.)
“Where I’m Calling From”
“Fever”
“The Bridle” (How life kicks people when you’re down sometimes. The only story with a female narrator, interesting how she feels bound to the woman she’s describing.)
“The Compartment”
“Chef’s House”
“A Small, Good Thing”
“Preservation”
“Careful”
“The Train” (more like a sketch, a beginning of a story than a story proper)