I’ve buried this story deep in my anthology here, but it’s actually the story that gave me the idea to create a collection around endings. Carver’s narrator is a belligerent and unsympathetic character and in some ways seems infected by his thinking, like his notions and resentments are permanently germinating under the surface. His reluctance to look past himself means the reader has to read through his murk, and in the process of the story he is disassembled slowly, until it ends with a sudden light, a release of breath.
First published in the Atlantic Monthly, in 1981. Collected in Cathedral, Knopf 1983. Read here
A Personal Anthology 