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After two collections of exquisitely written, concise yet grim and unmercifully sad working-class stories, Carver takes a different approach in this 1983 collection. He allows some of the stories to expand slightly in various ways. Almost all the stories in "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" (1976) and "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" (1981) focus on working-class people on the verge of tragedy or at the end of a slow tragic decline. It's not the classic tragedy of a great man like Macbeth but rather the downfall of an ordinary factory worker due to an affair and his own drunken blunders. The first story in this collection, "Feathers," perhaps signals the change by identifying the tale as a "low rent tragedy." Here, there's more humor, fuller descriptions, and a slower pace, allowing for more to happen and for us to get to know the characters more fully as humans. Most importantly, there's a generosity of spirit not seen to this extent in the earlier collections. The best example of this is seen in the revised story "A Small, Good Thing," which was originally "The Bath" in "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." In the original, an eight-year-old boy is hit by a car and in a coma on his birthday. His parents are too distracted to remember the ordered cake, and the phone keeps ringing with annoying calls. The tone is harsh and devastating. In the revised version, the parents drive to confront the baker in their grief and rage. The baker, upon learning what has happened, offers them freshly baked bread, and they share it together, restoring a small measure of grace and humanity. There are other stories in this collection where similar grace occurs. However, perhaps one of Carver's greatest stories, and maybe one of the best stories ever, is the concluding story, "Cathedral." Narrated by a man whose wife is old friends with a blind man, the story shows the narrator's initial dislike and misunderstanding of the blind man. The blind man's richness and "insightfulness" irritate and make the narrator jealous. When a program about cathedrals is on TV, the narrator fails to describe it to the blind man. But then, the blind man asks the narrator to draw a cathedral with his hand over the narrator's hand. During this process, a small but significant miracle happens. The narrator closes his eyes and experiences what it might be like to be blind. He realizes the power of imagination and relationship. In this story, there emerges the possibility of redemption and life change for the selfish narrator. This collection is a departure from Carver's earlier works, showing growth and a newfound heart. It's a must-read for anyone who loves great literature.
