In spite of the difficulties he confronted as he attempted to continue his development as a writer while he struggled to support his family through decades of low-wage jobs, marital discord and alcoholic abuse, Raymond Carver sustained a vision of himself as a member of a company that included Ernest Hemingway, Anton Chekhov, Isaac Babel, Flannery O’Connor, James Joyce, John Cheever and other “wonderful writers I’ve come across in the last year or two”, as he discussed his “literary influences” for The Paris Review in 1983 (Simpson, 309). John Updike’s introduction to the 7th series of Writers At Work cited “Raymond Carver’s tirelessly polished stories”, and quoted Carver’s comment about …
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Citation: Lewis, Leon. "Cathedral". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 April 2015 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6140, accessed 22 November 2024.]