That is the blue-collar, twice-bankrupt, hard-drinking, minimalist Carver. Later in his career, however, after ending his dependence on alcohol and with his life with his wife, poet Tess Gallagher, on an even financial and emotion keel, another Carver emerged: the more fulsome, optimistic, and affirmative Carver of the story collection
Cathedral, dubbed "Carver's masterpiece," by Adam Meyer in his study
Raymond Carver. Meyer characterized the author's work during this period as "open, expansive, and generous, rather than rigorously pared down." The great tragedy of Carver's life is that such a period came only at the end: Carver died in 1988 at age fifty, from lung cancer after a lifetime of heavy smoking.
Whichever Carver we talk about when we talk about Carver, the basic truth is that he was one of a handful of contemporary short story writers credited with reviving what was once considered a dying literary form. His stories mainly take place in his native Pacific Northwest region; they are peopled with the same type of lower-middle-class characters the author grew up around. In a Critique article, Bill Mullen described Carver's fictional world as a place where people "are employed in either traditionally low-paying occupations like logging, mill, or factory work, or in neo-blue-collar, service-industry equivalents like mini-mart operator or apartment manager." They worries revolve around survival: will the old car start? Will they lose their job or become unable to keep up with their bills? "The quiet economic sufferings of Carver's socially immobile characters," added Mullen, "rendered in skeletal, affectless prose, reminds .
