<![CDATA[Cheever: A Life]]>

false <![CDATA[Cheever: A Life]]> 3992503 3 For the first time: the full and unforgettable life of John Cheever (1912–1982), written with unprecedented access to essential sources—including Cheever’s massive journal, only a fraction of which has ever been published. Blake Bailey shows us a soul in conflict: a proud Yankee who flaunted his lineage while deploring the provincialism of his Quincy, Massachusetts, family circle; a high school dropout who published his first story at eighteen; a pioneer of suburban realist fiction who continually pushed the boundaries of realism; a dire alcoholic who recovered to write the great novel Falconer; a secret bisexual who struggled with his longings and his fierce homophobia in a revolving door of self-loathing and hedonism. We see a man who concealed his anxieties behind the mask of the genial Westchester squire; the paterfamilias in Brooks Brothers clothes whose world was peopled by legendary writers and beautiful women (Malcolm Cowley, Saul Bellow, William Maxwell, Hope Lange, and John Updike, among them); whose groundbreaking work landed him on the covers of Time and Newsweek; who believed in the power of family love and sexual pleasure; a man whose desperate loneliness was never wholly offset by his faith in the joy of creation. Blake Bailey has written a luminous biography, a revelation of a writer of timeless fiction and of the man behind the work. 4038561 book 10 3 2009 Cheever: A Life total:82|5:33|4:31|3:18|2:0|1:0| 82 343 242 34 5 2 false false Thu Jan 29 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 22 18:41:38 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 31 19:19:02 -0800 2009
Man, this guy really kills me. Bl...more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Mar 24 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Mar 24 06:58:00 -0700 2009 Tue Mar 24 06:58:26 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Fri Aug 28 02:55:04 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 30 06:37:02 -0700 2009 or his personality, which are both luminous. But this is definitely the definitive biography; it makes Donaldson's fairly substantive earlier book look like a puff piece. It includes new, lengthy in...more...]]> 0 0 false false Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 14 10:38:00 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 14 11:02:39 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed Apr 15 12:44:29 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 15 12:44:29 -0700 2009 Most critics felt that Blake Bailey's book was an admirable work of scholarship and approved of his task of encouraging people to read Cheever again. But they disagreed about the extent to which Cheever succeeds as a literary biography. A few reviewers thought that Bailey had done an incomparable jo...

more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 08 18:27:14 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 08 18:32:21 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Jul 08 06:05:35 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 08 06:10:58 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 3 false false Thu Jun 18 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 07 07:18:42 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 10 10:02:50 -0700 2009
I have been a huge Cheever fan since I was a teenager and have always wished that he was the "venerable New England author" who lived on the street in Ipswich where I w...more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Mar 30 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Dec 31 06:45:56 -0800 2008 Mon Mar 30 17:36:25 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Sep 07 11:30:02 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 07 11:36:29 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Aug 21 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 21 12:54:48 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 21 13:00:38 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Tue Mar 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 05 09:33:51 -0800 2009 Sat Mar 21 10:28:23 -0700 2009
And he wishes he was Cheever. He wants to be him, right down to Cheever's addition-fighting, New Yorker-battling, secretly bi-sexual, underappreciated, charm the pants off you, alientate...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Jul 30 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Feb 21 14:08:59 -0800 2009 Thu Jul 30 19:58:04 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri May 01 20:03:19 -0700 2009 Fri May 01 20:07:28 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Tue Apr 28 13:57:43 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 28 14:00:49 -0700 2009 5 0 false true Sat Aug 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 22 08:47:07 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 30 10:52:12 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Jun 17 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat May 30 14:41:32 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 17 18:23:42 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Apr 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 26 18:24:30 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 26 18:27:40 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Mar 02 10:34:44 -0800 2009 Mon Mar 02 10:37:14 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Wed Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 18 05:48:43 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 18 05:49:29 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=3992503