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The Stories of John Cheever
Here are sixty-one stories that chronicle the lives of what has been called "the greatest generation." From the early wonder and disillusionment of city life in "The Enormous Radio" to the surprising discoveries and common mysteries of suburbia in "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill" and "The Swimmer," Cheever tells us everything we need to know about "the pain and sweetness of life."
Goodbye, my brother --
The common day --
The enormous radio --
O city of broken dreams --
The Hartleys --
The Sutton Place story --
The summer farmer --
Torch song --
The pot of gold --
Clancy in the Tower of Babel --
Christmas is a sad season for the poor --
The season of divorce --
The chaste Clarissa --
The cure --
The superintendent --
The children --
The sorrows of gin --
O youth and beauty! --
The day the pig fell into the well --
The five-forty-eight --
Just one more time --
The housebreaker of Shady Hill --
The bus to St. James's --
The worm in the apple --
The trouble of Marcie Flint --
The bella lingua --
The Wrysons --
The country husband --
The duchess --
The scarlet moving van --
Just tell me who it was --
Brimmer --
The golden age --
The lowboy --
The music teacher --
A woman without a country --
The death of Justina --
Clementina --
Boy in Rome --
A miscellany of characters that will not appear --
The chimera --
The seaside houses --
The angel of the bridge --
The brigadier and the golf widow --
A vision of the world --
Reunion --
An educated American woman --
Metamorphoses --
Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin --
Montraldo --
The ocean --
Marito in città --
The geometry of love --
The swimmer --
The world of apples --
Another story --
Percy --
The fourth alarm --
Artemis, the honest well digger --
Three stories --
The jewels of the Cabots.
Goodbye, my brother --
The common day --
The enormous radio --
O city of broken dreams --
The Hartleys --
The Sutton Place story --
The summer farmer --
Torch song --
The pot of gold --
Clancy in the Tower of Babel --
Christmas is a sad season for the poor --
The season of divorce --
The chaste Clarissa --
The cure --
The superintendent --
The children --
The sorrows of gin --
O youth and beauty! --
The day the pig fell into the well --
The five-forty-eight --
Just one more time --
The housebreaker of Shady Hill --
The bus to St. James's --
The worm in the apple --
The trouble of Marcie Flint --
The bella lingua --
The Wrysons --
The country husband --
The duchess --
The scarlet moving van --
Just tell me who it was --
Brimmer --
The golden age --
The lowboy --
The music teacher --
A woman without a country --
The death of Justina --
Clementina --
Boy in Rome --
A miscellany of characters that will not appear --
The chimera --
The seaside houses --
The angel of the bridge --
The brigadier and the golf widow --
A vision of the world --
Reunion --
An educated American woman --
Metamorphoses --
Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin --
Montraldo --
The ocean --
Marito in città --
The geometry of love --
The swimmer --
The world of apples --
Another story --
Percy --
The fourth alarm --
Artemis, the honest well digger --
Three stories --
The jewels of the Cabots.
693 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
2,061 people are currently reading
25.8k people want to read
About the author
John Cheever
308books1,015followersJohn Cheever was an American novelist and short story writer, sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs" or "the Ovid of Ossining." His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the suburbs of Westchester, New York, and old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy, Massachusetts, where he was born.
His main themes include the duality of human nature: sometimes dramatized as the disparity between a character's decorous social persona and inner corruption, and sometimes as a conflict between two characters (often brothers) who embody the salient aspects of both--light and dark, flesh and spirit. Many of his works also express a nostalgia for a vanishing way of life, characterized by abiding cultural traditions and a profound sense of community, as opposed to the alienating nomadism of modern suburbia.
His main themes include the duality of human nature: sometimes dramatized as the disparity between a character's decorous social persona and inner corruption, and sometimes as a conflict between two characters (often brothers) who embody the salient aspects of both--light and dark, flesh and spirit. Many of his works also express a nostalgia for a vanishing way of life, characterized by abiding cultural traditions and a profound sense of community, as opposed to the alienating nomadism of modern suburbia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 894 reviews
July 29, 2020
John Cheever is a brilliant raconteur � one of my most favourite. He excellently knows the stuff our lives are made of.
Although this entire anthology is a gold mine, The Swimmer and The Day the Pig Fell into the Well seems to be my preferred nuggets.
Unrealized dreams, unfulfilled hopes, unsuccessful plans and the rivers of sadness � they all are a part of our lives too.
Although this entire anthology is a gold mine, The Swimmer and The Day the Pig Fell into the Well seems to be my preferred nuggets.
This is not an imitation, she thought, this is not the product of custom, this is the unique place, the unique air, where my children have spent the best of themselves. The realization that none of them had done well made her sink back in her chair. She squinted the tears out of her eyes. What had made the summer always an island, she thought; what had made it such a small island? What mistakes had they made? What had they done wrong? They had loved their neighbors, respected the force of modesty, held honor above gain. Then where had they lost their competence, their freedom, their greatness? Why should these good and gentle people who surrounded her seem like the figures in a tragedy?
Unrealized dreams, unfulfilled hopes, unsuccessful plans and the rivers of sadness � they all are a part of our lives too.
December 4, 2013
Try reading John Cheever all summer and working at a country club. That'll mess with you.
September 2, 2019
“betta check yo’self before you wreck yo’self.�
Da Ali G
Party Bear in Bleak MidSeptember
I'd appreciate these stories more, I'm sure, if I could see the silver lining in sadness, broken lives and shattered dreams. I loved three story collections from a few years ago which also had a melancholy bent:Fortune Smiles: Stories by Adam Johnson, Thirteen Ways of Looking: Fiction by Colum McCann, and The Tsar of Love and Techno: Stories by Anthony Marra.
For me, the difference of these three from Cheever's collected stories-taken as a whole--are their glimpse of hope in humanity, hint of redemption or forgiveness, or the implication that evil may be defeated in a battle of the forces though perhaps not in the full war.
With Cheevers' stories, I typically have difficulty seeing the redemptive. If this classifies me as a naive idealist, a resident of a fantasy world, or just a dumbass, then so be it.
Cheever's most famous story, "The Enormous Radio" (1947), illustrates why I'm not particularly fond of this set. In it, an NYC husband buys a "dark" gumwood cabinet radio (when it was centerpiece furniture) for his family's 12th floor flat despite their inability to afford it. The Radio begins picking up conversations/ arguments from others in their building, which at first shock then fascinate them. The wife becomes obsessed with eavesdropping, then fears that others can hear her family's conversations. She then becomes depressed from steady consumption of the problems of an entire building. Much like the Radio, this collection depresses me like, say, hearing about others' (even fictional others') adultery, alcoholism and domestic abjection and/or abuse (all of these stories touch on one of these 3 areas) without a silver lining somewhere.
Don't get me wrong. Cheever wrote stories I appreciate/enjoy, including a few in this assortment. Yet as a whole, this selection acts as sort of Black Hole for depression. To be sure, these stories were likely grand in the late 40s through early 70s when written b/cuz they showed shiny, happy people from the City and the suburbs suffering problems that Hollywood would not show on television, the airwaves filled with black and white of the likes of "Leave it to Beaver," "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," and "Father Knows Best."
My favorite of these stories is "The Sorrows of Gin," following a pre-teen (Amy) watch her parents get deeper and deeper into the bottle, attending parties nearly every night and rarely showing the slightest interest in Amy. Cheever wrote this from experience, as a lifelong alcoholic whose relationships were decimated by his alcohol abuse. I've not read or seen a story that so distilled (pun intended) the negative effects of alcoholism on a family. I say "alcoholism," not "alcohol"--most people can drink in moderation and only occasionally; the alcoholic, for whatever reason, cannot. Here, the selfish parents' selfishness steals time, love and care from their daughter. Amy's reaction and attempt to "save" her parents leads to an unexpected demoralization of the family as a unit.
All in all an excellent collection of stories for the time period in terms of structure, writing, moments of revelation.
Da Ali G
Party Bear in Bleak MidSeptember
I'd appreciate these stories more, I'm sure, if I could see the silver lining in sadness, broken lives and shattered dreams. I loved three story collections from a few years ago which also had a melancholy bent:Fortune Smiles: Stories by Adam Johnson, Thirteen Ways of Looking: Fiction by Colum McCann, and The Tsar of Love and Techno: Stories by Anthony Marra.
For me, the difference of these three from Cheever's collected stories-taken as a whole--are their glimpse of hope in humanity, hint of redemption or forgiveness, or the implication that evil may be defeated in a battle of the forces though perhaps not in the full war.
With Cheevers' stories, I typically have difficulty seeing the redemptive. If this classifies me as a naive idealist, a resident of a fantasy world, or just a dumbass, then so be it.
Cheever's most famous story, "The Enormous Radio" (1947), illustrates why I'm not particularly fond of this set. In it, an NYC husband buys a "dark" gumwood cabinet radio (when it was centerpiece furniture) for his family's 12th floor flat despite their inability to afford it. The Radio begins picking up conversations/ arguments from others in their building, which at first shock then fascinate them. The wife becomes obsessed with eavesdropping, then fears that others can hear her family's conversations. She then becomes depressed from steady consumption of the problems of an entire building. Much like the Radio, this collection depresses me like, say, hearing about others' (even fictional others') adultery, alcoholism and domestic abjection and/or abuse (all of these stories touch on one of these 3 areas) without a silver lining somewhere.
Don't get me wrong. Cheever wrote stories I appreciate/enjoy, including a few in this assortment. Yet as a whole, this selection acts as sort of Black Hole for depression. To be sure, these stories were likely grand in the late 40s through early 70s when written b/cuz they showed shiny, happy people from the City and the suburbs suffering problems that Hollywood would not show on television, the airwaves filled with black and white of the likes of "Leave it to Beaver," "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," and "Father Knows Best."
My favorite of these stories is "The Sorrows of Gin," following a pre-teen (Amy) watch her parents get deeper and deeper into the bottle, attending parties nearly every night and rarely showing the slightest interest in Amy. Cheever wrote this from experience, as a lifelong alcoholic whose relationships were decimated by his alcohol abuse. I've not read or seen a story that so distilled (pun intended) the negative effects of alcoholism on a family. I say "alcoholism," not "alcohol"--most people can drink in moderation and only occasionally; the alcoholic, for whatever reason, cannot. Here, the selfish parents' selfishness steals time, love and care from their daughter. Amy's reaction and attempt to "save" her parents leads to an unexpected demoralization of the family as a unit.
All in all an excellent collection of stories for the time period in terms of structure, writing, moments of revelation.
June 17, 2021
Two a morning for 6 weeks...brain candy. Loved it, loved reading it, Cheever is often incredibly funny and has captured the essence of time and place.
"He was a cheerful, heavy man with a round face that looked exactly like a pudding. Everyone was glad to see him, as one is glad to see, at the end of a meal, the appearance of a bland, fragrant, and nourishing dish made of fresh eggs, nutmeg, and country cream."
"He was a cheerful, heavy man with a round face that looked exactly like a pudding. Everyone was glad to see him, as one is glad to see, at the end of a meal, the appearance of a bland, fragrant, and nourishing dish made of fresh eggs, nutmeg, and country cream."
February 23, 2011
These stories are primarily about people who suck, but who somehow manage to maintain the appearance of people who don't suck. Eventually, they push their luck and are exposed. Then all the neighbors gossip about them, because it's better to keep the focus on the suckers who've been found out and hope no one finds out you suck just as bad, or worse.
So why am I giving five stars to a collection of stories about people who mostly suck? Because John Cheever DOESN'T suck. He absurdifies common emotions, desires, and behaviors in such a way that they are recognizable in the extreme. Not in yourself, of course, because you don't suck. Oh no, not you. But there are people all around you who want to seem more upwardly mobile than they actually are, and they have ugly secrets.
Don't get me wrong. Not ALL of the stories follow the above pattern. Some are sweet, and some are funny. Cheever has a flair for finishing stories in ways you'd least expect. It's like sitting on a bee with your bare flesh exposed. You're cruising along, happily oblivious, thinking hmmmm....wonder where this story is going. Then BAM! You get a stinger in the end. The sting doesn't last long, though. It just makes you want to sample the next story to see where it will wind up.
So why am I giving five stars to a collection of stories about people who mostly suck? Because John Cheever DOESN'T suck. He absurdifies common emotions, desires, and behaviors in such a way that they are recognizable in the extreme. Not in yourself, of course, because you don't suck. Oh no, not you. But there are people all around you who want to seem more upwardly mobile than they actually are, and they have ugly secrets.
Don't get me wrong. Not ALL of the stories follow the above pattern. Some are sweet, and some are funny. Cheever has a flair for finishing stories in ways you'd least expect. It's like sitting on a bee with your bare flesh exposed. You're cruising along, happily oblivious, thinking hmmmm....wonder where this story is going. Then BAM! You get a stinger in the end. The sting doesn't last long, though. It just makes you want to sample the next story to see where it will wind up.
