Alienation and Loneliness

In a review of Cathedral for the New York Times Book Review, Irving Howe identified an important theme in Carver's work when he called the collection "stories of our loneliness." The setting for "Where I'm Calling From" is a "drying out facility," which is by design a place of Isolation. Its residents are deliberately kept apart from family, friends, and society as a part of their cure. Yet, the characters have been plagued by an inability to connect with others since long before they checked into the facility. Both the narrator and J.P., for example, come to the facility from faded or failing marriages. The narrator's current relationship with his girlfriend seems to have suffered a complete breakdown in communication: neither has called the other since she dropped him off at the facility, and the narrator admits that he does not want to hear whether...