own bigotry. In what follows, however, most attention will be given to a comparative
reading of the use of space and how it relates to the sequencing of scenes in the two
stories.
Intertextual Spaces
Though some of Carver ’ s stories have important outdoor settings, e.g., “ So Much
Water, So Close to Home, ” “ Tell the Women We ’ re Going, ” and “ The Cabin, ” more
often than not his characters are portrayed in domestic spaces, and the “ action ” of a
story frequently takes place in the kitchens, living rooms, bathrooms, and/or bedrooms
of suburban America. Or, to put it in the words of Carver critic Hilary Siebert, who
has examined the poetics of space in Carver ’ s fi ction, “ the home, for Carver ’ s charac-
ters, is always a vital space ” (131). Such is the case with “ Cathedral, ” as its central
scenes are in the living room of the couple ’ s home, with the kitchen and the upstairs
rooms as supporting architecture for the movements of the plot. In “ The Blind Man ”
the poles of the plot that parallel the tension between characters are stretched out into
the rural space of a farm, with its stable and main house containing the major scenes.
Thus Carver ’ s late twentieth - century suburbia, complete with mixed drinks, mari-
juana, and television, and Lawrence ’ s early twentieth - century countryside, complete
with farm workers and teeming animal life, are the defi ning spatial coordinates of
their respective stories.
These coordinates become inextricably bound to the plot sequences in the stories.
There are three main sequences in Carver ’ s story (and sub - sequences within these):
the wait for the visitor Robert ’ s arrival during which the husband - narrator fi lls us in
with exposition concerning the details of his wife ’ s earlier acquaintance with this blind
man; Robert ’ s arrival and the dinner scene; and, fi nally, the long scene in the living
room that culminates with the two men watching television and drawing a cathedral
together (while the wife sleeps on the couch). The narrator never leaves the house
during the story, and neither do the other two characters once they have arrived from
the station.
Sequences in Lawrence ’ s story shift between the house (which is the main setting)
and the farm, especially two scenes in the stable, the fi rst in which the wife is alone
with the husband, the second in which the two men are alone together. These separate
spatial scenes provide the story with an intricate architecture that builds up to the
fi nal scene in which all three are back in the house; both the wife Isabel Pervin and
the visitor Bertie Reid have had a frightening experience when alone with the blind
husband Maurice Pervin in the stable. Mrs. Pervin, in the dark of the stable, suddenly
experiences the world as if she too were blind: “ How near he was and how invisible!
… While he was so utterly invisible she was afraid of him ” (353 – 4). Later, the blind
husband Maurice Pervin believes he has achieved an intimate friendship with the
visitor Bertie Reid during their moment of touching in the stable; Bertie, however,
376
Sandra Lee Kleppe
is aghast at the possibility of such a transgression of his personal space, underlined in
the story ’ s closing spatial image: “ He was like a mollusc [ sic ] whose shell is broken ”
(365).
Spatial imagery, according to the philosopher Gaston Bachelard , is fundamental to
human development and thus also plays a crucial role in literature. In The Poetics of
Space, Bachelard examines how our earliest memories, indeed most of our memories,
are connected to space, especially to the houses we have abided in. The space of Law-
rence ’ s story underlines the separateness of the characters: Mr. Pervin spending time
alone in the stable, Mrs. Pervin and her friend Bertie paying visits to him there, all
three isolated in emotional and spatial ways, even as they are together on the farm.
Hilary Siebert ’ s reading of Carver ’ s fi ction in spatial terms brings out the rich lyrical
imagery of Carver ’ s spaces, 20 and the possibilities these spaces bring for the develop-
ment of the characters in and beyond their physical surroundings: “ Most characters,
as in ‘ Cathedral, ’ don ’ t see the serious limitations of their ‘ housing ’ until they are
released from it through no intention of their own, due to an event that alters or calls
to attention the circumstances of their lives ” (Siebert 132).
The altering event in both “ Cathedral ” and “ The Blind Man ” is the visit of the
wife ’ s friend whose physical contact with the husband changes the balance of the
triangular relationship. Carver ’ s story, however, reverses the conclusion of “ The Blind
Man. ” Whereas Lawrence concludes his tale with the revelation (to the reader) that
the husband ’ s epiphany when the visitor touched him in the stable means the opposite
to the visitor (i.e., they are not friends after all), Carver concludes by joining the two
men physically and emotionally, followed by an image that transcends space. Compare
the two endings:
He [Bertie] could not bear it that he had been touched by the blind man, his insane
reserve broken in. He was like a mollusc whose shell is broken. (Lawrence 365)
I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn ’ t feel like I was inside anything. ‘ It ’ s really
something, ’ I said. (Carver, “ Cathedral ” 228)
Here we reach another uncanny coincidence, for, as Siebert points out in his reading
of “ Cathedral, ” “ The image Bachelard uses to defi ne the inside and outside of phe-
nomenological existence is the mollusk, living in its shell ” (136). The image of the
mollusk, however, is in Lawrence ’ s text, not Carver ’ s. But the archaic notion of inti-
mate space is the same: in Lawrence ’ s story, the character Bertie cannot bear the
invasion of his private space and it crushes him; in Carver ’ s story the character - narrator
is released from the confi nement of private space and experiences both intimacy and
transcendence. The intertext (the shared reference) in both stories, then, is double:
the ancient literary trope of the blind leading the sighted (for in both stories it is the
touch of the blind man that brings on the revelation – whether positive or negative
– of the conclusion), and the archaic image of mollusk/house as a protective yet con-
fi ning space.
