<![CDATA[The Stories of John Cheever]]>

false <![CDATA[The Stories of John Cheever]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166485512m/11686.jpg 11686 16 Think of John Cheever's fiction, and a whole world springs to mind--a world of leafy suburbs, summer houses, commuter trains, boarding schools, and inevitably, his own chosen territory, the cocktail hour among WASPs. But it's a mistake to approach Cheever as if he were merely some sort of anthropologist documenting the customs of an obscure and vanishing tribe. Nostalgia and class issues aside, his true subject is the darkness hidden beneath the surface of postwar American life. A case in point is his famous story "The Swimmer," in which an ebullient Neddy Merrill decides to swim home across the backyard pools of his neighbors. In the course of his journey, however, summer gives way to autumn, his neighbors turn against him, there are troubling intimations of disgrace and financial ruin, and he arrives to find his house both locked and empty. Though these stories deal with bright, prosperous, ostensibly happy people, a cold wind blows through them. Age, illness, financial embarrassment, sex, alcohol, death--all of these threaten his suburban Eden. (Is it himself Cheever is mocking in his ironic "The Worm in the Apple"? "Everyone in the community with wandering hands had given them both a try but they had been put off. What was the source of this constancy? Were they frightened? Were they prudish? Were they monogamous? What was at the bottom of this appearance of happiness?") Inanimate objects carry the residue of their past owners' unhappiness and cruelty ("Seaside Houses," "The Lowboy"); expatriates long for but cannot quite find their way home ("The Woman Without A Country," "Boy in Rome"); children vanish or turn out badly (too many stories to count). All of this is conveyed in prose both graceful and tender. No one is better than Cheever at describing a character's appearance: "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." Given his uncanny eye (and ear) for realistic description, it's easy to forget how experimental Cheever could be. His later stories pioneered authorial intrusions in the best postmodern style, and from the beginning, he wrote what would much later be called magical realism. (Think of the sinister broadcasts in "The Enormous Radio," or the phantom love interest in "The Chimera.") A literary event at its publication and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1979, The Stories of John Cheever remains a stunning and enormously influential book. --Mary Park 436251 1978 The Stories of John Cheever total:1398|5:699|4:486|3:169|2:32|1:12| 1398 6022 2371 167 4 6 false false Sun Aug 10 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jun 24 17:58:24 -0700 2008 Wed Sep 10 13:18:06 -0700 2008 4 2 false false Tue Apr 01 09:08:19 -0700 2008 Tue Apr 01 09:30:21 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 2 false false Thu Jan 10 20:22:19 -0800 2008 Thu Jan 10 20:31:54 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 2 false false Tue Dec 30 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Dec 21 15:00:17 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 31 09:17:56 -0800 2008
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 chara...more...]]> 5 1 false false Sat Aug 15 10:12:29 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 25 09:00:05 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 15 10:12:29 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 1 true false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Jul 26 19:58:14 -0700 2007 Tue Jun 17 08:06:49 -0700 2008
Maybe if I had to teach a mess of 18 year-olds English 101, clearly with the curri...more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun Mar 29 14:34:50 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 29 15:26:08 -0700 2009
It's astonishing, in that light, how many of these stories feat...more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Sep 13 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 03 09:27:16 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 15 20:46:46 -0700 2009
First, I have to say that I didn’t stop reading because I don’t lik...more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Dec 25 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Dec 11 10:32:03 -0800 2008 Thu Dec 25 02:20:22 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Apr 19 16:48:18 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 02 15:32:40 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 19 16:48:18 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Mar 29 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 08 12:47:12 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 29 19:45:57 -0700 2009 Goodbye, My Brother may well be the best short story I have ever read. It's close to perfect and leaves me wanting to just tear through this entire collection in the hopes of reading anything that matches it.

The more that I consider this book, the more I realize how much I love elegance...more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Nov 24 07:15:17 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 01 20:45:39 -0800 2008
"Oh, what can you do with a man like that? What can you do? How can you dissuade his eyes in a crowd from seeking out the cheek with acne, the infirm hand; how can you teach him to respond to the inestimable greatness of the race, the harsh surfac...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Jul 26 09:21:08 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 09 08:42:48 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 22 06:50:02 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 22 06:50:02 -0700 2009 The Stone Diaries, I always find it uncomfortable to give a less-than-sparkling review of an award-winning book - makes me feel like I missed something...

Be that as it may, I could appreciate some of the writing in this collection, but I found myself very quickly bored with a c...more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Mar 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 19 08:56:53 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 23 07:38:21 -0700 2009 ~1 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Nov 25 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Nov 03 12:18:56 -0800 2008 Tue Nov 25 13:09:01 -0800 2008
Classic tales like "The Swimmer" and "The Five-Forty-Eight" never fail to make me marvel at the linguistic mastery Cheever displays--how he moves the emotion of his upper middle and middle class subjects through the grit a...more...]]> 0 0 false false Wed Jan 07 03:29:28 -0800 2009 Wed Aug 19 03:51:19 -0700 2009
Goodbye, My Brother
The Common Day
The Enormous Radio
O City of Broken Dreams
The Hartleys
The Sutton Place Story
The Summer Farm
Torch Song
The Pot...more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Jul 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Dec 02 18:20:48 -0800 2008 Wed Jul 15 11:42:34 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Sep 30 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 28 16:56:02 -0700 2008 Fri Oct 02 17:54:18 -0700 2009 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, ...more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Jun 12 13:33:45 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 11 14:57:31 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 12 13:33:45 -0700 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=11686