February 1, 2021
Sixty one stupendously good short stories in a stupefyingly massive volume. This was my first encounter with Cheever and some of the stories were simply marvelous: The Geometry of Love and The Swimmer being my favorites.
More later...
My rating of all the Pulitzer Winners: /list/show/1...
More later...
My rating of all the Pulitzer Winners: /list/show/1...
February 15, 2025
October 2009
Now, what does that have to do with The Stories of John Cheever? Good question. The way I see it, this handsome little collection presents itself just like that monument at Thermopylae. It is formal, humble, almost genteel--in a way, it is itself a monument to Cheever: "Go tell the readers, stranger passing by, that these are the stories of John Cheever. They are fairly good. You are invited to peruse them, if you like, and judge for yourself."
Bullshit. That's sissy Athenian talk. Humble and polite Greek doesn't cut it, not here, which is why you know--you just know--that what this book is really trying to say is:
But I digress. These are some damn good stories. Real top-notch stuff. Granted, a few of the weaker samplings should’ve been drowned at birth, but the stronger ones (my particular favorites: "Goodbye, My Brother," "Clancy in the Tower of Babel," "The Children," "The Day the Pig Fell Into the Well," "The Duchess," "The Angel of the Bridge," and "The Swimmer," among others) could stand their ground against the mighty hordes of Persia, and I should just stop right here.
Now then, stranger passing by, go and tell everyone how fucking awesome this is.
� ξεῖ�', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτ� τῇδ�I'm not a very good student of History. I haven't read Herodotus, or Thucydides, or the other great classical historians. But I did see 300, and I spent about five minutes on Wikipedia, so I know a little about the Battle of Thermopylae. There's a monument there, at the site of the battle, with a neat little epitaph in Greek (see above) which, according to one translation, says:
κείμεθα, τοῖ� κείνων ῥήμασ� πειθόμενοι.
Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,Now, I'm no great student of Greek either, but those lines strike me as inaccurate. They're too formal, too quiet, too...well, humble. And if Frank Miller taught me anything, it's that the Spartans were anything but humble. Or quiet. Which leads me to believe the more accurate translation should be something like this:
That here obedient to their laws we lie.
Hey, you! Prick! Go tell everyone how awesome we were!Yeah, that's more like it.
Now, what does that have to do with The Stories of John Cheever? Good question. The way I see it, this handsome little collection presents itself just like that monument at Thermopylae. It is formal, humble, almost genteel--in a way, it is itself a monument to Cheever: "Go tell the readers, stranger passing by, that these are the stories of John Cheever. They are fairly good. You are invited to peruse them, if you like, and judge for yourself."
Bullshit. That's sissy Athenian talk. Humble and polite Greek doesn't cut it, not here, which is why you know--you just know--that what this book is really trying to say is:
THIS. IS. CHEEVER!Ok, I'll admit, this comparison isn’t entirely apt. While Cheever and Sparta may both be awesome, they are hardly the same kind of awesome. The Spartans were loud and ultraviolent and homoerotic; Cheever was quiet and dry-witted and clever. You would never see a Spartan reading Cheever. The Spartans were too brutal for Cheever (perhaps they would prefer O'Connor instead?), so it would probably be up to the Athenians--those philosophers, those boy-lovers--to appreciate this book: if a copy of The Stories of John Cheever, with English-to-Ancient-Greek translation, fell back through time and landed in the acropolis, you can bet the Athenians would interpret it as a message from the gods and model their society around these stories. The result, no doubt, would be the most fascinating Ancient Middle-Class Suburban Greek society ever, one in which all the statesmen play tennis between debates in the agora, the philosophers are drunk on gin, and everyone is hush-hush about the pederasty.
FUCK YEAH.
But I digress. These are some damn good stories. Real top-notch stuff. Granted, a few of the weaker samplings should’ve been drowned at birth, but the stronger ones (my particular favorites: "Goodbye, My Brother," "Clancy in the Tower of Babel," "The Children," "The Day the Pig Fell Into the Well," "The Duchess," "The Angel of the Bridge," and "The Swimmer," among others) could stand their ground against the mighty hordes of Persia, and I should just stop right here.
Now then, stranger passing by, go and tell everyone how fucking awesome this is.
June 18, 2019
The Stories of John Cheever
John Cheever won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer for this collection in 1979. He died in 1982 at the age of seventy.
Cheever’s stories are full of soul searching and the polarities that exist in both our mind and our outward behaviors. Some of his symbolism, I am certain, goes over my head but his stories are usually easy to follow. Both his writing style and characters are usually tempered � there are only a few moments of over the top drama. Sometimes his stories even end before the typical dramatic climax. I enjoy the stories of the older version of Cheever more, when he was in his late forties to early sixties. Most of these stories are in the second half of this collection.
Here are the eleven, of the sixty-one stories in this collection, that resonated the most with me and that I think are wonderful examples of writing and story-telling. Most of these stories are quite famous.
Best Stories
1. Goodbye My Brother. This is the first story in the collection and was written by a young Cheever. It is perhaps the most dramatic of the stories in this collection and focuses on the shocking capacity for humans to throw it all away based on little more than long simmering resentment. Very famous story studied at universities.
2. Clancy in the Tower of Babel. Clancy is a common man with good sensibilities but with too much pride. As a super, he saves a wealthy man from suicide but won’t acknowledge a gift of money that the wealthy man gave to his wife when he learned that Clancy lost his job while seriously ill. One of the most poignant stories in the book. Reminded me of Bernard Malamud as he also set so many of his stories in tenement buildings.
3. The Season of Divorce. A man named Trencher tries to seduce the protagonist’s wife. A reflection on how many marriages were held together in the 1950’s because of the economic disadvantages facing women in a paternalistic world.
4. Five Forty Eight. Boss sleeps with secretary and then fires her. It turns out she has psychiatric problems and it becomes clear he picked the wrong woman to cross as she chases him on the train. Story of vengeance.
5. The Country Husband. Family doesn’t really care that the dad nearly dies in an airplane crash. He is insufferably self centered. He begins acting out and it escalates from his being rude to his neighbors and then on his plot to seduce the babysitter. Also a famous short story.
6. The Swimmer. Ned decides to swim home, 8 miles away, by route of his friends and neighbors pools. He is an alcoholic. Readers watch his mind disintegrate in a single afternoon. Strange and fantastic story. One of his most famous.
7. The World of Apples. An aging poet full of nostalgia comes to grips with not winning the Nobel Prize but he gets an inspiration to write another a poem that keeps him occupied in his final days.
8. Another Story. The protagonist has an Italian friend who is a minor Prince and has moved to NYC and marries an American woman. She becomes resentful that she gave up an Opera career to marry a man who won’t change or broaden his horizons. The protagonist goes on a business trip years later and meets a man who tells him of a similar story � his wife wanted to become a singer and eventually came to resent her husband for not supporting her. The stories are examples of chauvinistic men not understanding the women they marry.
9. Percy. Story about a cousin and the cousin’s mother Percy. The cousin is a very young concert pianist but he gives up his career at a young age to marry a beautiful German immigrant. Percy, his mother, refuses to ever see here. Very sad and well written story about the folly of living vicariously through one’s children.
10. In the Fourth Alarm, John Cheever’s male protagonist is dealing with his wife’s new found liberation as she joins an acting troupe. One of the plays involves the women getting naked and simulating sex with the king. The husband, perhaps understandably, is at his wit’s end.
11. The Jewels of the Cabots. A middle class protagonist has an interest in a wealthy family with two daughters. He learns secondhand of a murder involving the family. But shortly thereafter he finds out there is money in the patriarch’s will left for him and that is enough for him to say nothing more. Perhaps the most beautiful descriptive writing of any of the stories in spite of the dark undertones.
5 stars. I thoroughly enjoyed most of the stories. This collection adds to the ‘master of suburban ennui� label that is often attributed to Cheever. But there are also many excellent stories about tenements for example and of course his travels around the world.
John Cheever won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer for this collection in 1979. He died in 1982 at the age of seventy.
Cheever’s stories are full of soul searching and the polarities that exist in both our mind and our outward behaviors. Some of his symbolism, I am certain, goes over my head but his stories are usually easy to follow. Both his writing style and characters are usually tempered � there are only a few moments of over the top drama. Sometimes his stories even end before the typical dramatic climax. I enjoy the stories of the older version of Cheever more, when he was in his late forties to early sixties. Most of these stories are in the second half of this collection.
Here are the eleven, of the sixty-one stories in this collection, that resonated the most with me and that I think are wonderful examples of writing and story-telling. Most of these stories are quite famous.
Best Stories
1. Goodbye My Brother. This is the first story in the collection and was written by a young Cheever. It is perhaps the most dramatic of the stories in this collection and focuses on the shocking capacity for humans to throw it all away based on little more than long simmering resentment. Very famous story studied at universities.
2. Clancy in the Tower of Babel. Clancy is a common man with good sensibilities but with too much pride. As a super, he saves a wealthy man from suicide but won’t acknowledge a gift of money that the wealthy man gave to his wife when he learned that Clancy lost his job while seriously ill. One of the most poignant stories in the book. Reminded me of Bernard Malamud as he also set so many of his stories in tenement buildings.
3. The Season of Divorce. A man named Trencher tries to seduce the protagonist’s wife. A reflection on how many marriages were held together in the 1950’s because of the economic disadvantages facing women in a paternalistic world.
4. Five Forty Eight. Boss sleeps with secretary and then fires her. It turns out she has psychiatric problems and it becomes clear he picked the wrong woman to cross as she chases him on the train. Story of vengeance.
5. The Country Husband. Family doesn’t really care that the dad nearly dies in an airplane crash. He is insufferably self centered. He begins acting out and it escalates from his being rude to his neighbors and then on his plot to seduce the babysitter. Also a famous short story.
6. The Swimmer. Ned decides to swim home, 8 miles away, by route of his friends and neighbors pools. He is an alcoholic. Readers watch his mind disintegrate in a single afternoon. Strange and fantastic story. One of his most famous.
7. The World of Apples. An aging poet full of nostalgia comes to grips with not winning the Nobel Prize but he gets an inspiration to write another a poem that keeps him occupied in his final days.
8. Another Story. The protagonist has an Italian friend who is a minor Prince and has moved to NYC and marries an American woman. She becomes resentful that she gave up an Opera career to marry a man who won’t change or broaden his horizons. The protagonist goes on a business trip years later and meets a man who tells him of a similar story � his wife wanted to become a singer and eventually came to resent her husband for not supporting her. The stories are examples of chauvinistic men not understanding the women they marry.
9. Percy. Story about a cousin and the cousin’s mother Percy. The cousin is a very young concert pianist but he gives up his career at a young age to marry a beautiful German immigrant. Percy, his mother, refuses to ever see here. Very sad and well written story about the folly of living vicariously through one’s children.
10. In the Fourth Alarm, John Cheever’s male protagonist is dealing with his wife’s new found liberation as she joins an acting troupe. One of the plays involves the women getting naked and simulating sex with the king. The husband, perhaps understandably, is at his wit’s end.
11. The Jewels of the Cabots. A middle class protagonist has an interest in a wealthy family with two daughters. He learns secondhand of a murder involving the family. But shortly thereafter he finds out there is money in the patriarch’s will left for him and that is enough for him to say nothing more. Perhaps the most beautiful descriptive writing of any of the stories in spite of the dark undertones.
5 stars. I thoroughly enjoyed most of the stories. This collection adds to the ‘master of suburban ennui� label that is often attributed to Cheever. But there are also many excellent stories about tenements for example and of course his travels around the world.
August 19, 2017
I racconti di Cheever (molti suoi racconti) sono piccoli quadri pressoché perfetti di vita borghese e quotidiana. All'inizio, guardando il quadro, si nota a volte la luce radiosa, la serenità, la mollezza, la piacevolezza del vivere - ma osservando meglio si nota un'incrinatura, un qualcosa di inquietante, che ci opprime, non sappiamo bene cosa, ma decisamente rompe la serenità, e d'un tratto ci accorgiamo che getta una luce completamente diversa sull'immagine: crepuscolare, malinconica, a volte tragica.
Cheever scrive con rara grazia e leggerezza, a volte con ironia; i suoi racconti scivolano piacevolmente e lasciano dietro una scia di tristezza; però anche una scia di speranza.
Bastano sempre pochi tratti per caratterizzare i personaggi e creare l'atmosfera del racconto.
Come in questo folgorante incipit:
"Jim e Irene Westcott facevano parte di quel genere di gente che ha raggiunto una media di reddito, posizione e rispettabilità soddisfacente secondo le statistiche riguardanti chi ha compiuto gli studi universitari. Avevano due bambini piccoli, erano sposati da nove anni, vivevano al dodicesimo piano di un caseggiato nei pressi di Sutton Place, si recavano a teatro in media 10.3 volte all'anno e speravano di andare a vivere un giorno a Westchester."
