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Summary: The laureate of Shady Hill
Review: Born in 1912, John Cheever gives a unique survey of the bright American mid-century through his stories. Like his literary brother, John Updike, having a life both lucky and lusty hardly spoilt his acuity.Cheever made his name as the laureate of Shady Hill, a pleasant post-war borough of bliss and torment, just a train ride beyond Manhattan. Many of these stories were initially penned for the New Yorker magazine. In the original 1979 introduction to this omnibus, he gently mocks its "dated paraphernalia". The stories still soar beyond their time, through a faultless touch for manners and mores. For Cheever's natural field of study is "decorum" as he puts it. This he studies with great artifice but never drily. Once imagined, savoured and named, "The Enormous Radio" could only have been his. This monstrous gift mysteriously pipes the loves and quarrels of surrounding families into the apartment of a "satisfactorily average" couple. Surreal snatches of Edward Lear bedtime reading are siphoned in. The couple lose their usual protective static and face again their own wickedness. From this early classic, Cheever went on to love and lampoon the Shady Hill domain, its interlocking characters playing out their dramas on Alewives Lane. There, a man may luckily recoup venial and mortal sins, but equally may forfeit everything on a pratfall. Life's fateful turns are observed with a fine mixture of acid and sympathy. The accomplished grandmother of "An Educated American Woman" cables her accomplished daughter, in perfect Italian, that she cannot make it back from Italy for her grandson's death. Cheever's striking use of the rhythms and progressions of fairytale is a bonus. In "The Children", the hapless servant Victor stumbles like a lost medieval courtier to ever-declining situations. "The Swimmer's" suburban pool-crawl starts as an alcoholic dare and ends in witchy desolation. One hand guarding the meal ticket from his comfortable readership, Cheever managed brave sleight of hand with the other. Rarely does he descend into Saturday Evening Post mawkishness. The 60 stories amassed from five previous collections give a satisfying sense of a skill husbanded and used over a long period, just about as well as we can ask of a writer. Cheever responded to the continuous assessment demands of his craft as did few writers in the class of the 20th century short story. [The West Australian, Saturday February 23 1991]
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Summary: Welcome to Cheever Country
Review: I don't imagine that John Cheever is much read these days by English Lit. types. These brilliant stories of love and loss among the genteel, drunken, and declasse WASP gentry are about as far as it is possible to get from the noisy concerns of the PoMo/multicultural/gender studies/Lit Crit. crowd. Which is only one of the reasons why the truly literate will still be reading Cheever's stories when Foucault, Derrida, De Man, Lacan and the rest of the French sophists are footnotes in future works about curious intellectual fads (yes, yes, I know: De Man was Belgian). You see, art always triumphs over kitsch; it may take an unconscionably long time in some cases, but in the end, art wins. And Cheever was nothing if not an artist, as the many small masterpieces contained in this collection amply demonstrate: "Goodbye, My Brother," "The Lowboy," "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill," "The Swimmer," "The Five-Forty-Eight," "The Cure," "The Sorrows of Gin," and so on, and on. The mood in these stories is predominantly one of melancholy and regret: regret that love, no matter how fierce and strong, will never last a lifetime; regret for the many small acts of cruelty that failed love and dashed dreams will force good men to commit; regret for what might have been, but was not, for what was and need not have been. But the melancholy and regret is tempered with a muted joy, inspired by the understanding that the same spiritual and moral isolation that prevents any man from ever fully connecting with another person also makes him autonomous and free. The obvious comparison is with Chekov; but such comparisons are seldom very helpful, and in this case would only serve to obscure the essential fact that Cheever was one of the finest artists this country has produced. But you don't have take my word for it. Here is a small test that will conclusively demonstrate Cheever's greatness, and in doing so will also demonstrate the power of art over schmaltz. ....So, prospective reader, do yourself a favor and buy this book. Keep it by your bedside and pick it up often. If you do that, you'll find that Cheever Country is one of the finest fictional worlds to visit.
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Summary: The best American short story writer
Review: I loved every one of John Cheever's stories and in fact, I go back every now and then to re-read them. Each story is perfectly crafted with characters that pull you in right at the beginning and plots that rise to a climax and ebb with precision. What I find compelling about these stories is that they are about everyday life in cities like New York. No weird characters in exotic locations served up by attractive, young, hip boho writers (preferred these days by "literary critics"). John Cheever's stories are about people like you and me who find themselves in the most painful, intolerable situations.
