Book Review – Cathedral by Raymond Carver
A Chance of Hope In a Short Story Master's Final Collection
If What We Talk About When We Talk About Love was a collection full of characters in the middle of losing it all, then Cathedral (Vintage, ISBN: 0394712811, 1983) is a collection full of characters trying to get it all back, trying to salvage relationships of all types: marital (“Chef’s House”), paternal (“The Compartment”), and edible (“Preservation”).
How hard the characters in the stories are trying is questionable, and the characters themselves might not even know. But somehow, Carver works that sort of angle wonderfully. It’s a rare thing to read a story like “Preservation”, where the outcome is two characters defeated, but stuck in the sort of lockdown where their lack of comprehension doesn’t hinder the reader’s ability to understand the situation. Carver makes questions appear in boldface before answering them with another question: what now?
The Upward Hook of Salvation
This collection doesn’t necessarily move away from loss and focus completely on the upward hook of salvation, however. There’s a “what now?” in all of these stories, but reader’s still see Carver’s characters lose, and lose big.
Tangible things are taken away: a watch, a child, a wife, a refrigerator full of food, a borrowed house, etc. There’s also the intangible losses found in most of Carver’s stories: love, joy, and hope. The characters found here are just as hapless as any of his others, but they’ve learned to cope with this batch of stories.
His characters learn. Not to discredit “Why Don’t You Dance?”, as it is a perfect story, but if it had appeared in Cathedral, it wouldn’t have shifted to the view of the couple at the end. Carver would have followed the man back into his house and watched his next move (or at least a hint of his next move). There wouldn’t exactly be a lesson, but there would be something learned regardless (or, again, at least the hint of something learned, san indication of a conscious change). There would be a life beyond depression and drinking.
An Uneven Collection
Cathedral contains some of Carver’s best work, but as whole is flawed in the sense that some of the stories drag and a couple of them just aren’t that good. A great writer like Carver can make a subpar story appear better than it is. He dresses up “Careful” in his trademark shell, letting dialogue and setting tell the story of the failed marriage, the drinking problem, the dimwitted cry for help. It doesn’t really do much, though.
The story functions: the ex-wife cleans the ear to make him hear again, to make things make sense again. The dialogue is as great as always and the apartment comes across as a barren wasteland with hidden bottles of champagne scattered throughout it. It’s just not very interesting.
The same could be said about “The Train.” It reads like a scene from an independent/foreign film where nothing happens except minor confusion. “The Compartment” is a bit bland as well, and while Carver may sound like every other American writing about being an American overseas, that’s not even a problem compared to the fact that the same story could have been told in about half the time.
The stories found within the prose stick to the ribs because of the skill used to write them, but the stories themselves are less than engaging. With the meandering nature of some of the characters, it’s difficult to care about them.
Classic Carver
“Feathers” is a beautiful story (though it is, along with “A Small, Good Thing”, guilty of dragging a bit) with a flash-forward at the end that encompasses all of the heartbreak that can be found in everyday life. It focuses on the unraveling point within the tedium of existence, proof that life does not often change in a grand sweeping story as found in a lot of literature, but as the effect of a dinner and a peacock.
“Chef’s House” is the shortest story in the book, and its eight pages do what “Careful” couldn’t: give the reader the seed of a saved relationship and its inevitable destruction. “Preservation” almost slips by unnoticed, but the wife and the husband play off each other so well that the reader can’t help but feel the end somewhere between her ambition and hope and his complete lack of either.
“A Small, Good Thing” is popular amongst American short story anthologies, and with good reason. As I mentioned, it drags a bit, and the half before the child’s death could be trimmed, but the story is so thick with metaphor and genuine sadness that it ranks among the classics.
“Where I’m Calling From” is the definitive story when it comes to Carver and alcohol, and he tackles more than just the characters’ demons from within the treatment center. For as much writing as he’s done about drinking, “Where I’m Calling From” gives the full spectrum, from the initial build to alcoholism to perhaps his most triumphant presentation of the “What now?” question.
It may take a bit of tossing around in the head, but “The Bridle” is eerie in how it lingers. As for “Cathedral,” it doesn’t get any sweeter than the final gift of clarity, the hover and ascent of a calming.
The Seed of Truth
Before working on the Cathedral stories, Carver parted ways with Gordon Lish, his longtime editor who is largely responsible for the precision of Carver’s early work. Regardless, the real focus here is the same as it always was: Carver pinpoints a moment in someone’s life – just a moment, nothing special – and reveals it as the moment when everything changed.
Carver is a true fiction writer, a writer who was able to find the seed of truth within the shell of a false reality. This particular collection finds Carver in search of the love, joy, and hope his characters have previously lost. This is redemption.
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