Questo "genere di gente" è protagonista dei racconti di Cheever (della gran parte), osservato con sguardo ironico, leggero, in grado di smascherare le ipocrisie, ma senza emettere condanne, piuttosto esprimendo partecipe empatia e grande umanità.
E soprattutto, infatti, quello che trasuda dai racconti di Cheever, tutti i suoi racconti, è una profonda umanità, una profonda comprensione e compassione per le debolezze umane, anche per i comportamenti più infimi. Le caratteristiche umane, i sentimenti, le ossessioni dei suoi personaggi sono evocate con poche righe sapienti, osservate con occhio fotografico ma empatico:
"E' vero anche per i migliori di noi che se un osservatore esterno potesse coglierci mentre saliamo su un treno in una stazione secondaria, se facesse attenzione al nostro viso sconvolto dall'ansia, se valutasse il nostro bagaglio, i nostri abiti, e guardasse fuori dal finestrino per vedere chi ci ha accompagnati in stazione, se ascoltasse le parole aspre o tenere che pronunciamo nel caso in cui fossimo con i nostri familiari o se notasse il modo in cui issiamo la valigia sulla reticella, controlliamo dove abbiamo messo il portafogli, il mazzo di chiavi e ci asciughiamo il sudore dalla nuca, se sapesse giudicare bene l'arroganza, la diffidenza o la tristezza con cui ci accomodiamo sul sedile, godrebbe di un quadro della nostra vita molto più ampio di quello che la maggior parte di noi vorrebbe dare."
Ed evocati con grande precisione sono anche sentimenti e sensazioni che tutti abbiamo provato almeno una volta nella vita, magari non nella stessa identica situazione, ma perfettamente riconoscibili in quanto universali: una grande solitudine (un ragazzo orfano ogni volta che si sente toccare una spalla pensa che sia il vecchio padre morto tornato per stare con lui e sostenerlo, e poi sente una grande solitudine e la certezza che nessuno mai potrà dargli tutto l'amore di cui ha bisogno), il senso del ridicolo e della disperazione per la propria misera esistenza (il celebre nuotatore che, volendo tornare a casa nuotando di piscina in piscina, si trova stanco, infreddolito e mezzo nudo ad attraversare l'autostrada, senza la voglia di proseguire, ma senza poter tornare indietro), le paure irrazionali, le ossessioni (un uomo non riesce ad accettare il fatto di aver perso la sua prestanza fisica e si ostina ripetere una sorta di prova di destrezza che offriva a tutte le feste con gli amici), la vergogna per le proprie piccolezze (un altro uomo non trova il coraggio di andare ad aiutare un vecchio e antipatico vicino di casa che è solo in casa con una gamba rotta e non sa chi altri chiamare), ma soprattutto, sempre, il bisogno di essere amati e accettati incondizionatamente per quello che siamo.
Cheever riesce a creare dei personaggi profondamente umani perché riesce a dotarli della caratterista dell'incoerenza, caratteristica tanto umana, quanto difficile da rendere, soprattutto in racconti così brevi.
Vorrei concludere citando queste bellissime parole della traduttrice Adelaide Cioni: "L'incoerenza è un lusso che la maggior parte di noi fatica a concedersi apertamente. La pratichiamo tutti, ma con vergogna. Tendiamo sempre a voler dare al mondo e a noi stessi un'immagine lineare di quello che siamo, ma è un'illusione, ed è del tutto fuorviante nella ricerca della verità. Serve all'ordine psico-sociale, ma è fasulla. Per quanto riguarda l'universo della narrativa, poi, costruire personaggi coerenti è una delle prime regole che insegnano nelle scuole di scrittura, sebbene questo non corrisponda mai alle cose come le viviamo. Perché noi *siamo* incoerenti: cambiamo idee e simpatie, tradiamo, ci rinnamoriamo. Non siamo monolitici nel nostro sentire e agire. Se lo fossimo il mondo sarebbe immobile. Il problema è dirlo, ammetterlo, e dopo averlo ammesso raccontarcelo."
E Cheever è riuscito senza dubbio a raccontarlo splendidamente.
Cheever scrive con rara grazia e leggerezza, a volte con ironia; i suoi racconti scivolano piacevolmente e lasciano dietro una scia di tristezza; però anche una scia di speranza.
Bastano sempre pochi tratti per caratterizzare i personaggi e creare l'atmosfera del racconto.
Come in questo folgorante incipit:
"Jim e Irene Westcott facevano parte di quel genere di gente che ha raggiunto una media di reddito, posizione e rispettabilità soddisfacente secondo le statistiche riguardanti chi ha compiuto gli studi universitari. Avevano due bambini piccoli, erano sposati da nove anni, vivevano al dodicesimo piano di un caseggiato nei pressi di Sutton Place, si recavano a teatro in media 10.3 volte all'anno e speravano di andare a vivere un giorno a Westchester."
Questo "genere di gente" è protagonista dei racconti di Cheever (della gran parte), osservato con sguardo ironico, leggero, in grado di smascherare le ipocrisie, ma senza emettere condanne, piuttosto esprimendo partecipe empatia e grande umanità.
E soprattutto, infatti, quello che trasuda dai racconti di Cheever, tutti i suoi racconti, è una profonda umanità, una profonda comprensione e compassione per le debolezze umane, anche per i comportamenti più infimi. Le caratteristiche umane, i sentimenti, le ossessioni dei suoi personaggi sono evocate con poche righe sapienti, osservate con occhio fotografico ma empatico:
"E' vero anche per i migliori di noi che se un osservatore esterno potesse coglierci mentre saliamo su un treno in una stazione secondaria, se facesse attenzione al nostro viso sconvolto dall'ansia, se valutasse il nostro bagaglio, i nostri abiti, e guardasse fuori dal finestrino per vedere chi ci ha accompagnati in stazione, se ascoltasse le parole aspre o tenere che pronunciamo nel caso in cui fossimo con i nostri familiari o se notasse il modo in cui issiamo la valigia sulla reticella, controlliamo dove abbiamo messo il portafogli, il mazzo di chiavi e ci asciughiamo il sudore dalla nuca, se sapesse giudicare bene l'arroganza, la diffidenza o la tristezza con cui ci accomodiamo sul sedile, godrebbe di un quadro della nostra vita molto più ampio di quello che la maggior parte di noi vorrebbe dare."
Ed evocati con grande precisione sono anche sentimenti e sensazioni che tutti abbiamo provato almeno una volta nella vita, magari non nella stessa identica situazione, ma perfettamente riconoscibili in quanto universali: una grande solitudine (un ragazzo orfano ogni volta che si sente toccare una spalla pensa che sia il vecchio padre morto tornato per stare con lui e sostenerlo, e poi sente una grande solitudine e la certezza che nessuno mai potrà dargli tutto l'amore di cui ha bisogno), il senso del ridicolo e della disperazione per la propria misera esistenza (il celebre nuotatore che, volendo tornare a casa nuotando di piscina in piscina, si trova stanco, infreddolito e mezzo nudo ad attraversare l'autostrada, senza la voglia di proseguire, ma senza poter tornare indietro), le paure irrazionali, le ossessioni (un uomo non riesce ad accettare il fatto di aver perso la sua prestanza fisica e si ostina ripetere una sorta di prova di destrezza che offriva a tutte le feste con gli amici), la vergogna per le proprie piccolezze (un altro uomo non trova il coraggio di andare ad aiutare un vecchio e antipatico vicino di casa che è solo in casa con una gamba rotta e non sa chi altri chiamare), ma soprattutto, sempre, il bisogno di essere amati e accettati incondizionatamente per quello che siamo.
Cheever riesce a creare dei personaggi profondamente umani perché riesce a dotarli della caratterista dell'incoerenza, caratteristica tanto umana, quanto difficile da rendere, soprattutto in racconti così brevi.
Vorrei concludere citando queste bellissime parole della traduttrice Adelaide Cioni: "L'incoerenza è un lusso che la maggior parte di noi fatica a concedersi apertamente. La pratichiamo tutti, ma con vergogna. Tendiamo sempre a voler dare al mondo e a noi stessi un'immagine lineare di quello che siamo, ma è un'illusione, ed è del tutto fuorviante nella ricerca della verità. Serve all'ordine psico-sociale, ma è fasulla. Per quanto riguarda l'universo della narrativa, poi, costruire personaggi coerenti è una delle prime regole che insegnano nelle scuole di scrittura, sebbene questo non corrisponda mai alle cose come le viviamo. Perché noi *siamo* incoerenti: cambiamo idee e simpatie, tradiamo, ci rinnamoriamo. Non siamo monolitici nel nostro sentire e agire. Se lo fossimo il mondo sarebbe immobile. Il problema è dirlo, ammetterlo, e dopo averlo ammesso raccontarcelo."
E Cheever è riuscito senza dubbio a raccontarlo splendidamente.
May 13, 2015
La radio fantasma
Leggere questi racconti comporta entrare in contatto con l'inevitabile consapevolezza del mistero della letteratura. Si cerca qualcosa mentre in realtà l'ultima cosa che si desidera è il raggiungerla. Per questo Cheever fa parlare attraverso le pagine i suoi fantasmi, cosciente di metterli in ascolto delle ombre del lettore, come attraverso una radio doppiamente spettrale. Niente suona così familiare come le lievi e allegre apocalissi dei suoi personaggi, i loro pentimenti vitali e i desideri oscuri, i legami e le guerre, i progetti ipocriti, le esistenze liminari e tutta la geografia psicologica di una società, che continuamente si fa e si disfa, uguale e diversa dal giorno prima, uguale e differente nell'attesa della data ultima, l'unica ineluttabile sovrana delle pagine più accurate e profonde. Quanti amori, quanti percorsi, quanti miracoli e quanta poesia nell'umanità vera, sognante e lucida di questo libro antico, che viaggia verso di noi da un futuro remoto. Forse Cheever ha rinunciato a inseguire una verità: dietro a questa rinuncia, il convincimento che ogni narrazione dei fatti porta con sé una traccia di finzione, che altera infinitamente il piano del reale. E allora, solo costruendo queste finzioni così vere ci si può trovare ad ascoltare veramente qualcuno e a metterne in parola, in discorso, la sostanza più genuina e corporea che sta dietro alle mille apparenze di ciascun essere umano. Indagare i sentimenti, indagare l'amore è un compito ricorsivo e illusorio, significa allontanarsi dalla propria meta mentre si fatica nel costruirla e quindi solo raccontare e conoscere possono dare origine a queste solitarie epifanie, a queste vertiginose rivelazioni per le quali saremo per sempre dubbiosamente felici di avere concluso, per il momento, la nostra esperienza di lettori. Se incontrando voi stessi, a volte avete voglia di scoprire qualcosa di nuovo, lasciate che siano i racconti di Cheever a farvi da curioso maestro.
Leggere questi racconti comporta entrare in contatto con l'inevitabile consapevolezza del mistero della letteratura. Si cerca qualcosa mentre in realtà l'ultima cosa che si desidera è il raggiungerla. Per questo Cheever fa parlare attraverso le pagine i suoi fantasmi, cosciente di metterli in ascolto delle ombre del lettore, come attraverso una radio doppiamente spettrale. Niente suona così familiare come le lievi e allegre apocalissi dei suoi personaggi, i loro pentimenti vitali e i desideri oscuri, i legami e le guerre, i progetti ipocriti, le esistenze liminari e tutta la geografia psicologica di una società, che continuamente si fa e si disfa, uguale e diversa dal giorno prima, uguale e differente nell'attesa della data ultima, l'unica ineluttabile sovrana delle pagine più accurate e profonde. Quanti amori, quanti percorsi, quanti miracoli e quanta poesia nell'umanità vera, sognante e lucida di questo libro antico, che viaggia verso di noi da un futuro remoto. Forse Cheever ha rinunciato a inseguire una verità: dietro a questa rinuncia, il convincimento che ogni narrazione dei fatti porta con sé una traccia di finzione, che altera infinitamente il piano del reale. E allora, solo costruendo queste finzioni così vere ci si può trovare ad ascoltare veramente qualcuno e a metterne in parola, in discorso, la sostanza più genuina e corporea che sta dietro alle mille apparenze di ciascun essere umano. Indagare i sentimenti, indagare l'amore è un compito ricorsivo e illusorio, significa allontanarsi dalla propria meta mentre si fatica nel costruirla e quindi solo raccontare e conoscere possono dare origine a queste solitarie epifanie, a queste vertiginose rivelazioni per le quali saremo per sempre dubbiosamente felici di avere concluso, per il momento, la nostra esperienza di lettori. Se incontrando voi stessi, a volte avete voglia di scoprire qualcosa di nuovo, lasciate che siano i racconti di Cheever a farvi da curioso maestro.
