A Companion to the American Short Story
Page 81
What Are You Looking At? The First Fat Fiction Anthology (2003) . One suspects that
the sheer accessibility of his language combined with the closeness between lived and
fi ctional experience have contributed to the fascination with Carver in areas far
removed from traditional literary courses.
Finally, fi lm and media studies remain pertinent charted and forthcoming areas of
inquiry, especially since the release of Ray Lawrence ’ s fi lm Jindabyne in 2006. 10 Where
Robert Altman portrayed the fast - paced and interlocked fate of characters from nine
Carver stories in the now - classic Short Cuts (1993), Lawrence dedicates a full feature
to the exploration of one story, “ So Much Water, So Close to Home. ” Set in contem-
porary Australia, the fi lm is an excellent example of how Carver Country is as much
a state of mind as it is a place, and how characters everywhere and anywhere are a
part of the arduous business called life that Carver so meticulously recreated in his
fi ction. This is the case regardless of whether they live in the small community of
Jindabyne or sprawling Los Angeles.
An Intertextual Assessment of “ Cathedral ”
As our knowledge of Carver ’ s literary life has expanded with time, our understanding
of the collection Cathedral (and its title story) as a post - minimalist work has been
confi rmed and emphasized. The collection, written soon after Carver ’ s intense corre-
spondence with Lish over the editor ’ s huge cuts to What We Talk About , includes
several stories that Carver rewrote or restored from earlier versions, as well as new
stories such as “ Cathedral ” that were to be published without Lish ’ s interference. The
book was also written during what Carver referred to as the “ gravy ” years of his life,
after recovery from alcoholism and before diagnosis with cancer. 11 The title story is,
for good reasons, widely anthologized, and all of the major Carver scholars cited
above have commented on it in their monographs. There exist dozens of individual
critical articles on the story and at least one student study guide, 12 in addition to
Harold Bloom ’ s (mis)treatment of it as a lesser version of D. H. Lawrence ’ s “ The
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371
Blind Man ” in his Major Short Story Writers series. Indeed, the interest in “ Cathedral ”
exemplifi es the versatility of Carver ’ s short fi ction, demonstrating its ability to with-
stand scrutiny and to offer up insights in readings that emphasize a range of topics
including religion, alcoholism, disability, humor, television, feminism, and gender
studies. This section, however, will place the story in the literary
“
canon
”
(from
which Bloom has excluded it) while emphasizing the larger literary and intertextual
issues that it raises.
Intratextuality and Intertextuality
Before looking specifi cally at some of the intertextual traits of
“
Cathedral,
”
it is
important to establish that Carver frequently worked both intra - and intertextual
elements into his writing, and that this was a lifelong process he never abandoned.
Intra textual refers to the phenomenon of a writer ’ s self - reference; to the recycling or
reworking of elements from one ’ s own texts. The intratextual can function on the
level of a collection of stories, as Randolph Runyon has illuminated in
Reading
Raymond Carver , where he shows how each story in each of Carver ’ s major collections
reworks elements of the previous one(s). For Carver, however, intratextuality also
functions on many other levels, as he frequently rewrites his own stories (calling, for
example, “ A Small, Good Thing ” not a version of “ The Bath, ” but a completely dif-
ferent story) or pokes fun at himself as a writer. In “ Cathedral, ” for example, the
narrator ridicules his wife for writing a poem about the blind man touching her: “ I
didn ’ t think much of the poem. … Maybe I just don ’ t know much about poetry ”
(211). Both Tess Gallagher (Carver ’ s second wife) and Carver himself are accomplished
poets, so the humor is double - edged here.
Moreover, by introducing blindness into the story as its central trope, Carver ’ s
“ Cathedral ” is an intratextual experiment in reversal: almost all of his stories and
poems deal at some level with the trope of vision. On the microlevel of the word and
of the verb phrase, the most frequent intratextual element in Carver, what marks
almost every Carver text as his particular product (whether edited by Lish or not), is
his obsession with sight; indeed Carver scholars have long since established voyeurism
as a central motif in his work. There is almost no story or poem that does not display
an almost redundant use of verbs such as “ see, ” “ watch, ” “ look, ” “ glance, ” and “ stare, ”
and related nouns such as “ eyes, ” “ vision, ” or, to borrow the title from one of his
stories, “ Viewfi nder. ” To take that very brief, fi ve - page story as an example, we fi nd
the following density of sight verbs: “ watching ” (2 times), “ see ” (2 times), “ look ”
(5 times), “ looked ” (3 times), “ saw ” (2 times), “ seeing ” (once), “ watched ” (2 times),
and “ show ” (2 times). In addition, there is an ironic sight - related adjective to describe
the antagonist, who is “ ordinary - looking ” (except for the fact that he has hooks instead
of hands), and several nouns related to this man ’ s vocation as an amateur photographer,
itself a trope for viewing: “ photograph ” (2 times), “ picture ” (5 times), “ camera ”
(4 times), “ Polaroid ” (once), “ viewfi nder ” (3 times including the title), and “ shutter ”
(once). 13 On a larger intratextual level, this story resounds with “ Cathedral ” ; in both
372
Sandra Lee Kleppe
stories, a disabled person functions as a more “ whole ” being than the main character
who has no physical disabilities.
