The Journals Of John Cheever

Rating:
Summary: Tough slogging amply rewarded over and over
Review: Cheever says "I am fifty-four, but I still think myself too young...to suffer nightmares about throughways and bridges." Daily peril is ever close at hand in the self-abusive pain and duty of the observed life of a 20th century master of English prose. The only peril in reading this book is a broken heart. I would stand anywhere and say there are paragraphs in these journals that rival in beauty and perfection any other in English literature you may produce. Cheever can't help it; this kind of genius is inevitable, anyway. What does it matter that misery formed a life? The journal pages from Italy in the late 50's, especially, nurse a kind of transparent abiding of that old misery-- seeking, arranging and soldiering it, and writing, fortunately. However alcohol and inner troubles may have crippled aspects of Cheever's career, NOTHING but glory shadows his paragraphs of Light! Journals fixes itself more like an autobiographical duel in the form of a novel, so raw is Cheever's self-reaching & so moving his conclusions. Barely able to escape the intense life of the mind, Cheever's art almost threatens confessional literature by REFUSING TO CONFESS. He keeps his writer's mind, and makes the rest serve. As a result, the book is drenched with a beauty that doesn't dissolve. It's a worthwhile idea to get a copy JUST to read the paragraph written in 1981, after taking the dogs walking deep into the rainy woods, returning & listening to Bach's Concerto for Two Violins on headphones, while the wet and muddy dogs dry on the porch... It's an amazing book.

Rating:
Summary: throughways and bridges..
Review: Cheever says "I am fifty-four, but I still think myself too young...to suffer nightmares about throughways and bridges." Daily peril is ever close at hand in the self-abusive pain and duty of the observed life of a 20th century master of English prose. The only peril in reading this book is a broken heart. I would stand anywhere and say there are paragraphs in these journals that rival in beauty and perfection any other in English literature you may produce. Cheever can't help it; this kind of genius is inevitable, anyway. What does it matter that misery formed a life? The journal pages from Italy in the late 50's, especially, nurse a kind of transparent abiding of that old misery-- seeking, arranging and soldiering it, and writing, fortunately. However alcohol and inner troubles may have crippled aspects of Cheever's career, NOTHING but glory shadows his paragraphs of Light! Journals fixes itself more like an autobiographical duel in the form of a novel, so raw is Cheever's self-reaching & so moving his conclusions. Barely able to escape the intense life of the mind, Cheever's art almost threatens confessional literature by REFUSING TO CONFESS. He keeps his writer's mind, and makes the rest serve. As a result, the book is drenched with a beauty that doesn't dissolve. It's a worthwhile idea to get a copy JUST to read the paragraph written in 1981, after taking the dogs walking deep into the rainy woods, returning & listening to Bach's Concerto for Two Violins on headphones, while the wet and muddy dogs dry on the porch... It's an amazing book.

Rating:
Summary: For the Cheever fan, but not for your average journal fan.
Review: Just so you know what you're getting into: this book is not exactly accessible. The other reviewers hinted at this with words like "tedious" and "slogged." A true Cheever fan will bring a lot to the book and treasure it for Cheever's sake. I'm not that big a fan, though I liked his short story collection and I liked the Wapshot books and Bullet Park.

First, you should know that not a whole lot happens. Not much action. You'd think a writer would reproduce entire scenes and dialog from his life in his journal. Not Cheever. When other people appear in his journals at all, he's analyzing them. Not interacting much at all. What you tend to get instead are endless musings about midlife loneliness, repressed sexuality, and other cerebral concepts.

Second, these journals aren't dated except by the year, repeated at the top of each page. So you aren't as anchored in time. You don't feel as close to him. The entries lack a daily immediacy. You can't easily track the changes in his life.

Third, poor Cheever was a desperately unhappy individual. He had real problems: alcoholism, struggling to support a family on a writer's unpredictable pay, guilt, a troubled marriage, and homosexual urges in a repressive time and place. So this is one unhappy book. Dark, very dark.

Fourth, Cheever intended the journals for publication and reworked everything into gorgeous prose. You'd think that would be great, but it imparts a false, self-conscious feel to the work. This isn't someone's raw emotion; it's been massaged and picked over and elevated to a lofty distance.

All these are personal preference things. But this book may not be the place to start if, like me, you're getting interested in famous published diaries. You could try The Assassin's Cloak, a fascinating anthology of the famous diarists of the world edited by Irene and Alan Taylor to get a feel for several different styles of journal writing.

Rating:
Summary: Tough slogging amply rewarded over and over
Review: Read these journals and you will meet this man. Not just the sardonic detached observer of the cocktail party set. Yes, the journals verify that he is that. And not just the gentle introspective genius who pours his heart out to the labradors as he empties his nth glass of gin sitting on the porch as a warm summer night drifts to an end. (is that too). But the man who, when a grand and ancient 3 and a half foot snapping turtle dares trample his flower bed, pumps 10 shotgun rounds unceremoniously into its head. Ten. (and remember, this is in Westchester). A man who basked in his celebrity and yet felt insecure around people of learning (he was high school dropout). A man who loved his wife as deeply as he resented marriage (ok, that's most of us - but he captures it). Some slogging, no doubt. But the gems make it overwhelmingly worthwhile. To read it is not just research, but a prose adventure into a soul.

Rating:
Summary: Mildly interesting but tedious
Review: You can see how his writing style improved, his voice became clearer as he aged. Yet it's tedious. Over and over you read about gin, whiskey, the weather, birds, his terrible relationship with his nutty wife, his inability to get perspective on life or writing in these journals. He is not as straightforward or revelatory as we would wish.

It's mildly interesting but don't expect to learn a thing about writing or even his writing.