January 19, 2013
I do not usually write a review of a book that I have not finished reading, so this is an exception. The Stories of John Cheever is a fine vintage collection of 61 stories. It won the Putlizer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1979. The paperback edition also garnered a National Book Award in 1981.
The stories depicted life in suburbia, typically set in fictional Shady Hill. Across this luminous collection of stories, Cheever distilled the commonalities shared by disparate, desperate lives. The foibles and troubles of the characters beneath the facade of security struck a chord of familiarity. The stories were all different, yet they were linked by a common thread of humanity.
This was most evident in “Enormous Radio�, one of the famous stories that first appeared in the New Yorker. A radio intended to bring pleasure became the incidental gadget that gave a couple surreptitious access to conversations in their neighbor's houses, revealing sordid family struggles. When the story ended, we realized that the couple who owned this radio was no different from their neighbors with their fair share of pain and disdain. In “Christmas is a Sad Season�, an elevator man found out that the rich dwellers of the building he served were as lonely as he was on Christmas Day. In “The Country Husband�, the protagonist (Frank Weed) who survived a near plane crash awoke to the epic realization of the vapid restlessness and suffocation imposed by the cloistered morality of suburbia. In “Summer Farmer�, Cheever captured the subtle undercurrents in familial interactions. It is amazing how Cheever managed to make his character portrayals so sharp that in stories such as “Goodbye, My Brother�, the tensions could be traced to the unique qualities of each family member in his or her response to the dysfunctional brother’s misanthropic turn of mind. Even the sea was imbued with a purgative force. There was no sugar coating in the stories that also told of couples pursuing a dream (“O city of broken dreams�) or trying unsuccessfully to retrieve lost happiness (“The Hartleys�). One of my favorites is “Torch Song�, a creepy story about a Black Widow, a single lady with an uncanny sixth sense to sniff out and attach herself to men who were dying.
What struck me too is the way his stories typically end. Life goes on the way it is normally lived despite elements of disturbance that ruffle equanimity or temptations that tug at the fringes. Cheever stated in his Preface, "These stories seem to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quarters from a radio in a stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat." But it is more than this. The stories also seem to hark back to an age of restraint and respect for what is decorous. The constants, as Cheever put it are “a love of light and a determination to trace some moral chain of being." There was no sensationalism or high drama. People went on with their ordinary lives. They picked up where they left off when their dreams shattered; they held on to their lack-lustre marriages (e.g., “Chaste Clarissa�, “A Season of Divorce, and “The Trouble of Marcie Flint�). There was something joyous and liberating in becoming aware that one had choices. In “The Housebreaker of Shady Hill�, Johnny Hake who pathologically broke into his neighbors� houses and stole from them revealed in a moment of insight, "I was not trapped. I was here on earth because I chose to be. And it was no skin off my elbow how I had been given the gifts of life so long as I possessed them, and I possessed them then... It is not� the smell of corn bread that calls us back from death; it is the lights and signs of love and friendship."
I am about half way through this collection of short stories. I read them one or two at any one time like sweet treats, and I have enjoyed each one so far. I can see why. Beyond the grime and imperfection, there promises to be “the lights and signs of love and friendship.�
The stories depicted life in suburbia, typically set in fictional Shady Hill. Across this luminous collection of stories, Cheever distilled the commonalities shared by disparate, desperate lives. The foibles and troubles of the characters beneath the facade of security struck a chord of familiarity. The stories were all different, yet they were linked by a common thread of humanity.
This was most evident in “Enormous Radio�, one of the famous stories that first appeared in the New Yorker. A radio intended to bring pleasure became the incidental gadget that gave a couple surreptitious access to conversations in their neighbor's houses, revealing sordid family struggles. When the story ended, we realized that the couple who owned this radio was no different from their neighbors with their fair share of pain and disdain. In “Christmas is a Sad Season�, an elevator man found out that the rich dwellers of the building he served were as lonely as he was on Christmas Day. In “The Country Husband�, the protagonist (Frank Weed) who survived a near plane crash awoke to the epic realization of the vapid restlessness and suffocation imposed by the cloistered morality of suburbia. In “Summer Farmer�, Cheever captured the subtle undercurrents in familial interactions. It is amazing how Cheever managed to make his character portrayals so sharp that in stories such as “Goodbye, My Brother�, the tensions could be traced to the unique qualities of each family member in his or her response to the dysfunctional brother’s misanthropic turn of mind. Even the sea was imbued with a purgative force. There was no sugar coating in the stories that also told of couples pursuing a dream (“O city of broken dreams�) or trying unsuccessfully to retrieve lost happiness (“The Hartleys�). One of my favorites is “Torch Song�, a creepy story about a Black Widow, a single lady with an uncanny sixth sense to sniff out and attach herself to men who were dying.
What struck me too is the way his stories typically end. Life goes on the way it is normally lived despite elements of disturbance that ruffle equanimity or temptations that tug at the fringes. Cheever stated in his Preface, "These stories seem to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quarters from a radio in a stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat." But it is more than this. The stories also seem to hark back to an age of restraint and respect for what is decorous. The constants, as Cheever put it are “a love of light and a determination to trace some moral chain of being." There was no sensationalism or high drama. People went on with their ordinary lives. They picked up where they left off when their dreams shattered; they held on to their lack-lustre marriages (e.g., “Chaste Clarissa�, “A Season of Divorce, and “The Trouble of Marcie Flint�). There was something joyous and liberating in becoming aware that one had choices. In “The Housebreaker of Shady Hill�, Johnny Hake who pathologically broke into his neighbors� houses and stole from them revealed in a moment of insight, "I was not trapped. I was here on earth because I chose to be. And it was no skin off my elbow how I had been given the gifts of life so long as I possessed them, and I possessed them then... It is not� the smell of corn bread that calls us back from death; it is the lights and signs of love and friendship."
I am about half way through this collection of short stories. I read them one or two at any one time like sweet treats, and I have enjoyed each one so far. I can see why. Beyond the grime and imperfection, there promises to be “the lights and signs of love and friendship.�
July 20, 2023
Ako ste ljubitelj američke kratke priče, nemojte zaobići Čivera.
Ako bih izdvojila omiljenu priču, bila bi to „Grozni radio� (u originalu „The Enormous Radio�). Dok budete slušali taj Čiverov „Grozni radio�, čućete kako jedan realista sjajno koketira sa magičnim realizmom, oneobičavajući stvari koje se čuju sa radija. Odjeci života drugih i nesvakidašnji voajerizam, prekidaju se kada se umesto u živote drugih ljudi malo zagledamo u � svoje.
Izdvojila bih i „Susret�, „Zbogom, brate�, „Božić je tužan praznik za siromašne� i „Plivač�.
Htela bih još da dodam da sam, dok sam čitala ovu zbirku, pomislila kako je Čiver zasigurno imao uticaj na stvaralaštvo Rejmonda Karvera. Što i nije daleko od istine, jer ne samo da su se družili, već se i jedna Karverova priča („Voz�) nadovezuje na Čiverovu („U pet i četrdeset osam�), što je njegov divan omaž ovom piscu. Možda je taj Karverov „prljavi realizam� malo „prljaviji� od Čiverovog, ali činjenica je da kritičari obojicu nazivaju američkim Čehovom 20. veka, pa... sami procenite zašto.
Ako bih izdvojila omiljenu priču, bila bi to „Grozni radio� (u originalu „The Enormous Radio�). Dok budete slušali taj Čiverov „Grozni radio�, čućete kako jedan realista sjajno koketira sa magičnim realizmom, oneobičavajući stvari koje se čuju sa radija. Odjeci života drugih i nesvakidašnji voajerizam, prekidaju se kada se umesto u živote drugih ljudi malo zagledamo u � svoje.
Izdvojila bih i „Susret�, „Zbogom, brate�, „Božić je tužan praznik za siromašne� i „Plivač�.
Htela bih još da dodam da sam, dok sam čitala ovu zbirku, pomislila kako je Čiver zasigurno imao uticaj na stvaralaštvo Rejmonda Karvera. Što i nije daleko od istine, jer ne samo da su se družili, već se i jedna Karverova priča („Voz�) nadovezuje na Čiverovu („U pet i četrdeset osam�), što je njegov divan omaž ovom piscu. Možda je taj Karverov „prljavi realizam� malo „prljaviji� od Čiverovog, ali činjenica je da kritičari obojicu nazivaju američkim Čehovom 20. veka, pa... sami procenite zašto.
April 24, 2024
I have a long history with this collection of short stories. I purchased a copy years ago when I was in college, and it traveled with me along my various stops in life. I never read it, and eventually it was damaged so badly in a move I had to dispose of it. When I finally read it over the last month, it was from a digital copy.
I have read quite a few large, short story collections in the last few years, so coming in at 61 stories and 693 pages, this one was just a middleweight. In a collection this large, though, there are always some stories that don’t work for you, and that was true in this case. There were also a few that despite my best effort I did not fully comprehend, but on the whole this collection was very enjoyable and very readable.
These stories are mostly about marriage and families. Infidelity plays a part in many of the stories. From what I have read about the author, the recurrence of infidelity is probably reflective of his own life, but if you were to generalize from these stories then there was a lot of extramarital sex during the 40’s and 50’s. Cheever engages the reader quickly, often in the first sentence, where you typically meet the narrator, protagonist or someone else that plays a significant role in the story. There is rarely any preamble or setting the stage. I had quite a few favorites, and the stories by Cheever that are considered classics, such as The Enormous Radio and The Swimmer, were as good or better than I remembered them. I am certain that when I read The Swimmer as an assignment in school that I didn’t appreciate it nearly as much as I did this time. Many of these stories would have made for great book group discussions.
The quality of this collection was very good. I have read one of Cheever’s novels; I am feeling motivated to revisit it and to consider the few other novels he wrote.
I have read quite a few large, short story collections in the last few years, so coming in at 61 stories and 693 pages, this one was just a middleweight. In a collection this large, though, there are always some stories that don’t work for you, and that was true in this case. There were also a few that despite my best effort I did not fully comprehend, but on the whole this collection was very enjoyable and very readable.
These stories are mostly about marriage and families. Infidelity plays a part in many of the stories. From what I have read about the author, the recurrence of infidelity is probably reflective of his own life, but if you were to generalize from these stories then there was a lot of extramarital sex during the 40’s and 50’s. Cheever engages the reader quickly, often in the first sentence, where you typically meet the narrator, protagonist or someone else that plays a significant role in the story. There is rarely any preamble or setting the stage. I had quite a few favorites, and the stories by Cheever that are considered classics, such as The Enormous Radio and The Swimmer, were as good or better than I remembered them. I am certain that when I read The Swimmer as an assignment in school that I didn’t appreciate it nearly as much as I did this time. Many of these stories would have made for great book group discussions.
The quality of this collection was very good. I have read one of Cheever’s novels; I am feeling motivated to revisit it and to consider the few other novels he wrote.
June 16, 2024
Lucinda River
Tante storie brevi, ma un unico grande racconto.
Racconto di famiglie borghesi - incidentalmente collocate negli Stati Uniti - talvolta alta borghesia ricca, talaltra più modesta, che viaggia in treno, ci sono molti treni, quelli dei pendolari. Ma è anche il racconto, di personaggi più umili, personale di servizio, cuochi, ascensoristi. Famiglie sempre a far festa con vicini ed amici. Ma, fuori dalla festa, in versione privata, mariti e mogli sono spesso in crisi, spesso traditi, abbandonati, divorziati. O con il terrore che il loro bel quadretto familiare venga sconvolto.
Racconto di fallimenti personali, di cadute e di risalite, di rimorsi e rimpianti, di drammi veri e irrecuperabili.
Racconto della consolazione-maledizione dell’alcol. Della consolazione e pulsione del sesso. Del peso della complessità, disordine, sporcizia della vita. Dell’acqua che cura, quando ci immergiamo o con il rumore quando piove.
C’� anche molta Italia (e vedremo il Cheever di Sorrentino in Parthenope).
“Il nuotatore� una spanna su tutti, tra gli altri alcuni miei preferiti sono: Una radio straordinaria, L’accelerato delle cinque e quarantotto, Riunione, Percy, Il generale di brigata e la vedova del golf, Geometria dell’amore, Il ladro di Shady Hill, Gli Hartley, Artemis l’onesto scavatore di pozzi, Boy in Rome, La terapia, Miscellanea di personaggi che non compariranno.
John Cheever
"Si potrebbe dire che aveva perso il dono di evocare i profumi della vita: l’acqua del mare, il fumo della legna di abete che brucia e il seno delle donne. Era come se gli si fosse danneggiata la cavità più interna dell’orecchio, lì dove sentiamo il rumore pesante della coda del drago mentre avanza sulle foglie secche."