Raymond
Carver
377
Conclusion
Some short story theorists suggest that the lyrical quality of short fi ction is one of its
defi ning traits and even that the short story as genre has more in common with poetry
than with the novel. Charles May, for example, believes that the twentieth - century
short story has moved “ away from the linearity of prose toward the spatiality of poetry
– either by using the metaphoric and plurasignative language of the poem or by radi-
cally limiting its selection of the presented event ” (214). In May ’ s interpetation, it is
Chekhov, with his lyrical style, who paved the way for this development for Carver and
other contemporary writers. Carver never completed the manuscript of his novel, but
he did consider
himself as much a poet as a short story writer, publishing six volumes
of verse in his lifetime. Carver ’ s name has also begun to appear in all kinds of contexts
and in tandem with the major writers of contemporary fi ction, including Hemingway,
Joyce, O ’ Connor, Cheever, and others, and there is no doubt that he is considered a
master of the short fi ction genre. This can be observed not only in his use of lyricism
and imagistic detail, but also in his honing of narrative technique, his careful attention
to structure and story sequences, his transposition of American idioms into artistic
gems, as well as his humor 21 and empathy in broaching the quirks of human behavior
(i.e., characterization) and situation. “ Cathedral ” is illustrative of all of these techniques
(as well as of his late expansive style), but most of these traits can also be seen in any
of his stories from the major collections Will You Please Be Quiet, Please (1976), What
We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981), Cathedral (1983), and Where I ’ m
Calling From (1988) . By comparing any of these with the formative stories Carver wrote
in his youth (gathered in No Heroics, Please ), his development from an aspiring writer
to a story craftsman is evident. Much work remains to be done as we compare all of his
existing texts with his manuscripts and his posthumously published works, promising
continued revelations about Carver well into the twenty - fi rst century.
Notes
1
Interest in Carver ’ s parallel poetry career has
4
Some examples are Marshall B. Gentry ’ s
also grown signifi cantly since the posthu-
“
Women
’
s Voices in Stories by Raymond
mous publication of his collected poems, All
Carver ” ( CEA - Critic 56.1 [Fall 1993]: 86 – 95),
of Us, in 1996 . This chapter treats mainly the
and Pamela Demory ’ s “ ‘ It ’ s About Seeing … ’ :
story career.
Representations of the Female Body in Robert
2
Posthumous volumes edited by William L.
Altman ’ s ‘ Short Cuts ’ and Raymond Carver ’ s
Stull et al. include No Heroics, Please: Uncol-
Stories ” ( Pacifi c Coast Philology 39.1 [1999]:
lected Writings (1991), Call If You Need Me: The
96 – 105), and Chris J. Bullock ’ s “ From Castle
Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose (2000), and
to Cathedral: The Architecture of Masculinity
Tell It All (poems, plays, and recollections,
in Raymond Carver ’ s ‘ Cathedral ’ ” ( Journal of
2005).
Men ’ s Studies [May 1994]: 343 – 51).
3 Raymond Carver Review
1 (Spring 2007). 5
A recent issue of the Raymond Carver Review
< http://dept.kent.edu/english/RCR/issues/
is a special issue on “ Carver and Feminism ”
01/index.html > .
(2 [Autumn 2008/Winter 2009]).
378
Sandra Lee Kleppe
6
For a more substantial discussion of male
14
The concept of intertextuality as developed
bonding in such stories, see Libe Garc ì a Zar-
by European literary theorists in the twenti-
ranz ’ s essay “ Passionate Fictions: Raymond
eth century, especially by Julia Kristeva,
Carver and feminist Theory ” in the Raymond
is one which had been translated precisely
Carver Review 2 (2009): 20 – 39.
from Mikhail Bakhtin ’ s cultural and literary
7
Many of these are listed in the bibliography
theories.
of the International Raymond Carver Society
15
See Claire Fabre - Clark, “ The Poetics of the
< www.internationalraymondcarversociety.
Banal in Elephant and Other Stories ” (Kleppe
org/bib.html > .
and Miltner, eds.