This brings us to the discussion of the inter textual nature of Carver ’ s work. The
story “ Viewfi nder ” is one among several that echo Flannery O ’ Connor ’ s fi ction, espe-
cially the idea that the freakish is ordinary and vice versa, and that a person may not
be a whole being despite a whole physical body. Consider, for example, the one - armed
man in O ’ Connor ’ s “ The Life You Save May Be Your Own, ” whose adeptness as a
handyman is similar to the photographer ’ s ease when using his hooks in “ Viewfi nder. ”
Though there are fewer moments of grace in Carver than in O ’ Connor, he in fact
moved closer, in his later works, to depicting moments of grace under pressure and
even epiphany, lessons he had learned from masters such as Hemingway, Joyce, and
O ’ Connor. Yet here it is important to underline that the notion of intertextuality is
a cultural phenomenon that has both general and specifi c manifestations, and that
language itself is loaded with intertextuality in the Bakhtinian sense: “ [L]anguage is
not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the
speaker ’ s intentions; it is populated – o
verpopulated – with the intentions of others.
Expropriating it, forcing it to submit to one ’ s own intentions and accents, is a diffi cult
and complicated process ” (Bakhtin 294). 14 Intertextuality can be conscious or uncon-
scious, deliberate or accidental, fl aunted or cloaked in allusion. Carver employs all of
these forms of intertextuality in his works, sometimes unabashedly stealing elements
from other writers ’ texts, from letters written to him, or from stories told to him by
friends, sometimes accidentally or even na ï vely reproducing his own versions of other
texts (as seems to be the case with “ Cathedral ” ), which in turn might be texts which
have been recycled through the centuries. In all cases, however, the emphasis should
be put on what artistic effect Carver achieves with his version , for all major writers
have to a greater or lesser extent rewritten the tradition and texts of the “ canon ” and
of their culture to suit their own purposes. Indeed, as recent studies have shown,
Carver ’ s use of clich é and of the banal contribute to his transforming American col-
loquialisms into an aesthetic and lyrical language. 15
During his formative years in the 1960s, Carver wrote imitations/parodies of both
Faulkner and Hemingway ( “ Furious Seasons ” and “ The Afi cionados, ” both collected
in No Heroics, Please ), illustrating Harold Bloom ’ s notion of the anxiety of infl uence,
but the symbolic “ killing off ” of a writer is only one of many types of intertextual
writing. In most cases in his mature works, Carver is clearly not employing parody
or anxiety, but rather consciously tipping his hat to writers he admires by confi dently
creating his own version of another text, such as with the case of Carver ’ s “ The Train, ”
which is a sequel to John Cheever ’ s “ The Five - Forty - Eight, ” in which the character
Miss Dent stalks and threatens a man who has mistreated her. While Carver and
Cheever were (drinking) buddies in life, in their fi ction Carver ’ s text marks both dif-
ference and respect as he leads Miss Dent back into ordinary scenes of waiting room
and train ride after the violent closing of Cheever ’ s story. Carver also shows his admi-
ration for Chekhov and both writers ’ celebration of the ordinary by incorporating rich
intertextual elements into the last story that he wrote and published, “ Errand. ” In
Raymond
Carver
373
this quasi - biographical tale of the death of Chekhov, Carver unabashedly lifts passages
from others ’ texts about the Russian master. Claudine Verlay, in her illuminating
reading of the story, makes the distinction (borrowed from Genette) between “ hyper-
text, ” which is a derived or altered version of a previous text, and “ hypotext, ” which
is the previous version. In “ Errand, ” she writes,
The hypotext stems from many sources of information. Suvorin ’ s and Tolstoy ’ s diaries,
Marie Chekhov ’ s and Olga Knipper ’ s memoirs, … and the various biographies Carver
may have consulted, notably Henry Troyat ’ s Chekhov. (148)
Carver, however, molds all of this into a story that most critics agree, in Verlay ’ s
words, is a tour de force. 16 He does this by employing a characteristic rich mix of fact
and fabrication in which the biographical details of Chekhov ’ s life are juxtaposed with
the sheerly fi ctional account of the bellboy at the end of the story, an everyman whose
banal concerns trump the austere moment of the death of a great world writer. Such
a narrative pivot away from “ heroics ” and toward the everyday is indeed one of Carver ’ s
key contributions to the short story genre.