PAUL THEK Untitled (diver), 1969
"Era il quarto o il quinto bicchiere che beveva, e aveva già percorso a nuoto quasi la metà del fiume Lucinda. Si sentiva stanco, pulito, e contento di esser solo in quel momento, contento di tutto quanto."
Room in New York, Edward Hopper
“La vita è troppo spaventosa, troppo sordida e angosciosa. Ma noi non siamo mai stati come loro, vero tesoro? Lo siamo stati? Voglio dire, noi siamo sempre stati buoni e sensibili e affettuosi l’uno con l’altro, non è vero? E abbiamo due bambini, due bellissimi bambini. La nostra vita non è sordida, vero che non lo è, tesoro? È vero?� Gli gettò le braccia al collo e attirò il suo viso verso il proprio. “Noi siamo felici, non è vero, tesoro? Siamo felici, non è vero?�
Second Story Sunlight, Edward Hopper
"Il piano era scordato, e la persona non aveva idea di come si suonava, ma la musica e il tubo da giardino e la pelle perlacea e i capelli d’oro di Donna-Mae e il profumo dalla cucina e il crepuscolo, sembrava tutto una specie di paradiso."
Hotel room,Edward Hopper (1931)
"…come se, col nostro desiderio di essere spose e giocatori di football, mettessimo a nudo il fatto che, lasciate alle spalle le luci della giovinezza, non eravamo stati capaci di trovarne altre più avanti, e che, abbandonata ogni fede e principio, eravamo divenuti sciocchi e patetici."
Tante storie brevi, ma un unico grande racconto.
Racconto di famiglie borghesi - incidentalmente collocate negli Stati Uniti - talvolta alta borghesia ricca, talaltra più modesta, che viaggia in treno, ci sono molti treni, quelli dei pendolari. Ma è anche il racconto, di personaggi più umili, personale di servizio, cuochi, ascensoristi. Famiglie sempre a far festa con vicini ed amici. Ma, fuori dalla festa, in versione privata, mariti e mogli sono spesso in crisi, spesso traditi, abbandonati, divorziati. O con il terrore che il loro bel quadretto familiare venga sconvolto.
Racconto di fallimenti personali, di cadute e di risalite, di rimorsi e rimpianti, di drammi veri e irrecuperabili.
Racconto della consolazione-maledizione dell’alcol. Della consolazione e pulsione del sesso. Del peso della complessità, disordine, sporcizia della vita. Dell’acqua che cura, quando ci immergiamo o con il rumore quando piove.
C’� anche molta Italia (e vedremo il Cheever di Sorrentino in Parthenope).
“Il nuotatore� una spanna su tutti, tra gli altri alcuni miei preferiti sono: Una radio straordinaria, L’accelerato delle cinque e quarantotto, Riunione, Percy, Il generale di brigata e la vedova del golf, Geometria dell’amore, Il ladro di Shady Hill, Gli Hartley, Artemis l’onesto scavatore di pozzi, Boy in Rome, La terapia, Miscellanea di personaggi che non compariranno.
John Cheever
"Si potrebbe dire che aveva perso il dono di evocare i profumi della vita: l’acqua del mare, il fumo della legna di abete che brucia e il seno delle donne. Era come se gli si fosse danneggiata la cavità più interna dell’orecchio, lì dove sentiamo il rumore pesante della coda del drago mentre avanza sulle foglie secche."
PAUL THEK Untitled (diver), 1969
"Era il quarto o il quinto bicchiere che beveva, e aveva già percorso a nuoto quasi la metà del fiume Lucinda. Si sentiva stanco, pulito, e contento di esser solo in quel momento, contento di tutto quanto."
Room in New York, Edward Hopper
“La vita è troppo spaventosa, troppo sordida e angosciosa. Ma noi non siamo mai stati come loro, vero tesoro? Lo siamo stati? Voglio dire, noi siamo sempre stati buoni e sensibili e affettuosi l’uno con l’altro, non è vero? E abbiamo due bambini, due bellissimi bambini. La nostra vita non è sordida, vero che non lo è, tesoro? È vero?� Gli gettò le braccia al collo e attirò il suo viso verso il proprio. “Noi siamo felici, non è vero, tesoro? Siamo felici, non è vero?�
Second Story Sunlight, Edward Hopper
"Il piano era scordato, e la persona non aveva idea di come si suonava, ma la musica e il tubo da giardino e la pelle perlacea e i capelli d’oro di Donna-Mae e il profumo dalla cucina e il crepuscolo, sembrava tutto una specie di paradiso."
Hotel room,Edward Hopper (1931)
"…come se, col nostro desiderio di essere spose e giocatori di football, mettessimo a nudo il fatto che, lasciate alle spalle le luci della giovinezza, non eravamo stati capaci di trovarne altre più avanti, e che, abbandonata ogni fede e principio, eravamo divenuti sciocchi e patetici."
December 27, 2015
August 22, 2015
As predicted (see earlier two posts, below), it took me months to finish this masterpiece. To reiterate earlier comments, I read from front to back as well as back to front. Not the best idea, it turns out, because the strongest stories are not in the middle. I'm adding this note for two reasons:
First, I googled the one story in sixty-one that I didn't think worked, and I found a wonderful piece by Brad Leithauser about Cheever's style and turn of phrase. I was a drama major and dropped out of all the lit classes I started when I was in school because the teachers seemed fixated on writers' personal lives which I thought was nobody's business. Maybe I had some bad teachers. I shouldn't say where because it's a renowned school (Bennington), but if Mr. Leithauser had been there, I would have taken his course. Perhaps some other readers will be interested in his article.
Second, in addition to finishing Cheever's opus, I finally gave in and bought a Kindle. I hate it. And knowing that I feel that way makes me even more appreciative of the big fat orange Cheever book I own. When I finished it, I kissed it long and hard before I put it up on my shelf. And the fact that I can glance up at it—it's lying sideways because I've run out of space—and see Mr. Cheever's name in big white letters against a two-toned amber background gives me comfort. I've heard a lot of things about Cheever (my mother knew him) that make me pretty sure he wasn't always fun (yikes, none of my business! I apologize), but I am so happy to have him physically on my shelf. He is now a permanent member of my library family. Kindle can't come close to giving that kind of pleasure.
Feb. 18, 2015
An update to the earlier quasi-review (see below). I still haven't finished this book, and I'm in no rush to. I'm reading from front to back and back to front, so when I finish, I'll be somewhere in the middle of the book--which, for inarticulate reasons, feels right. The stories flay and slay me, so one story a day, or every few days, is all I can handle.
Last night I went to an Authors Guild symposium where one of the panelists described reading as "an intimate social connection--between a reader and a writer." I was struck by the word "social." Intimate, yes, but social? I certainly don't want John Cheever in the room while I'm reading, and I don't really want to meet him. But, yes, I feel intimately connected and safe in that connection because it is private, in my mind.
I'm curious: do other people feel an intimate social connection with the writer of a book they're reading? And if so, what does that mean to them? Is there more that they want from the writer than the words and story in the book, privately? I'd love responses to this post. I'm really curious.
Jan. 5, 2015
I lied. I haven't finished reading this, but I'm just going to cut to the chase and give it five stars. The stories in this 693-page opus appear in the chronological order Cheever wrote them. I started reading from the front, then began reading from the back.
I borrowed my copy of the book from the library, and since most of what I've read leaves me almost catatonic from awe and in need of inert time on my back on the couch in order to process, there is no way I'm going to finish this book in the two weeks allotted by the library. So in order to read this book in the time it demands, I'm going to have to buy it.
Buying books scares me these days. Here's why:
Nevertheless, I must risk it. Five stars. The guy was a master.
As predicted (see earlier two posts, below), it took me months to finish this masterpiece. To reiterate earlier comments, I read from front to back as well as back to front. Not the best idea, it turns out, because the strongest stories are not in the middle. I'm adding this note for two reasons:
First, I googled the one story in sixty-one that I didn't think worked, and I found a wonderful piece by Brad Leithauser about Cheever's style and turn of phrase. I was a drama major and dropped out of all the lit classes I started when I was in school because the teachers seemed fixated on writers' personal lives which I thought was nobody's business. Maybe I had some bad teachers. I shouldn't say where because it's a renowned school (Bennington), but if Mr. Leithauser had been there, I would have taken his course. Perhaps some other readers will be interested in his article.
Second, in addition to finishing Cheever's opus, I finally gave in and bought a Kindle. I hate it. And knowing that I feel that way makes me even more appreciative of the big fat orange Cheever book I own. When I finished it, I kissed it long and hard before I put it up on my shelf. And the fact that I can glance up at it—it's lying sideways because I've run out of space—and see Mr. Cheever's name in big white letters against a two-toned amber background gives me comfort. I've heard a lot of things about Cheever (my mother knew him) that make me pretty sure he wasn't always fun (yikes, none of my business! I apologize), but I am so happy to have him physically on my shelf. He is now a permanent member of my library family. Kindle can't come close to giving that kind of pleasure.
Feb. 18, 2015
An update to the earlier quasi-review (see below). I still haven't finished this book, and I'm in no rush to. I'm reading from front to back and back to front, so when I finish, I'll be somewhere in the middle of the book--which, for inarticulate reasons, feels right. The stories flay and slay me, so one story a day, or every few days, is all I can handle.
Last night I went to an Authors Guild symposium where one of the panelists described reading as "an intimate social connection--between a reader and a writer." I was struck by the word "social." Intimate, yes, but social? I certainly don't want John Cheever in the room while I'm reading, and I don't really want to meet him. But, yes, I feel intimately connected and safe in that connection because it is private, in my mind.
I'm curious: do other people feel an intimate social connection with the writer of a book they're reading? And if so, what does that mean to them? Is there more that they want from the writer than the words and story in the book, privately? I'd love responses to this post. I'm really curious.
Jan. 5, 2015
I lied. I haven't finished reading this, but I'm just going to cut to the chase and give it five stars. The stories in this 693-page opus appear in the chronological order Cheever wrote them. I started reading from the front, then began reading from the back.
I borrowed my copy of the book from the library, and since most of what I've read leaves me almost catatonic from awe and in need of inert time on my back on the couch in order to process, there is no way I'm going to finish this book in the two weeks allotted by the library. So in order to read this book in the time it demands, I'm going to have to buy it.
Buying books scares me these days. Here's why:
Nevertheless, I must risk it. Five stars. The guy was a master.
November 9, 2018
Marvelous American Cechov.
Due nomi che, curiosamente, hanno anche una omofonia di pronuncia: Cheever � Cechov.
Cheever il Cechov della borghesia americana.
Con tutte le differenze spazio temporali, tra i due autori c'è qualche affinità: intanto per la ricca produzione di entrambi, per Cheever siamo a circa 61 racconti per il russo 250 ufficiali, racconti lunghi che si dilatano anche per decine di pagine, per la completezza delle storie, per la meticolosità nella costruzione narrativa e il tratteggio fisico dei personaggi; scritture precise, realistiche, efficaci, con un giusto peso di poesia, che non cede facilmente all’inconsistenza.
I racconti di Cheever hanno una trama e un epilogo (finalmente) chiaro; addio a quei finali aperti che lasciano tutto il lavoro sporco al lettore, sono epiloghi che offrono una sensazione di completezza che non si traduce mai in sazietà, noia, o deja-vu, e anche se la miglior regola a tavola è alzarsi ancora con la fame, con Cheever essere sazi significa rimanere soddisfatti ma volerne ancora senza stare male e dopo la parola fine di ogni racconto girare la pagina e gettarsi voracemente su quello appresso.
Sia che ci parli di una famiglia dove sembra che i legami tra fratelli diventati adulti siano rimasti idillicamente intatti come al tempo dell’infanzia (quando nella realtà non è mai così); sia che ci parli di una coppia di provinciali che sprovveduta sbarca a New York illusa di fare affari senza sudore né fatica; o di una bambina che si perde tra le strade di Manhattan obbligando finalmente i suoi genitori ad accorgersi di lei; o ancora quando racconta di una radio con una frequenza difettosa che cattura le voci dei vicini e ci fa penetrare dentro lo squallore delle loro esistenze, vicini prima invidiati quando nell’androne del palazzo volteggiavano impellicciati e sicuri di sé come fossero stati sempre intenti al compimento di grandi imprese; sia quando Cheever ci avverte del pericolo di ritornare nei posti dove si è stati felici...
Ha una miriade di storie da raccontare Cheever, non si riaggomitola mai su se stesso, ma è capace di rinnovarsi ad ogni racconto.
