John Cheever’s Collected Stories, first awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1979, is a magnificent, inspiring collection, and one that has resolutely stood the test of time. Spanning from his earliest writings in the mid 1940s to the late 1970s, Collected Stories features Cheever’s most iconic works, including ‘The Swimmer’, ‘The Enormous Radio’, and ‘The Country Husband’. These stories plumb the depths of human experience and have rightfully earned Cheever the title ‘Chekhov of the suburbs.’ And yet, for all his accolades, John Cheever (1912–82) faded from critical attention after his death. It wasn’t until 1991, with the publication of the scandalous The Journals of John Cheever (also available in Vintage Classic) that his reputation underwent significant revision. Here, his public persona was so brutally contrasted with his private – hitherto depicted as wry, conservative and monogamous man; the journals instead portrayed Cheever as plagued by chronic alcoholism. He struggled, too, with acceptance of his bisexuality, for which he consistently blamed his long-suffering wife, Mary.
All this biographical stuff naturally complicates the way you read him. Was he an essentially good yet brooding chap, or an adulterous, misogynous tyrant? You’ll need to read The Journals to decide on that yourself – and ultimately, it would be a shame if it clouded your opinion. Because the man, as horrible as he sounded, can write, and there remains such a thrilling sense of anticipation when cracking open the Cheever spine – as if delving into something fresh and cool and profound. Never has a writer so poignantly captured the tedium of the American suburbs.
Like his contemporary Richard Yates, Cheever’s fiction dwells largely in the domestic, exploring life in mid-twentieth century America, and it is located mostly in the Upper East Side and the suburbs of Westchester. We read about families holidaying in ski lodges, home renovations, servants and parties; characters are re-occurring. They are ordinary folk, with ordinary feelings – yet something larger and more damaging festers in them: loneliness and helplessness. And while you can always count on Cheever’s stories to be grim, there is such aching beauty in these tales, so sad and authentic. And beneath the surface of sparse, neat prose seethes other kinds of compelling desire: for escape, for the more generous times in the past, and for the climax of confined rage and corruption.
For me, stand-out stories in the collection are and ‘The Sorrows of Gin’ and ‘The Swimmer’. ‘The Sorrows of Gin’ is a short tale, told from the perspective of a little girl, Amy. Her parents are upper-middle class and like to attend parties – they both enjoy a tipple. The family employs a cook, Rosemary, who it later transpires has a severe drinking problem. Amy’s father has a drinking problem of his own – he needs several drinks in the evening before he softens: ‘At last,’ Amy thinks, relieved, ‘he is happy.’ ‘The Swimmer’, Cheever’s most famous and most anthologised story, remains awe-inspiring in its casual, cruel critique of bourgeois America, chronicling the Narcissus-like Neddy Merrill’s bizarre quest to swim across all the swimming pools in his neighbourhood. It is a brilliant story, perfectly encapsulating Cheever’s most dominant themes, mixing the bitter realism of loss of wealth and prestige with Neddy’s surrealist nostalgia for the past.
Rebecca Starford is editor of **.
