Eggp’s Reviews > The Stories of John Cheever > Status Update

59. Artemis, The Honest Well Digger, 3 stars. Romantic man falls in love non-stop, is suspected of spycraft.
60. Three Stories, 3 stars. Fat belly details the efforts to be rid of it. Woman's husband/kids/new husband are all killed in car accidents. Beautiful woman on a plane coldly rejects attempts at conversation.
61. The Jewels of the Cabots, 3 stars. Assorted family events surrounding the theft of diamond rings.

Wiki: "The architecture of the church was Bullfinch with columns and one of those ethereal spires that must have dominated the landscape a century ago."

Word: "He supposed they were understandably wary of lushes, mashers, and bores."

1. Originally and chiefly U.S. A womanizer; a man who makes indecent sexual advances towards women, esp. in public places.

2. A fashionable young man of the late Victorian or Edwardian era, esp. one fond of the company of women; a dandy.

56. Another Story, 3 stars. Man's Italian friend is a big fan of America until he moves there with his American wife, doesn't assimilate very well.
57. Percy, 3 stars. One branch of the family tree is destroyed by thwarted artistic aspirations.
58. The Fourth Alarm, 3 stars. Husband doesn't know what to do with his life after his wife launches her career as a nude performer.

53. The Geometry of Love, 4 stars. Prompted by his wife's moodiness, unhappy man tries to apply geometry to live his life with serenity.
54. The Swimmer, 3 stars. Man decides to swim through all the neighborhood pools on the way home, has a feeling that his memory is unreliable.
55. The World of Apples, 3 stars. Old poet is horrified by the sudden surge of vulgarity in his work, resorts to dirty limericks.

49. Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, 2 stars. Man sees poetry written on marble bathroom walls.
50. Montraldo, 2 stars. Thief rents a room with an ocean view from two poor bickering women.
51. The Ocean, 3 stars. Man gets fired with a huge pension, alienates daughter, is repeatedly poisoned by wife.
52. Marito in Città, 3 stars. Husband fails to fend for himself while the wife and kids are away, screws a seamstress.

Word: "It was one of those places where lonely men eat seafood and read the afternoon newspapers and where, in spite of the bath of colored light and distant music, the atmosphere is distinctly contumacious."

1. Contemning and obstinately resisting authority; stubbornly perverse, insubordinate, rebellious. (Of persons and their actions.)

47. An Educated American Woman, 4 stars. Woman raised to be an intellectual marries a doormat, has no human feeling for anything but campaigns and causes.
48. Metamorphoses, 4 stars. Man pays the price for barging into a woman's office. Persuasive man is too obsessed with his loving wife. Snobby woman loses her family through stubborn priggishness. Newly self-righteous man replaces smoking with excessive drinking.

Wiki: "She had introduced the maxixe to Newport..."


Dancing the Maxixe (1915) by Walter Nelson

Wiki: "She had been a beauty, and had been painted by Paxton in the twenties."