Con il merito, raro, di non essere un autore disperato votato alla distruzione di sé e dei suoi personaggi, non si fa mai prendere completamente da quegli eccessi che a volte ci fanno sentire troppo distanti dalle storie che leggiamo come a pensare "ma sì in fondo noi siamo meglio" e se beviamo è solo perché ci piace il vino senza arrivare ad essere alcolizzati e se abbiamo difficoltà economiche non le risolviamo con il suicidio, e anche se la nostra coppia è un vero disastro cercheremo comunque di risollevarci, pure qualcuno cantava Esistono anche degli zingari felici e tra le sue pagine si può scorgere un piccolo barlume di chiarore che apre uno squarcio nel grigio conformismo dei sobborghi residenziali dove ambienta molte storie..
ll volume che ho letto raccoglie circa una decina di racconti, ancora una cinquantina sono ancora lì pronti ad aspettarmi in altrettanti volumi editi da Feltrinelli, mica c’� fretta, e che bellezza!
Due nomi che, curiosamente, hanno anche una omofonia di pronuncia: Cheever � Cechov.
Cheever il Cechov della borghesia americana.
Con tutte le differenze spazio temporali, tra i due autori c'è qualche affinità: intanto per la ricca produzione di entrambi, per Cheever siamo a circa 61 racconti per il russo 250 ufficiali, racconti lunghi che si dilatano anche per decine di pagine, per la completezza delle storie, per la meticolosità nella costruzione narrativa e il tratteggio fisico dei personaggi; scritture precise, realistiche, efficaci, con un giusto peso di poesia, che non cede facilmente all’inconsistenza.
I racconti di Cheever hanno una trama e un epilogo (finalmente) chiaro; addio a quei finali aperti che lasciano tutto il lavoro sporco al lettore, sono epiloghi che offrono una sensazione di completezza che non si traduce mai in sazietà, noia, o deja-vu, e anche se la miglior regola a tavola è alzarsi ancora con la fame, con Cheever essere sazi significa rimanere soddisfatti ma volerne ancora senza stare male e dopo la parola fine di ogni racconto girare la pagina e gettarsi voracemente su quello appresso.
Sia che ci parli di una famiglia dove sembra che i legami tra fratelli diventati adulti siano rimasti idillicamente intatti come al tempo dell’infanzia (quando nella realtà non è mai così); sia che ci parli di una coppia di provinciali che sprovveduta sbarca a New York illusa di fare affari senza sudore né fatica; o di una bambina che si perde tra le strade di Manhattan obbligando finalmente i suoi genitori ad accorgersi di lei; o ancora quando racconta di una radio con una frequenza difettosa che cattura le voci dei vicini e ci fa penetrare dentro lo squallore delle loro esistenze, vicini prima invidiati quando nell’androne del palazzo volteggiavano impellicciati e sicuri di sé come fossero stati sempre intenti al compimento di grandi imprese; sia quando Cheever ci avverte del pericolo di ritornare nei posti dove si è stati felici...
Ha una miriade di storie da raccontare Cheever, non si riaggomitola mai su se stesso, ma è capace di rinnovarsi ad ogni racconto.
Con il merito, raro, di non essere un autore disperato votato alla distruzione di sé e dei suoi personaggi, non si fa mai prendere completamente da quegli eccessi che a volte ci fanno sentire troppo distanti dalle storie che leggiamo come a pensare "ma sì in fondo noi siamo meglio" e se beviamo è solo perché ci piace il vino senza arrivare ad essere alcolizzati e se abbiamo difficoltà economiche non le risolviamo con il suicidio, e anche se la nostra coppia è un vero disastro cercheremo comunque di risollevarci, pure qualcuno cantava Esistono anche degli zingari felici e tra le sue pagine si può scorgere un piccolo barlume di chiarore che apre uno squarcio nel grigio conformismo dei sobborghi residenziali dove ambienta molte storie..
ll volume che ho letto raccoglie circa una decina di racconti, ancora una cinquantina sono ancora lì pronti ad aspettarmi in altrettanti volumi editi da Feltrinelli, mica c’� fretta, e che bellezza!
October 31, 2017
I have been reading the short stories now for a long time. I'm not finished yet but sometime I will because they are so good. The stories are placed in New England or New York. There doesn't happen much in the stories on first sight ( I mean not a lot of action) but they are focused on the relations between people. Characterisation, conversation, exploring the relation between people... that's what it's all about. And Cheever is a master in it.
August 30, 2015
We read Cheever not because we love stories about the suburbs, but because Cheever shows us that a wild imagination can’t be bound even by the suburbs. We enjoy the quality of observation, the dialogue, the air-tight construction (and what he teaches us about form both in every example and over the course of the collection), but we read him for those moments when his stories take wing to escape cliche, banality, and the mundane.
A few more thoughts on Cheever:
Thanks!
A few more thoughts on Cheever:
Thanks!
November 1, 2021
They say in April, National Poetry Month, "one poem a day won't hurt you." This book isn't poetry, but I followed the mantra anyway. I read one story a day between September 1 and October 31, 61 stories in all. I didn't absolutely love them all, but I'd be hard put to say there was even one clunker. I will confess that toward the end of October I started thinking that 45 stories would have been enough. This may have affected my thinking that the last few stories weren't as good as those prior.
Most of the earliest stories take place in New York or its suburbs. Included are his stories from other collections, including one I'd read previously . There are other stories that take place in Italy. There is at least one story late in the collection that takes place aboard a 707. With few exceptions, the characters are all upper middle class.
At some point I remarked to myself that his opening lines were pretty darned good. I wished I'd marked some of the earlier ones, but I didn't think of it. There is just something about them that drew me in and had me wondering where what could come next.
Most of the earliest stories take place in New York or its suburbs. Included are his stories from other collections, including one I'd read previously . There are other stories that take place in Italy. There is at least one story late in the collection that takes place aboard a 707. With few exceptions, the characters are all upper middle class.
At some point I remarked to myself that his opening lines were pretty darned good. I wished I'd marked some of the earlier ones, but I didn't think of it. There is just something about them that drew me in and had me wondering where what could come next.
You may have seen my mother waltzing on ice skates in Rockefeller Center. She’s seventy-eight years old now but very wiry, and she wears a red velvet costume with a short skirt.All of the stories are from the male point of view, many of them in the first person. Some of these males have no clue about what makes a woman tick! I'm not sure anyone would characterize this collection as humor, but that doesn't mean there wasn't more than one laugh out loud moment. There is just something light about them and I was always glad to start my day with a Cheever story.
She was born and brought up in Nascosta, in the time of the wonders—the miracle of the jewels and the winter of the wolves.
The first time I robbed Tiffany’s, it was raining.
I do what I have to do, like everyone else, and one of the things I have to do is to serve my wife breakfast in bed. I try to fix her a nice breakfast, because this sometimes improves her disposition, which is generally terrible.I can certainly understand why the Pulitzer committee considered this the 1979 winner. That award is "For distinguished fiction published in book form during the year by an American author, preferably dealing with American life..." Not every American life is like another. Cheever writes of one segment, but definitely American, and definitely that of the 30 or so years post WWII. 5-stars.
She was a pretty woman with that striking pallor you so often find in nymphomaniacs. Larry was a big man who used to garden without a shirt, which may have shown a tendency to infantile exhibitionism.
He had graduated from Yale, but when Melee once asked him if he liked Thackeray he said sincerely and politely that he had never tasted any.
December 31, 2008
Dear Mr. Cheever,
While it is unfair 0f me t0 put y0ur b00k 0n my "read" shelf when in fact I 0nly read ab0ut 400 0ut 0f 693 pages, I feel the time has c0me f0r us t0 part.
Y0u are n0t f0r me, Mr. Cheever, th0ugh I tried. Y0u never break 0pen the hearts 0f y0ur characters, which leaves me irritable and half-satisfied. I keep waiting t0 turn the page 0n s0mething m0ment0us, s0mething that will cause my little spirit t0 rise 0r sink with dreadful, unst0ppable m0ti0n.
At best, Mr. Cheever, y0u caused my spirit t0 rustle in its nest, and that is n0t en0ugh f0r me. I say g00d day t0 y0u, sir.
While it is unfair 0f me t0 put y0ur b00k 0n my "read" shelf when in fact I 0nly read ab0ut 400 0ut 0f 693 pages, I feel the time has c0me f0r us t0 part.
Y0u are n0t f0r me, Mr. Cheever, th0ugh I tried. Y0u never break 0pen the hearts 0f y0ur characters, which leaves me irritable and half-satisfied. I keep waiting t0 turn the page 0n s0mething m0ment0us, s0mething that will cause my little spirit t0 rise 0r sink with dreadful, unst0ppable m0ti0n.
At best, Mr. Cheever, y0u caused my spirit t0 rustle in its nest, and that is n0t en0ugh f0r me. I say g00d day t0 y0u, sir.
May 24, 2013
Note: The following is not a review of the entire collection. Rather, it's of one of the stories, probably the shortest, in the collection. This story alone, in my view, merits a five-star rating, representative of the rest.
Reunion by John Cheever
The New Yorker Fiction Podcast couldn't have chosen a better specimen of short fiction for its inaugural episode. Aired on May 3, 2007, and hosted by The New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman, the episode featured Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford, then promoting his soon to be released in paperback novel, The Lay of the Land. Ford's previous book was the short story collection A Multitude of Sins. That collection includes a story titled Reunion, inspired, Ford acknowledged, by a short story by one of America's most underrated writers and his fellow Pulitzer Prize awardee, John Cheever. The Cheever story in question is also called Reunion, and it's this story, handpicked and read by Ford, that helped the podcast launch on an excellent note.
Originally published in The New Yorker in 2000, Ford's Reunion is narrated by a man who again meets the man he cuckolded more than a year before. They are "reunited" in New York's Grand Central Terminal, the same setting for Cheever's Reunion, published nearly four decades earlier in the same magazine. Cheever's story, however, reunites a different pair of men: father and son.
Reunion is narrated by a boy named Charlie. "The last time I saw my father was in Grand Central Station," his story begins. "I was going from my grandmother's in the Adirondacks to a cottage on the Cape that my mother had rented, and I wrote my father that I would be in New York between trains for an hour and a half, and asked if we could have lunch together." It's tempting to just reproduce the entire story here, what with its immense narrative thrust and remarkable brevity. It's just shy of a thousand words long, but, to echo Treisman's evaluation, "it has the material of a ten thousand-word story in it." She adds, "As a fiction editor, if you get a thousand-word story that works, you're delighted." As readers, we are far more so.
The first paragraph of Reunion alone is an exercise in efficiency and minimalism. We learn that Charlie's father is a more or less successful businessman who seems to really value time—his secretary replied to Charlie with a meeting time, at which he arrived exactly—and we learn, by way of a most striking sentence, why Charlie had to drop his father a line to meet him in the first place: "He was a stranger to me—my mother divorced him three years ago and I hadn't been with him since—but as soon as I saw him I felt he was my father, my flesh and blood, my future and my doom." More sentences of similar clout follow in this paragraph, such as this auspicious attempt at listmaking that tells of both the younger's yearning and the elder's apparent vanity and alcoholism: "He put his arm around me, and I smelled my father the way my mother sniffs a rose. It was a rich compound of whiskey, after-shave lotion, shoe polish, woolens, and the rankness of a mature male." Ending with a threefold expression of desire ("I hoped that someone would see us together. I wished that we could be photographed. I wanted some record of our having been together."), this paragraph is self-contained even as it is introductory.
But the story doesn't end there even if it could with only the slightest hint of being wanting in some sort of closure. It is "the last time I saw my father," Charlie states upfront, and we want to know why. And we do, in no time.
As previously agreed upon, they depart the terminal to grab a quick bite before Charlie's train arrives. But they no sooner get seated in a nearby restaurant than the father reveals himself to be a vainglorious and quarrelsome chap. Calling out importantly to the waiter in German, French, Italian, and English all in the same breath, if only to impress his son, and clapping his hands insolently to boot, he is boisterous in a way that recalls the misconduct of a cocky, intoxicated person. Daddy might have had one too many drinks of whiskey, and the waiter is none too pleased.
They eventually leave that restaurant and enter another, where to Charlie's relief his father acts in a more acceptable manner and starts small talk about baseball over drinks. As soon as he empties his glass, however, the father reverts to his drunken, haughtily multilingual behavior. They eventually leave that restaurant and enter another, which for obvious reasons they leave soon afterward for another.
In the course of an hour and a half, a small span of time with his son the father appears not to give any true value at all, Charlie's great expectations of his father are instantly formed and, bit by bit, shattered. The story's last few words mirror those of its beginning, signifying a new one for the disenchanted boy. "...I went down the stairs and got my train," he says finally, "and that was the last time I saw my father." Effectively it implies that Charlie will, in time, salt away their unfortunate reunion like a fossil of memory.
It's a great tribute to Cheever's Chekhovian mastery of the short story that he should be remembered above all for his "big red book," a 1978 collection of his short stories simply called The Stories of John Cheever. It's an even greater tribute to his rare ability to impart so much with so few and so little words that his , a short short story included in the famous collection, should directly influence a writer of Ford's talent. You can tell just how dearly Ford regards this tiny gem of dirty realism. When you read his own or listen to his magnificent of the Cheever original, you easily will.