New Paths to Raymond
8
For treatments of Carver ’ s work in the context
Carver 173 – 86).
of medicine see, for example, P. W. Graham,
16
In his poetry collections Carver also includes
“ Metapathography: Three Unruly Texts ”
verbatim passages from many writers, includ-
( Literature and Medicine 16.1 [1997]: 70 – 87),
ing Chekhov, presenting these extracts as
or S. L. Kleppe,
“
Medical Humanism in
“ found poems. ”
the Poetry of Raymond Carver
” ( Journal of
17 Quoted in Cushman (166, fn. 1). Source: Jim
Medical Humanities
27.1 [Spring 2006]:
Naughton, “ Carver: The Master ’ s Touch ”
39 – 56).
( Washington Post [August 4, 1988]: C1, C6).
9
See, for example, the course syllabus for
I am indebted to Cushman ’ s reading of the
“ Disability Studies/English 340 ” at Miami
stories for my own analysis.
University,
Ohio.
< www.units.muohio.
18
For more information on the genesis of
edu/disabilitystudies/DS%20Poetics%20
“ Cathedral ” see Cushman ’ s article, Tess Gal-
Narrative.htm > .
lagher ’ s essay “ Carver Country ” in Adelman
10
For critical articles on Short Cuts , consult the
and Gallagher,
Carver Country
, and Carol
bibliography of the International Raymond
Sklenicka ’ s biography (2009) . Sklenicka has
Carver Society.
also presented a paper on the genesis and
11
In Carver ’ s late poem “ Gravy, ” the speaker
intertextual elements at the International
refl ects that
“
No other word will do. For
Conference on D. H. Lawrence, Santa Fe,
that ’ s what it was. Gravy. / Gravy, these past
NM, 2005:
“
The Building of Raymond
ten years ” ( All of Us 292).
Carver ’ s ‘ Cathedral. ’ ”
12 Many, though not all, of the individual arti-
19
There are two marvelous photographs of
cles on “ Cathedral ” are listed in the bibliog-
Mr. Carriveau in
Carver Country , 119 –
raphy of the International Raymond Carver
120.
Society:
Cathedral
, ed. Wendy Perkins 20
Though I have studied Bachelard ’ s works
(Wadsworth
’
s Casebook Series for Reading,
independently, I am indebted to Siebert
’
s
Research and Writing; Belmont, CA:
reading for insights into how Bachelard
’
s
Wadsworth, 2003).
ideas apply specifi cally to “ Cathedral ” and
13 For an excellent article on Carver from the
other Carver stories.
perspective of theories of photography, see 21
For an assessment of Carver ’ s understudied
Ayala Amir, “ ‘ I do
n ’ t do motion shots ’ :
humor, see Paul Benedict Grant, “ Laughter ’ s
Photography, Movement, and Change in
Creature: the Humor of Raymond Carver
”
Raymond Carver ’ s Stories ” ( Raymond Carver
(Kleppe and Miltner, eds.
New Paths to
Review 1 [2008] : 33 – 52).
Raymond Carver 154 – 72).
References and Further Reading
Adelman , Bob , and Tess Gallagher . Carver Country:
Bachelard ,
Gaston .
The Poetics of Space .
The World of Raymond Carver . New York : Scrib-
Trans. Maria Jolas.
Boston
:
Beacon Press
,
ner , 1990 .
1994 .
Raymond
Carver
379
Bakhtin , Mikhail . The Dialogic Imagination . Ed.
Jarrell , Donna , and Ira Sukrungruang , eds. What
Michael Holquist . Trans. Caryl Emerson and
Are You Looking At? The First Fat Fiction Anthol-
Michael Holquist. Austin : University of Texas
ogy . San Diego : Harcourt/Harvest Books , 2003 .
Press , 1981 .
Kleppe , Sandra Lee , and Robert Miltner , eds. New
Bethea , Arthur . Technique and Sensibility in the
Paths to Raymond Carver: Critical Essays on His
Fiction and Poetry of Raymond Carver . New York :
Life, Fiction, and Poetry . Columbia : University of
Routledge , 2001 .
South Carolina Press , 2008 .
Bloom , Harold , ed. Bloom
’
s Major Short Story Lainsbury , Greg . The Carver Chronotope: Inside the
Writers: Raymond Carver . Bromall, PA : Chelsea
Life - World of Raymond Carver ’ s Fiction . New
House , 2002 .
York : Routledge , 2004 .
Campbell , James . “ What a Carve - up . ” Saturday
Lawrence , D. H. “ The Blind Man . ” The Complete
Guardian (December 1, 2007 ): 21 .
Stories of D. H. Lawrence . Vol. II . New York :
Carroll , Maureen P. , and William L. Stull . Remem-
Viking Press , 1961 . 347 – 65 .
bering Ray: A Composite Biography of Raymond Max , D. T. “ The Carver Chronicles . ” New York
Carver . Santa Barbara, CA : Capra Press , 1993 .
Times Magazine (August 9, 1998 ): 34ff .
Carver , Maryann Burk . What It Used to Be Like: A
May , Charles E. “ Chekhov and the Modern Short
Portrait of My Marriage to Raymond Carver . New
Story . ” The New Short Story Theories . Ed. Charles
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 82