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"Last"/"Cathedral"

“Last” in the Ali Smith collection Public Library.


The title story in Raymond Carver’s Cathedral.


In both stories, an able-bodied narrator has a potentially transformative encounter with a disabled person.


In Public Library, see also “The Beholder,” in which extremely puzzled diagnosticians are ignored: “Then the voice began saying something serious-sounding about something. But I wasn’t listening,” (51).

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