Reunion by John Cheever
The New Yorker Fiction Podcast couldn't have chosen a better specimen of short fiction for its inaugural episode. Aired on May 3, 2007, and hosted by The New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman, the episode featured Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford, then promoting his soon to be released in paperback novel, The Lay of the Land. Ford's previous book was the short story collection A Multitude of Sins. That collection includes a story titled Reunion, inspired, Ford acknowledged, by a short story by one of America's most underrated writers and his fellow Pulitzer Prize awardee, John Cheever. The Cheever story in question is also called Reunion, and it's this story, handpicked and read by Ford, that helped the podcast launch on an excellent note.
Originally published in The New Yorker in 2000, Ford's Reunion is narrated by a man who again meets the man he cuckolded more than a year before. They are "reunited" in New York's Grand Central Terminal, the same setting for Cheever's Reunion, published nearly four decades earlier in the same magazine. Cheever's story, however, reunites a different pair of men: father and son.
Reunion is narrated by a boy named Charlie. "The last time I saw my father was in Grand Central Station," his story begins. "I was going from my grandmother's in the Adirondacks to a cottage on the Cape that my mother had rented, and I wrote my father that I would be in New York between trains for an hour and a half, and asked if we could have lunch together." It's tempting to just reproduce the entire story here, what with its immense narrative thrust and remarkable brevity. It's just shy of a thousand words long, but, to echo Treisman's evaluation, "it has the material of a ten thousand-word story in it." She adds, "As a fiction editor, if you get a thousand-word story that works, you're delighted." As readers, we are far more so.
The first paragraph of Reunion alone is an exercise in efficiency and minimalism. We learn that Charlie's father is a more or less successful businessman who seems to really value time—his secretary replied to Charlie with a meeting time, at which he arrived exactly—and we learn, by way of a most striking sentence, why Charlie had to drop his father a line to meet him in the first place: "He was a stranger to me—my mother divorced him three years ago and I hadn't been with him since—but as soon as I saw him I felt he was my father, my flesh and blood, my future and my doom." More sentences of similar clout follow in this paragraph, such as this auspicious attempt at listmaking that tells of both the younger's yearning and the elder's apparent vanity and alcoholism: "He put his arm around me, and I smelled my father the way my mother sniffs a rose. It was a rich compound of whiskey, after-shave lotion, shoe polish, woolens, and the rankness of a mature male." Ending with a threefold expression of desire ("I hoped that someone would see us together. I wished that we could be photographed. I wanted some record of our having been together."), this paragraph is self-contained even as it is introductory.
But the story doesn't end there even if it could with only the slightest hint of being wanting in some sort of closure. It is "the last time I saw my father," Charlie states upfront, and we want to know why. And we do, in no time.
As previously agreed upon, they depart the terminal to grab a quick bite before Charlie's train arrives. But they no sooner get seated in a nearby restaurant than the father reveals himself to be a vainglorious and quarrelsome chap. Calling out importantly to the waiter in German, French, Italian, and English all in the same breath, if only to impress his son, and clapping his hands insolently to boot, he is boisterous in a way that recalls the misconduct of a cocky, intoxicated person. Daddy might have had one too many drinks of whiskey, and the waiter is none too pleased.
They eventually leave that restaurant and enter another, where to Charlie's relief his father acts in a more acceptable manner and starts small talk about baseball over drinks. As soon as he empties his glass, however, the father reverts to his drunken, haughtily multilingual behavior. They eventually leave that restaurant and enter another, which for obvious reasons they leave soon afterward for another.
In the course of an hour and a half, a small span of time with his son the father appears not to give any true value at all, Charlie's great expectations of his father are instantly formed and, bit by bit, shattered. The story's last few words mirror those of its beginning, signifying a new one for the disenchanted boy. "...I went down the stairs and got my train," he says finally, "and that was the last time I saw my father." Effectively it implies that Charlie will, in time, salt away their unfortunate reunion like a fossil of memory.
It's a great tribute to Cheever's Chekhovian mastery of the short story that he should be remembered above all for his "big red book," a 1978 collection of his short stories simply called The Stories of John Cheever. It's an even greater tribute to his rare ability to impart so much with so few and so little words that his , a short short story included in the famous collection, should directly influence a writer of Ford's talent. You can tell just how dearly Ford regards this tiny gem of dirty realism. When you read his own or listen to his magnificent of the Cheever original, you easily will.
December 17, 2023
I have been reading & rereading The Stories of John Cheever since the anthology was published almost 40 years ago and I've never ceased to enjoy the stories, finding them a formidable balance of acute perception merged with considerable narrative skill. So much description of Cheever's work at this site seems limiting in the extreme.
Yes, he was called the "Bard of Ossining" and detailed many vignettes of life in suburban New York. And yes, his writing is full of references to folks who employ maids, gardeners, nurses & cooks and of women who stay home to "keep house." In that sense, Cheever's work is most certainly about a different time & place; however, the differences are more obvious than they are important.
John Cheever's characters almost always seem to convey a sense of dislocation & alienation, a quality that is perennial & not particularly regional. Beyond that, while some see Cheever's characters as tiresome WASPs, his stories are largely satirical and most certainly do not constitute an endorsement of the author's observations.
When John Cheever was expelled from Thayer Academy, he described a sensation of "being almost outside of himself", a feeling he captured in one of his first stories and one that prevails in most of his fiction. And while Cheever has been labeled the "Chekhov of the Suburbs", many of his early stories are set in Manhattan and he composed others, which rank among his best, that are situated in Italy.
However, the comparison with Chekhov is perhaps not inappropriate. Cheever's "The Country Husband" is quite reminiscent of Chekhov's story about a man whose son has died but who is unable to find compassion from anyone in his village, eventually sharing his grief with his horse. In Cheever's story, a man named Francis Weed survives a plane crash but upon reaching his home finds the members of his family otherwise engaged with their own concerns when he attempts to describe his near-death experience while returning from a business trip.
In "The Scarlet Moving Van", alcohol in excess causes the downfall of two men, including the man who tried to assist his neighbor in dealing with the addiction. The situations within the Cheever stories are not always particularly original but as with any gifted writer, the author describes his characters in a manner that is very often masterful & sometimes even eloquent.
Cheever's "The Brigadier & the Golf Widow", speaks of a woman "whose marriage was bewilderingly threadbare" and suggests that "the sum of her manner was one of bereavement."
"The Geometry of Love" represents an inventive tale of a man who uses Euclidean geometry to reconcile his life.
In my opinion, "The Swimmer" is among the best short stories I've ever encountered, an allegorical tale, originally meant to be a novel but reduced to 10 pages in which Neddy Merrill fashions a series of swimming pools into a spatially disconnected but metaphorically unified river that parallels his life, spiraling downward to the endpoint of his aqueous journey, only to find his home abandoned. Translated to film, this story was adeptly distilled by Frank & Ellen Perry into a movie starring Burt Lancaster that wonderfully captures the spirit of the Cheever story.
There are some distractions in reading Cheever's stories and among them is an over-dependence on words such as sumptuary, anneal, & venereal, with the last word used multiple times in "The World of Apples". His tales are almost always male-centered. A few stories seem incomplete and appear to lack any kind of resolution. Whatever the shortfalls, John Cheever provided a distinctly original account of his subset of humanity and one that, like Chekhov, seems to carry an almost universal validity.
*Within my review are 3 images of author John Cheever + one of Burt Lancaster as the alienated swimmer traveling through a network of suburban pools in search of his identity in one of the author's best stories.
Yes, he was called the "Bard of Ossining" and detailed many vignettes of life in suburban New York. And yes, his writing is full of references to folks who employ maids, gardeners, nurses & cooks and of women who stay home to "keep house." In that sense, Cheever's work is most certainly about a different time & place; however, the differences are more obvious than they are important.
John Cheever's characters almost always seem to convey a sense of dislocation & alienation, a quality that is perennial & not particularly regional. Beyond that, while some see Cheever's characters as tiresome WASPs, his stories are largely satirical and most certainly do not constitute an endorsement of the author's observations.
When John Cheever was expelled from Thayer Academy, he described a sensation of "being almost outside of himself", a feeling he captured in one of his first stories and one that prevails in most of his fiction. And while Cheever has been labeled the "Chekhov of the Suburbs", many of his early stories are set in Manhattan and he composed others, which rank among his best, that are situated in Italy.
However, the comparison with Chekhov is perhaps not inappropriate. Cheever's "The Country Husband" is quite reminiscent of Chekhov's story about a man whose son has died but who is unable to find compassion from anyone in his village, eventually sharing his grief with his horse. In Cheever's story, a man named Francis Weed survives a plane crash but upon reaching his home finds the members of his family otherwise engaged with their own concerns when he attempts to describe his near-death experience while returning from a business trip.
In "The Scarlet Moving Van", alcohol in excess causes the downfall of two men, including the man who tried to assist his neighbor in dealing with the addiction. The situations within the Cheever stories are not always particularly original but as with any gifted writer, the author describes his characters in a manner that is very often masterful & sometimes even eloquent.
Cheever's "The Brigadier & the Golf Widow", speaks of a woman "whose marriage was bewilderingly threadbare" and suggests that "the sum of her manner was one of bereavement."
"The Geometry of Love" represents an inventive tale of a man who uses Euclidean geometry to reconcile his life.
The study of Euclid put him in a compassionate & tranquil frame of mind. He felt that he had corrected the distance between his reality & those realities that pounded at his spirit. He might not, had he possessed any philosophy or religion, have needed geometry but the religious observances in his neighborhood seemed to him boring & threadbare, and he had no disposition for philosophy.Later, considering the absence of love in his marriage & facing a serious ailment, the man in making reference to his wife "had no way of anticipating the poverty of her gifts as a nurse." And yet, within Cheever's tales, there are also those who display "the raw grace of human nature," a phrase taken from his story "The Golden Age."
Geometry served him beautifully for the metaphysics of understood pain. He was not a victor but he was wonderfully safe from being victimized. He was able to carry the conviction of innocence, with which he woke each morning, well into the day. He thought about writing a book about his discovery: Euclidean Emotion: The Geometry of Sentiment.
In my opinion, "The Swimmer" is among the best short stories I've ever encountered, an allegorical tale, originally meant to be a novel but reduced to 10 pages in which Neddy Merrill fashions a series of swimming pools into a spatially disconnected but metaphorically unified river that parallels his life, spiraling downward to the endpoint of his aqueous journey, only to find his home abandoned. Translated to film, this story was adeptly distilled by Frank & Ellen Perry into a movie starring Burt Lancaster that wonderfully captures the spirit of the Cheever story.
There are some distractions in reading Cheever's stories and among them is an over-dependence on words such as sumptuary, anneal, & venereal, with the last word used multiple times in "The World of Apples". His tales are almost always male-centered. A few stories seem incomplete and appear to lack any kind of resolution. Whatever the shortfalls, John Cheever provided a distinctly original account of his subset of humanity and one that, like Chekhov, seems to carry an almost universal validity.
*Within my review are 3 images of author John Cheever + one of Burt Lancaster as the alienated swimmer traveling through a network of suburban pools in search of his identity in one of the author's best stories.
June 10, 2020
Creo que estos cuentos de Cheever conforman una de las mejores antologías que he leído jamás.
Los cuentos de Cheever no se parecen en demasía a la idea preconcebida que de un relato se suele tener. No suelen estar basados en ideas o tramas singulares, no contienen apenas giros finales ni tampoco abundan en ellos, a mi parecer, las típicas epifanías que se les suele achacar y a las que Carver, su heredero natural, era tan asiduo. Había leído con anterioridad dos novelas de Cheever, la muy notable Bullet Park y la floja Esto No Es El Paraíso, y no me esperaba para nada el impacto que he recibido con estos relatos. Las temáticas que aborda Cheever, así como el contexto en que sitúa la mayoría de ellas es de sobra conocido, pero aunque esas sean las señas de identidad que lo distinguen de sus coetáneos, no son las razones que lo sitúan, a mi juicio, y tras la orgiástica lectura de este tomo, por encima de la mayoría de ellos. Lo que lo hace, por descontado, es que Cheever, en estos cuentos, muestra una maestría como escritor al alcance de muy pocos. Basta leer cualquier página de esta antología al azar para hallar una descripción de una precisión quirúrjica, una imagen memorable, un párrafo de puro músculo; magia literaria, en definitiva. Yo terminaba un relato y, maravillado, comenzaba el siguiente, y los asimilaba todos no como entes independientes, sino como capítulos de una misma obra magna. No todos tienen la misma calidad, obviamente, hay diez o doce de ellos que son majestuosos, otros tantos quizás sean un poco flojos, y los cuarenta restantes son, sencillamente, sobresalientes de ese modo humilde y silencioso con que Cheever construía sus inutuitivas tramas de final abrupto. Podría llenar muchas lineas glosando las maravillas de la prosa de Cheever, pero comentaré únicamente la más reseñable de todas, la más responsable de la grandeza que yo advierto en ella: el dinamismo, la fibra narrativa, la capacidad pasmosa para hacer la descripción justa, la frase medida y perfecta, los párrafos kilométricos, pero ligeros como nubes, de prosa aseada y clásica donde cada frase lleva de una manera natural a la siguiente. En eso Cheever es un maestro de maestros, y leerle durante este último mes ha sido un inmenso placer al que tardaré muy poco en volver.
