著者

橋本 博美

出版者

大同工業大学

雑誌

大同工業大学紀要 (ISSN:02855372)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.35, pp.69-78, 1999

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Tess Gallagher's short story, "Rain Flooding Your Campfire" is an excellent piece in its own right, but it is also a good example of intertextual dialogue between two writers. When we compare her story with "Cathedral," the quintessential Raymond Carver story, we realize how two writers grow and develop stories differently from the same seed. In Carver's version, he depicts a character drifting toward inertia who is draw back into life through an encounter with a blind guest who is an old friend of the narrator's wife. The climax of the story is the narrator's epiphany in which he opens his mind's eye. On the other hand, in Gallagher's counterpart, the story is narrated from the wife's point of view. Sensitively describing the inner pain of the blind man, which neither Carver nor his protagonist knows or explains, Gallagher shows the readers a highly spiritual and solacing interchange between the female narrator and her old friend. In this article I translate and would like to introduce to the Japanese readers this fine piece almost overshadowed under another famous masterpiece.