Cheever

Though he was scarcely 5'5", it's hard to imagine another human vessel containing more contradictions than John Cheever, one of the most important American postwar writers. Those conflicts would ultimately render this impish wizard a profoundly unhappy man--and an altogether fascinating biographical subject. And his story here is told by a narrator of unusually subtle gifts. Bailey's book is as lively (and squalid) as his subject but quite dense, an attribute Malcolm Hillgartner overcomes with wondrous pacing and inflection. So in command is he that with the merest pause, he clearly indicates the beginning and ending of quotations or a shift in perspective. And his unfaltering impression of Cheever's Brahmin accent--wholly invented by the writer--rings with acerbity, humor, or pathos. Cheever is very much alive in this reading. M.O. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

November 24, 2008
Three biographies of 20th-century American short story masters.
Cheever: A Life
Blake Bailey
. Knopf
, $35 (736p) ISBN 978-1-4000-4394-1

Rebellious Yankee son of a father who fell victim to the Depression and a doo-gooder-turned-businesswoman mother, father to three competitive children he rode mercilessly but adored, chronicler par excellence of the 1950s American suburban scene while deploring all forms of conformity: John Cheever (1912–1982) was a mass of contradictions. In this overlong but always entertaining biography, composed with a novelist's eye, Bailey, biographer of Richard Yates and editor of two volumes of Cheever's work for Library of America (also due in March), was given access to unpublished portions of Cheever's famous journals and to family members and friends. Bailey's book is fine in descriptions of Cheever's reactions to other writers, such as his adored Bellow and detested Salinger. Bailey is also sensitive in describing the prickly dynamic of Cheever's domestic life, lived through a haze of alcoholism and under the shadow of extramarital heterosexual and homosexual relationships. This “Ovid in Ossining,” who published 121 stories in the New Yorker
as well as several bestselling novels, has probably yet to find a definitive position in American letters among academicians. This thoroughly researched and heartfelt biography may help redress that situation. 24 pages of photos.