Cathedral Raymond Carver by Raymond Carver 9781101970553, 1101970553, B00XST7KK8 instant download after payment.

Raymond Carver said it was possible "to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language and endow these things - a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring - with immense, even startling power". 

"All the stories in Cathedral are different; some funny, some hauntingly sad. Each has its own individual and curious power."  -  Daily Telegraph

Nowhere is this alchemy more striking than in the title story of Cathedral in which a blind man guides the hand of a sighted man as together they draw the cathedral the blind man can never see. Many view this story, and indeed this collection, as a watershed in the maturing of Carver's work to a more confidently poetic style.

"The twelve stories collected in his book Cathedral are remarkable for the originality of vision which he manages to convey in scrupulously simple prose. Carver is a considerable and enterprising talent."  -  The Guardian

These twelve stories mark a turning point in Carver’s work and “overflow with the danger, excitement, mystery and possibility of life. . . . Carver is a writer of astonishing compassion and honesty. . . . his eye set only on describing and revealing the world as he sees it. His eye is so clear, it almost breaks your heart” (Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World).

Raymond Carver (1938-1988) was an author who rejected the more experimental fiction of the 60s and 70s. He pioneered a precisionist realism reinventing the American short story during the eighties, heading the line of so-called "dirty realists" or "K-mart realists". They are stories of banal lives that turn on a seemingly insignificant detail. Carver writes with meticulous economy, suddenly bringing life into focus in a similar way to the paintings of Edward Hopper.