Impressions

Cathedral

Written in short, simple, staccato sentences, in the first person. The language is collquial. The narrator - Robert - is introduced to his wife's friend - a blind man who comes to stay for a night. Robert is brutally honest about not knowning how to deal with a blind man. There is some confusion about the blind man's race too, and that of his ex-wife. Robert is inordinately concerned about how he will react to the blind man, what he will say to him. It becomes increasingly clear that the story is more about Robert's insecurities than about anything else. When they finally meet, there is a faux pas or two, but for the most part Robert gets along well with the blind man who, in turn, is completely at ease with his blindness. The blind man makes Robert draw a Cathedral - something that he has never seen. Robert doesn't think he can draw very well, but as he starts drawing and keeps at it, it begins to come naturally to him, and in the end Robert closes his eyes, and keeps drawing -- and there is no difference between him and the blind man. Poignant, but leaves the reader with a contended smile at the end.

The Girl on the Plane

A man gets into a conversation with a girl/woman on a plane. The girl is curiously candid, and gets John, the protagonist, thinking about his teenage years growing up in a small town in Minnesota, and he confesses to a rape. The plane is simply a device to tell the background story of little town Minnesota, and of the lives lived by teenagers and the ugly coming-of-age rituals and of date-rape. The story builds up to the scene of the rape, and is very graphic in the details, and leaves the reader feeling a sense of outrage and shame. The man and the girl have strikingly similar backgrounds, and the reader wonders if the girl might not have a story very similar to the man's. The story, unfortunately, seems to be a common, though untold story of middle-America.

Nothing to Ask For

A touching story of a young man dying of AIDS, the slow degeneration of a young mind, of a life of promise that comes to naught. The story is about relationships: that of the two young lovers, that of the narrator and his best friend - the young man dying of AIDS, of the narrator and his young daughter and his wife. It is also a story about death and dying, of accepting mortality, of the humility of dying: the dying young man has "nothing to ask for" from his friends.