Los cuentos de Cheever no se parecen en demasía a la idea preconcebida que de un relato se suele tener. No suelen estar basados en ideas o tramas singulares, no contienen apenas giros finales ni tampoco abundan en ellos, a mi parecer, las típicas epifanías que se les suele achacar y a las que Carver, su heredero natural, era tan asiduo. Había leído con anterioridad dos novelas de Cheever, la muy notable Bullet Park y la floja Esto No Es El Paraíso, y no me esperaba para nada el impacto que he recibido con estos relatos. Las temáticas que aborda Cheever, así como el contexto en que sitúa la mayoría de ellas es de sobra conocido, pero aunque esas sean las señas de identidad que lo distinguen de sus coetáneos, no son las razones que lo sitúan, a mi juicio, y tras la orgiástica lectura de este tomo, por encima de la mayoría de ellos. Lo que lo hace, por descontado, es que Cheever, en estos cuentos, muestra una maestría como escritor al alcance de muy pocos. Basta leer cualquier página de esta antología al azar para hallar una descripción de una precisión quirúrjica, una imagen memorable, un párrafo de puro músculo; magia literaria, en definitiva. Yo terminaba un relato y, maravillado, comenzaba el siguiente, y los asimilaba todos no como entes independientes, sino como capítulos de una misma obra magna. No todos tienen la misma calidad, obviamente, hay diez o doce de ellos que son majestuosos, otros tantos quizás sean un poco flojos, y los cuarenta restantes son, sencillamente, sobresalientes de ese modo humilde y silencioso con que Cheever construía sus inutuitivas tramas de final abrupto. Podría llenar muchas lineas glosando las maravillas de la prosa de Cheever, pero comentaré únicamente la más reseñable de todas, la más responsable de la grandeza que yo advierto en ella: el dinamismo, la fibra narrativa, la capacidad pasmosa para hacer la descripción justa, la frase medida y perfecta, los párrafos kilométricos, pero ligeros como nubes, de prosa aseada y clásica donde cada frase lleva de una manera natural a la siguiente. En eso Cheever es un maestro de maestros, y leerle durante este último mes ha sido un inmenso placer al que tardaré muy poco en volver.
January 11, 2008
This author would be in my top twenty list of all time masters of the short story....I like a lot of "uncool" authors like Cheever, Hawthorne, Carver....these are authors I read decade in, decade out, and keep coming away with new experiences, thoughts, the whole palimpsestic layering which is life....so many books and authors achieve a fashionable moment...but I think it's obviously timeliness AND timelessness that have to be achieved to really merit that overused term "masterpiece"...or whatever your favorite term of supreme approbation is, lol...the stories in here are various and the literary aims and ends are various but the polish is about consistent...I know a lot of people probably see "his ilk" as a cause of a lot of the really awful workshop type fiction that ended up dominating the magazine scene in the 70s and 80s, but he has a mastery and a subtletly and negative capability...things almost always missing from the McRelationship workshop short fiction....it's true he's rather obssessed with human vulnerability...that's probably the major theme in everything he ever wrote...but I like that theme...I like empathy...and he's one of the most empathic...but not in any bullshit condescending sort of way...he's able to be turn Chekhovian and cold when he needs to be...in that sense he's like an S&M dom, and we are his clients lol...Cheever Dungeon...yeah that's it...that's the ticket...
September 20, 2017
John Cheever the best American short story writer of the 20th century. Not IMHO. I already did not like his novel Falconer and the best stories in this collection are entertaining yes, but there are equally many that do not make sense to me. I read that the author never planned what he wrote, just let it happen, following his intuition. The result is that half of the stories lack direction, contain digressions that lead nowhere and a lot of loose threads are kept lying around. The stories set in Italy are a clear example, but also a story like The common day. I like stories to have a nice rounding up at the end, clarifying everything that happened and leaving no mess around. I read ten of this collection, some of the most famous ones and a few at random. I did like The Swimmer and The Enormous Radio.
July 29, 2020
I spent most of the unfortunate non-event that the summer of 2020 was, with John Cheever's collected stories. They are aligned chronologically in the book and the sweep of this universe took me completely, wholly and I let myself be taken gladly.
I find it difficult to add anything new to the canonic praise that surrounds John Cheever. He has taken a part of history, a certain time an period and made it more alive than it perhaps was in reality. Similarly to Carver, he gave voice to the muffled suburban agony of mid-century America, to the false siren of the American Dream. His is not raw and merciless though, it is not without hope. It is edged with otherworldliness and taut irony, whiskey on rocks glistening in the mute October sunshine with occasional detours to Italian small towns. He sees the unfulfilled dreams and inadequateness of the sad man who always fins someone better to compare himself to. He sees the wife who has a gin way before a decent cocktail hour. He knows the false mantra of the mistress who says "I have never done anything like this before". Story after story the same themes reoccur, about the controversies of his characters and the times they are trapped in. Yet the depressiveness - so often attributed to his work - remains in the readers head. It isn't there on the page. His work gives you space to see it whichever way you please, whichever lens you prefer to see yourself through. It is you, only in mid-century America, trying to do your best while society presses on you from whichever direction you are running towards.
And then there are the cultural references that are so timeless that you almost want to cry at their accuracy and hide under a fluffy duvet with a stiff martini, quit your job and watch all the seasons of Md Men all over again. You just want to live in this perfectly constructed world, for it to never end and to nudge away the knowledge that all this was created by a man who spent 40 years of his life drinking and still managed to make something like this.
A book to revisit and a book to celebrate. Literature hardly gets better than this.
I find it difficult to add anything new to the canonic praise that surrounds John Cheever. He has taken a part of history, a certain time an period and made it more alive than it perhaps was in reality. Similarly to Carver, he gave voice to the muffled suburban agony of mid-century America, to the false siren of the American Dream. His is not raw and merciless though, it is not without hope. It is edged with otherworldliness and taut irony, whiskey on rocks glistening in the mute October sunshine with occasional detours to Italian small towns. He sees the unfulfilled dreams and inadequateness of the sad man who always fins someone better to compare himself to. He sees the wife who has a gin way before a decent cocktail hour. He knows the false mantra of the mistress who says "I have never done anything like this before". Story after story the same themes reoccur, about the controversies of his characters and the times they are trapped in. Yet the depressiveness - so often attributed to his work - remains in the readers head. It isn't there on the page. His work gives you space to see it whichever way you please, whichever lens you prefer to see yourself through. It is you, only in mid-century America, trying to do your best while society presses on you from whichever direction you are running towards.
And then there are the cultural references that are so timeless that you almost want to cry at their accuracy and hide under a fluffy duvet with a stiff martini, quit your job and watch all the seasons of Md Men all over again. You just want to live in this perfectly constructed world, for it to never end and to nudge away the knowledge that all this was created by a man who spent 40 years of his life drinking and still managed to make something like this.
A book to revisit and a book to celebrate. Literature hardly gets better than this.
March 13, 2019
This book starts with a man who almost kills his brother, mainly because he misunderstands the brother. It finishes with a wife who poisons her husband and gets away with it. Cheever writes like an entomologist - his characters are beetles and butterflies who he skewers with a pin before fastening them to the page. But Cheever doesn't seem to have any love for his bugs. Rather, if he feels much of anything for them, he tends to despise them. Often, when they are not thinking about killing one another as punishment for banalities, he does the favor for them and kills them off himself.
This all takes place in a fairly mundane world, mostly in a triangle running from Manhattan and its suburbs, to Nantucket, to Rome. Whatever else is going on, each story will certainly have its share of highballs and martinis. Everyone seems so ordinary (or ordinary for the middle of the last century, when folks had cocktail parties instead of facebook) and thats the scariest thing about the loathsomeness of these characters. I knew them. I grew up in a New York suburb. My parents went to cocktail parties, and I recognize at least some of the outer trappings of these stories. But the inner world here seems foreign to me, and its definitely one that I prefer to visit in fiction and not in real life.
The writing is simple and graceful, with some stunning flights of fancy. As he aged, he also seems to have come to hate story structure as much as he hated his characters, so he starts to play with that as well, to cast doubts everywhere. By the end, he seems to be dividing some stories between "facts" and questions that he throws out and does not obviously answer. And these self-referential excursions tend to work. The stories remain engaging, and they are always well written. Some of the stories are quite beautiful, and I'm glad I read them. I'm not sure whether I liked them enough to continue on to one of his novels. I guess it will depend whether I'm in the mood for gin, sweating glasses around the pool, casual adultery and spite.
This all takes place in a fairly mundane world, mostly in a triangle running from Manhattan and its suburbs, to Nantucket, to Rome. Whatever else is going on, each story will certainly have its share of highballs and martinis. Everyone seems so ordinary (or ordinary for the middle of the last century, when folks had cocktail parties instead of facebook) and thats the scariest thing about the loathsomeness of these characters. I knew them. I grew up in a New York suburb. My parents went to cocktail parties, and I recognize at least some of the outer trappings of these stories. But the inner world here seems foreign to me, and its definitely one that I prefer to visit in fiction and not in real life.
The writing is simple and graceful, with some stunning flights of fancy. As he aged, he also seems to have come to hate story structure as much as he hated his characters, so he starts to play with that as well, to cast doubts everywhere. By the end, he seems to be dividing some stories between "facts" and questions that he throws out and does not obviously answer. And these self-referential excursions tend to work. The stories remain engaging, and they are always well written. Some of the stories are quite beautiful, and I'm glad I read them. I'm not sure whether I liked them enough to continue on to one of his novels. I guess it will depend whether I'm in the mood for gin, sweating glasses around the pool, casual adultery and spite.
September 11, 2022
O capodoperă ca asta se recomandă singură. N-am ce scrie despre ea ca s-o “promovez�. Probabil că, între timp, cartea a devenit de negăsit. Și atunci, doar v-aș frustra. Multumiți pentru asta Polirom, care consumă, fără rost, hârtia și tiparul cu scriitorași locali obscuri - unii reeditați acerb, în ciuda valorii îndoielnice. Așa că, n-aveți decât să luați cu asalt anticariatele!
Nu cred să fi citit un volum de proză scurtă mai bun ca această integrală. Și-i cu atât mai mare bucuria cât - recent - am citit alte volume de proză scurtă foarte bune (Nabokov, Munro etc).
Lui Cheever, Polirom nici măcar n-a schițat efortul să-i traducă romanul distins cu National Book Award - cel mai bun și cel mai “pe bune� premiu literar din lume: The Wapshot Chronicle (premiat în 1958).
Tot așa cum Polirom n-a tradus-o pe J.C. Oates cu Tetralogia ei - Wonderland Quartet, ci a ales dintre toate cele 4 numai “Grădina plăcerilor lumești”� o strălucitoare lipsă de logică editorială. Amatorism! Și - ca în cazul Cheever - nu i-au retipărit nimic.
Nu cred să fi citit un volum de proză scurtă mai bun ca această integrală. Și-i cu atât mai mare bucuria cât - recent - am citit alte volume de proză scurtă foarte bune (Nabokov, Munro etc).
Lui Cheever, Polirom nici măcar n-a schițat efortul să-i traducă romanul distins cu National Book Award - cel mai bun și cel mai “pe bune� premiu literar din lume: The Wapshot Chronicle (premiat în 1958).
Tot așa cum Polirom n-a tradus-o pe J.C. Oates cu Tetralogia ei - Wonderland Quartet, ci a ales dintre toate cele 4 numai “Grădina plăcerilor lumești”� o strălucitoare lipsă de logică editorială. Amatorism! Și - ca în cazul Cheever - nu i-au retipărit nimic.
December 17, 2009
In the same vein as Updike and precursor to the "dirty-realism" of Carver, Cheever betrays our expectations by presenting a class of people that on the surface of things have life together. Through unpretentious plots and simple syntax, he stuns his readers by revealing catastrophic and devastating results in otherwise innocuous scenarios. It is almost a form of voyeurism the way he reveals the reality behind our neighbors closed doors. A phenomenal author and unique, revealing perception of American society.
August 15, 2009
Where the hell have I been, this guy's a fucking genius. "Torch Song" is amazing, "The Chaste Clarissa" is hysterical, and the asshole elevator boy on Xmas day story has to be read to be believed. Cheever's sense of deadpan humor is sharp as a knife, "The Superintendent" being a great example. I'm only on page 200 but this is pure fucking gold.
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