There’s really no point recommending a short story by Raymond Carver to someone on this site, is there? So, assuming you have already read it, the amazing thing about this one for me is the ending. The narrator is trying to describe a Portuguese cathedral to Robert, a blind man, firstly though words, and then by trying to draw it with him. It is a cathedral neither of them knows, and which the narrator has only glimpsed on TV. The result is, of course, tremendously profound in its brevity, a brilliant exploration of how curiously abstract the idea of physical place can be.
First published in Best American Short Stories 1982. Collected in Cathedral, Knopf, 1983
A Personal Anthology 