Cathedral — Raymond Carver (1983)

Raymond Carver's Cathedral marked a departure from his earlier minimalism into something more open and hopeful. The title story, where a man resents his wife's blind friend yet learns about connection by drawing a cathedral, is the most frequently anthologized American short story of the last 40 years—appearing in over 25 anthologies, three times more than the average collection's flagship piece. Carver's spare prose and empathy for working-class lives changed fiction permanently, offering a warmth that contrasts with the darker tones of Everything That Rises Must Converge.