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Summary: One of the best writers of short stories ever
Review: I recently made a lengthy automobile trip through a boring section of the country, and I spent much of the drive listening to these stories. Of the sixty-odd pieces in this collection, almost all of them first published in _The New Yorker_, I'd previously read maybe one-third, especially the more famous and heavily anthologized ones like "The Swimmer." But my favorites are those in which Cheever experimented with style and content, like "The Enormous Radio" and "The Country Husband" and "The Wrysons" and "Goodbye My Brother." Cheever invented the "New York story" in which the characters are ordinary people living generally ordinary lives, but by whom the reader becomes fascinated. And the last paragraph always seems to tie up the narrative in a neat surgical knot. Amazingly good stuff.
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Summary: One of the all-time greats
Review: John Cheever is one of the greatest writers ever to come out of this or any other country. He's incredibly unsung and my suspicions are that in twenty years we'll be singing his praises the way we do Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Few stories in this collection will disappoint, my favorites being "The Enormous Radio" and "The Swimmer." Still, read them for yourself and judge. Would also recommend Jackson McCrae's "The Bark of the Dogwood" for another excellent read.
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Summary: Among the best of short fiction
Review: John Cheever's stories are among the best of American short fiction. This volume contains most of the stories Cheever ever wrote, and the number of excellent ones is really amazing. The best stories are all set in New York City and its suburbs, whereas some stories set in Italy are much less convincing. The stories are highlighting many aspects of American life, especially working-class and middle-class life. As a German reader who has spent some years of his life in the US, I am really impressed how well the "typical Americans" come to life in this book. Although the stories have mostly quite pessimistic endings and may not seem quite encouraging, there is nevertheless an all-pervading sense of humour and soft irony in them. At least 60% of these stories are true great fun to read, but they won't leave you all content, but something remains in the mind that keeps working. Most of the stories require the reader to dream up by himself what has really happened, so you as a reader become part of the fun and creative act of writing. A MUST read for anyone with the slightest interest in the US and American literature.
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Summary: A portrait of a generation
Review: Like most good short story writers, John Cheever has his niche in time and place. His is the world of New York middle class life in the 1940s -- as he himself puts it, "when almost everyone wore hats." It was also, it seems, a time when every man worked a nine to five office job and took the commuter train home to Shady Hill. A time when his wife, who regretted giving up her talent and ambition for the life of a lonely housewife, would either have an affair with the milkman or pass her time shopping and catching matinees in the city. A time when cocktail parties were the Friday night routine, and every other family was named Farquarson. Yes, this is Waspy America at its peak, in its heyday, and no one that I know of has captured it so crisply, so honestly, and so compassionately, as John Cheever. If F. Scott Fitzgerald captured a generation in the 1920s, the same can be said of Cheever two decades later.
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Summary: One of 20th Century America's Best
Review: Most of my students scratch their heads and mutter "Who?" when I tell them they will be reading the selected stories of John Cheever. When I tell them that Cheever is a representative of upper crusty, mid-twentieth century, cosmopolitan American cities, the sighs and groans can be heard crosstown.
Then they read the stories: "Goodbye, My Brother", "The Swimmer", "The Enormous Radio"... And the discussions are as lively as any instructor could hope for.
And their excitement reminds me over and again of the thrill I had reading these stories for the first time. (I'm almost jealous of my students--I miss that first time pleasure.) These are stories perfect in their craftsmanship, memorable in their characters, and decidedly superior to anything of his time, and just about anything since. Pick up this collection and enjoy. Rocco Dormarunno,
College of New Rochelle
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Summary: Stories of family and friends
Review: Stories of family and friends that incorporate life's normal occurrences and provide a feeling that we all experience the same things.
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Summary: The Maximum Impact with the Minimal Prose
Review: The late John Cheever could not only tell a story well. He also could make each word count to ultimately paint a complex portrait of a certain type of person and his life, (less often her life). This was the upperclass, or marginal thereto, person who when in a city was in New York and when in the suburbs went by train to CT. Even more telling though was that Cheever's eye could see in a person's smallest gesture, or his passingest moment, everything you would ever need to know about him. Cheever exposed the underside of what was going on in life for this person. The world might seem sunny and simple when a Cheever story begins but by its end the world is rendered in all its complexity in the sparest of prose. I read Cheever's novels too but it was in his short stories that his genius as a writer shone forth best. Each story in this collection is stunning and well worth owning forever.
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