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American Literary Minimalism is an important yet largely misunderstood movement. Even though a number of scholars have attempted to describe the mode, it remains poorly defined. Part of the problem is that the roots of the tradition have not been thoroughly explored. The aim of this essay is to examine how Literary Impressionism, a style practiced by authors such as Anton Chekhov and Stephen Crane near the turn of the century, shaped the aesthetic of one of the most prominent practitioners of American Minimalism, Raymond Carver. "Cathedral," perhaps Carver's most important short story, illustrates the nexus between the modes. The unnamed narrator objectively reports past sensory experiences, an action common in Impressionistic works, but like many Minimalist protagonists is ultimately unable to articulate the significance of the events he describes.
Keywords: Raymond Carver / American Literary Minimalism / Literary Impressionism / "Cathedral" / Anton Chekhov
In a recent interview, Anne Beattie is asked how she felt about being "classed as a minimalist." She begins her response by saying that "none of us have ever known what that means" and then mentions Raymond Carver's distaste for the term. Despite her initial hesitancy to expound, however, Beattie then goes on to offer a series of thoughtful observations about the topic, many of which show that it is perhaps not as nebulous an idea as she first says. Beattie declares that "minimalism resides in certain omissions," and she discusses Carver's "Are These Actual Miles?" as an example of how the creation of such omissions generates significant implication. Important occurrences are leftout because the protagonist is not physically present to experience them; the narrator objectively recounts only selective sensorial details and thus limits what is known. Beattie maintains that "Actual Miles" is a story in which Carver "keeps the reader in the house," closing offany knowledge of what is going on in the outside world (82-83).
Beattie's answer suggests that even though there are a number of studies on Minimalism,1 little is understood about what it is or how it developed. Confusion about the category largely stems from a murky conception of its origins. Cynthia Whitney Hallett, James Dishon McDermott, and John Barth conclude that it begins in earnest after 1950, but it is in fact an extension...