Postmodernism and minimalism in Raymond Carver's "Cathedral"

characteristic of postmodernism, in which “the text and the world fuse when the author appears in his own fiction” (Sim 131).

The sentences are short, but meaningful, expressing a great amount of information in few words: His wife had died. […] He called my wife from his in- laws’. Arrangements were made (Carver 205). Carver manifests an open reluctance to presenting many, unnecessary details, as it is not the shell, but the nut (Barth 73) which is important, that is the kernel, not the adorned wrap.

Moreover, the writer prefers to keep the silence, not to spoil the mystery of the events, by making use of the theory of omission - promoted by Hemingway in his well-known iceberg aesthetics - as “the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood” (Barth 67). For instance, Carver allows some moments of privacy to his characters, graphically marked by two free lines in the text, and the initial word of the new paragraph written in capital letters: AFTER she’d left the room (Carver 219), WE didn’t say anything for a time (Carver 222). Also the open ending of the story can be interpreted as a deliberate omission, in order for the reader to continue the story and finish it in his own way. Thus, the story is subjected to a “bifurcation […] between what is apparent to the reader and what is missing” (Trussler, The narrowed voice: minimalism and Raymond Carver), the reader being able to speculate upon the absent facts, and to shape them according to his own understanding and will.

Another feature that Postmodernism and Minimalism share is indeterminacy; in this case, it is the main character’s indeterminacy about whether he should speak or remain silent: I started to say something about the old sofa. I’d liked that old sofa. But I didn’t say anything. Than I wanted to say something else, small talk (Carver 215). There is a lack of concordance between the “intention (wanting to speak) and communication; […] the verbal intention is forced to confront the insufficiency, and indeed the absence of words” (Trussler, The narrowed voice: minimalism and Raymond Carver). It seems that the words are