John Cheever





John Cheever

Author profile


born
in Quincy, Massachusetts, The United States
May 27, 1912

died
June 18, 1982

gender
male

genre


About this author

John 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 cult...more


Average rating: 3.99 · 17,200 ratings · 1,238 reviews · 95 distinct works · Similar authors
The Stories of John Cheever
4.27 of 5 stars 4.27 avg rating — 6,210 ratings — published 1978 — 22 editions
Falconer
3.64 of 5 stars 3.64 avg rating — 2,837 ratings — published 1977 — 29 editions
The Wapshot Chronicle
by
3.75 of 5 stars 3.75 avg rating — 2,545 ratings — published 1957 — 32 editions
Bullet Park
3.75 of 5 stars 3.75 avg rating — 828 ratings — published 1967 — 28 editions
Oh What a Paradise It Seems
3.57 of 5 stars 3.57 avg rating — 440 ratings — published 1982 — 17 editions
Cheever Reads: The Swimmer
4.15 of 5 stars 4.15 avg rating — 297 ratings — published 1964 — 5 editions
The Wapshot Scandal
by
3.73 of 5 stars 3.73 avg rating — 324 ratings — published 1963 — 15 editions
The Journals Of John Cheever
4.16 of 5 stars 4.16 avg rating — 264 ratings — published 1991 — 12 editions
Collected Stories and Other...
by
4.38 of 5 stars 4.38 avg rating — 194 ratings — published 2009
The Enormous Radio
4.01 of 5 stars 4.01 avg rating — 130 ratings — published 1953 — 7 editions
More books by John Cheever…
“I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.”
John Cheever

“I've been homesick for countries I've never been, and longed to be where I couldn't be.”
John Cheever

“For lovers, touch is metamorphosis. All the parts of their bodies seem to change, and they seem to become something different and better.”
John Cheever

Polls

March 2013 Short Story Author Poll

**4th option: one additional month with John Cheever (in the event that Cheever has the most votes when this poll ends, I will bring the other 3 authors back for May's poll)
 
  13 votes, 31.7%

 
  12 votes, 29.3%

 
  9 votes, 22.0%

 
  7 votes, 17.1%

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