Raymond Carver: Cathedral

Short Story Monday

This is my 2nd Carver story for Short Story Monday. Back in October of last year I had reviewed "A Small Good Thing." Having loved that one so much, I had perhaps expected too much. I also compared too much. Last year I was surprised that albums by the White Stripes and Bjork didn't make many critics top 10 lists, when I thought they were great compared to everything else that was released that year. The problem was (if it was indeed a problem), most people compared them to their previous albums. No, Icky Thump didn't measure up to Elephant, and Volta wasn't able to impress upon Homogenic. Likewise, "Cathedral" didn't have the same brilliance as "A Small Good Thing." But it was still a fine story.

To analyze them side by side, "Cathedral" doesn't feel as neatly woven. Whereas there's much more of a plot in "A Small Good Thing" to wrap details around, Cathedral's plot isn't as dramatic or defined: a man awaits a visit from his wife's blind male friend and doesn't quite know how to act around him once he shows up.

But of the two stories, "Cathedral" is much funnier. With a lot of politically incorrect jokes, I often couldn't tell if I was laughing with the main character or at him. His demeanour and awkward comments towards the blind man seemed sometimes to come out of jealousy and other times out of ignorance. Neither makes him excusable, but perhaps forgivable.

In any case, the comedy was the opposite of comic relief and I appreciated Carver's ability to make me feel just as uncomfortable as the husband.

However, the ending is a bit too vague for me. I actually had to check to make sure I had all of it, suspecting that I had accidentally not printed the last page. There seems to be a heavy importance placed upon the cathedral that the two men set out to draw towards the end (it's the title of the story after all), but it comes across as stoner talk. I tried to see the significance. Cathedrals were built to pay tribute to something that can't be seen, and out of faith that there is something beyond vision. But what is it that the blind man is building? And was the husband understanding his point? I gave up after a while, feeling too obtuse to grasp what Carver was getting at, and beginning to doubt he was getting at anything.

When I reviewed "A Small Good Thing" I said that to reduce it to a moral would be doing the story an injustice. With "Cathedral" it feels as if the crime is not being able to reduce it to a moral.

(Cross-posted at The Book Mine Set.)