"Cathedral" and "A Small, Good Thing," Raymond Carver

I. I've read "Cathedral" so many times, with years between each reading. I've never read "A Small, Good Thing." WOW to reading these back to back. Which I did last night.

II. To me, the engine of these two stories is INTIMACY, an intimacy that has nothing to do with sexuality. More than one character in each story moves into intimacy with another, sliding from a grounding in their own buried aloneness, so buried they may not have fully known they possessed it until presented with the oppportunity (the story's occasion) to encounter the lonely mystery embedded in others: the blind man, the baker.

III. This slide is ennabled by exhaustion-- an exhaustion achieved through drinking, dope, or death.

IV. The collection these stories come from-- "The Art of the Short Story," edited by Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn-- includes a brief "craft note" from the author, tacked on after the story/stories. In his note, Carver says, "It's possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things-- a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring-- with immense, even startling power." He goes on to say a similar thing regarding dialogue.

Is it useful to say that this startling power of precision is, in fact, INTIMACY?

When we write precisely, are we writing intimately?