John Cheever: Classic or Dud?

Is it possible that this was never asked?

A small revival looks like is under way, what with the publication of the Blake Bailey biography and the Library of America's editions of the collected novels and stories.

I went through a huge Cheever phase about fifteen years ago. I've committed many of his stories to heart ("The Ocean," "Goodbye, My Brother," "The World of Apples," "The Country Husband"), and his journals arguably made an even bigger impact. Never cared much for the novels.

just read updike's review from the grave of the biography. i don't think i need to read it. i got enough lush life from bailey's yates bio. anyway, yeah, classic just for the short stories alone. i still need to tackle the 1978 collected stories that i have. it's huge enough for me and i don't have the money for the library of america stuff. i've never actually read one of his novels. he was a better short story writer than updike. and better than o'hara at his best too. and better than salinger at his best too. um, what other new yorker short story writers can i bash?

i do prefer alice munro to cheever though! (cuz she is my very special lady.)

some of the journal stuff i've read is awesome! and fine writing. someday i need to pick up cheap copies of the journals and the letters.

i'd love it if more ppl talked abt him here, i've never read any of his stories. is he similar to anyone?

harold brodkey's best stuff is as good as cheever's best. at least the best from his first book and the best from stories in an almost classical mode. as long as i'm talking new yorker short fiction.

(actually i might say the same about the best of thurber and perelman.)

I went through a Cheever phase a while ago, now I'm going through a Yates phase, but on the strength of the publicity surrounding the new biography and the connection to Yates (including sharing a biographer) I'm trying to engineer a mini-revival of the Cheever phase: today I checked out the biography and Bullet Park (which I don't think I read before), along with Yates' biography. I'll probably just keep reading Yates' back catalog though. I actually think the Cheever novels are good, but they do hold a certain suburban period fascination for me that perhaps I am mistaking for high art. This morning I ordered the LOA editions for our library. No matter what I try I can't seem to go through an Updike phase though, despite enjoying his baseball article, and reading his essays as a matter of course each week in the New Yorker.

Bullet Park is good but a bit mad. Cheever's stories are his best stuff, I reckon--I've read all the novels except the second Wapshot book, and they're all GOOD but not GREAT, whereas some of the stories are REALLY GREAT.

what james said. "the swimmer" is one of my favorite short stories by anybody.

I'm not sure this bio will win him many new readers though. I note w/dismay that the NYT review of Bailey's book ID's Cheever as an alcoholic in the FIRST SENTENCE.

if blake bailey only writes bios about writers who featured in seinfeld episodes, who's next? henry miller?

HOME BEFORE DARK, Susan Cheever's memoir, already covers all the alkie/bisex stuff w/ devastating frankness and is a v. good psychodramatic read

read FALCONER by Cheever cos it had a rave review by bellow on the front, but this was many years ago and can't remember a thing abt it

Reading his Collected Stories and it's some of the most depressing writing I've ever read -- even more so than Carver. Cheever loves an elaborate set up just to heighten the effect of pulling out the rug from under you in the last paragraph...

I finished the Bailey biography on Monday -- one of the best I've ever read, with the texture (and heft) of a novel. Cheever's life is a total downer.

calstars yeah - i've never read him but the lovely Emma B just bought a thick volume of his short stories and she's read me some of them out loud.. like YIKES dude

Alfred Kazin has a great line about Cheever: his stories were an immense effort at cheering himself up.

A closer look at his style.

Just finished Falconer and am surprised at how different the style is from Bullet Park. Like it could have been written by someone else entirely.

I find the difference is that Bullet Park is great while Falconer is horrible

'the journals of john cheever' is intensely moving, especially if you read it front to back.

As the order vanished from his own affairs, he sought to order the world. "This is the way you do it." "Listen to me." He pissed in the umbrella stand, drop-kicked the roast beef, waved his prick at Mrs. Vanderveer, and called in the morning to ask if everyone was all right.

The substitution of physical pain and infirmity for melancholy seems not to have worked. I am simply saddled with both.

Why is it so difficult for me to bring into focus the image of a young man with thick eyelashes on the plane from Tbilsi? Is this a temperamental infirmity, a national trait, a sort of neurosis? Why, watching some kilted pipers crossing a bridge in Ireland, did I feel that my life was passing by? What is this unhappy mystery?

as essential as the stories