Cathedral by Raymond Carver

She worked with this blind man all summer. She read stuff to him, case studies, reports, that sort of thing. She helped him organize his little office in the county social-service department. They’d become good friends, my wife and the blind man. On her last day in the office, the blind man asked if he could touch her face. She agreed to this. She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose—even her neck! She never forgot it. She even tried to write a poem about it. She was always trying to write a poem. She wrote a poem or two every year, usually after something really important had happened to her.

What's so great about Carver is that he makes it look easy. Like Salinger in The Catcher in the Rye (though not so much in most of his other works) and Hemingway (Carver is considered by many to be his successor), he makes the reader feel smarter than the writer. That is to say, you think that you understand what's happening in the story better than Carver himself does. I tend to think this is a good thing.
Carver is a legend, especially among would-be writers and writing teachers. The reason for this is clear. To read a Carver story is not only to experience something great, but to receive a lesson in how to write something great. Reading, say, Nabokov or Faulkner, is absolutely worth the price, but I would argue that they can sometimes be negative influences on someone trying to learn how to write. Their styles are so unique and all-around high that a new writer finds himself striving for things that he simply is not ready to do.
I don't mean to say that you can read a Carver story and then immediately write a Carver story. And I certainly don't mean to say that he's any less of a writer than those that write in high style. I simply mean to say that Carver's stories are like beautiful post-and-beam construction houses, whereas Nabokov's and Faulkner's are more like mansions in the Hamptons. I think this comparison works in two ways: first, Carver's stories are more rustic than the others' though no less beautiful. But perhaps more importantly, in a post-and-beam construction house, you can see the construction of the house even as you are living in it. It doesn't mean you can just up and build one. But it does mean that you can get some inkling of how to build one just by being inside it.
Anyway, in this particular collection (the only one of Carver's I've read in whole, though I have read a few others of his stories), Carver seems to be pushing for something bigger than before, perhaps gearing up to write a novel (which he never did). In his earlier collections, the stories are usually about 6-10 pages, whereas here most are around twenty or so. I have heard some people say they prefer the earlier stories, but I haven't read enough of them to speak to that.
I can say, however, that Cathedral is a great collection. Carver loves to write about the everyday. There is very little here that would seem all that notable in the real world. But the sequencing and point of view that Carver uses in each of them gives them great meaning, often poignancy. I think I would agree with most people that the title story, in which a blind friend of the narrator's wife comes over and they watch TV together (think about it for a second), is the best of the collection. In fact, it is one of my favorite short stories ever, an opinion I share with quite a few people. But I'm surprised to say that "A Small, Good Thing" is a fairly close second for me. But all of the stories here are better than most writers will ever produce. Essential reading. Even if, for some reason, you don't want to read the whole collection, (to quote the godfather himself) do yourself a frickin' service and read "Cathedral" (http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/cinichol/GovSchool/Cathedral2.htm) and "A Small, Good Thing" (http://wings.buffalo.edu/AandL/english/courses/eng201d/asmallgoodthing.html).