To sum up our examination of the wide variety of intra - and intertextual elements
in Carver
’
s works, we must conclude that, in addition to the vexed relationship
between Lish ’ s words and Carver ’ s words, which will continue for some time to occupy
scholars, Carver himself “ edited, ” borrowed, rewrote, and freely incorporated his own
and others ’ texts throughout his career. Although fascinating to study, it is not always
necessary for readers to be aware of all of the intertextual elements in his stories.
Indeed, it would be impossible to trace all of them. Carver ’ s stories stand on their
own as the product of his craftmanship and can be read without too much anxiety
about infl uences. In Carver ’ s own often - quoted words,
Some writers have a bunch of talent; I don ’ t know any writers who are without it. But
a unique and exact way of looking at things, and fi nding the right context for expressing
that way of looking, that ’ s something else. The World According to Garp is, of course,
the marvellous world according to John Irving. There is another world according to
Flannery O ’ Connor, and others according to William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.
( “ On Writing ” 22)
On the other hand, in studies and courses that focus on comparative readings,
whether of American writers such as the ones mentioned above, or in larger contexts
such as the Chekhovian connections, Carver ’ s stories (and poems) will continue to
provide a goldmine of prospects for discussion and comparison. The next sections of
this essay consider one such connection, the phenomenon that Carver ’ s “ Cathedral ”
so strikingly resembles D. H. Lawrence ’ s “ The Blind Man, ” yet Carver ’ s story is also
much more than a hypertext or new version of an older text. “ Cathedral ” is an “ origi-
nal ” Carverian text, unaltered by Lish, and singled out by readers and critics alike as
a favorite.
374
Sandra Lee Kleppe
Carver, “ Cathedral, ” and D. H. Lawrence
D.H. Lawrence was one of the best writers in the language and one of the worst, and sometimes
in the same story.
– Raymond Carver in the classroom, as quoted by a student 17
Readers wishing to study specifi c intertextual connections between Lawrence and
Carver are advised to steer away from Harold Bloom ’ s reductive and unsubstantiated
claims: “ Carver, whom perhaps we have overpraised, died before he could realize the
larger possibilities of his art. … There is a reverberation in Lawrence ’ s story that carries
into the high madness of great art. Carver, though a very fi ne artist, cannot take us
there ” (11). The Lawrence scholar Keith Cushman, on the other hand, presents a more
balanced assessment in his essay
“
Blind Intertexual Love:
‘
The Blind Man
’
and
Raymond Carver ’ s ‘ Cathedral. ’ ” Rather than diminish Carver to an imitation of Law-
rence, Cushman opens up both stories by showing how the literary trope of blindness
is a staple in the Western canon, well established in antiquity and thus a shared
intertext for writers of all eras. Intertextuality is not about tracing the source from
one writer to another and embracing an authoritative version, for as Cushman rightly
points out in citing Kristeva and Barthes, intertextuality is concerned with the trans-
mission of both language and culture, which are always already given, yet also always
open and malleable. The on
ly original human words, as Bakhtin has pointed out, were
spoken by the Biblical Adam; since then language has been in continual dialogic
development.
Cushman and others have noted the very striking resemblances between “ Cathe-
dral
”
and
“
The Blind Man.
”
There is the same triangle of characters: a married
couple and a male visitor. In both stories one of the men is blind, though in Law-
rence ’ s it is the husband Maurice Pervin and in Carver ’ s it is the visitor Robert. In
both stories, the visitor is a close friend of the wife, an aspect that both husbands
initially resent. In his correspondence with Cushman, Carver claimed he had not
read
“
The Blind Man
”
before writing
“
Cathedral
”
and that any similarities were
coincidental (although Carver later did read, appreciate and teach Lawrence ’ s story). 18
What makes the resemblances between the two stories stranger than fi ction is the
fact that “ Cathedral ” was based on the actual visit of a blind man, Tess Gallagher ’ s
friend and earlier employer, Jerry Carriveau, who took the train to see the couple
in Syracuse in 1981. 19 But like the story “ Errand ” discussed above and in most of
the stories that have their sources in biographical and/or intertextual material, Carver
uses the visit as a source only insofar as it can serve his own fi ctional and aesthetic
purposes.
What a comparative reading of
“
Cathedral
”
and
“
The Blind Man
”
ultimately
reveals is that the similarities ultimately serve to highlight the specifi cally Lawrentian
in Lawrence ’ s fi ctional world and the specifi cally Carverian in Carver ’ s. One crucial
difference is in the narrative techniques employed: Lawrence uses a third
-
person
omniscient narrator who allows each of the main characters focalization, showing how
Raymond
Carver
375
they are isolated beings at the same time as they desire strong bonds; Carver uses a
fi rst - person narrator who, in the course of the story, discovers the shallowness of his