John Cheever's Shady Hill Stories
Ok, There's one taking place in Manhattan
It’s Tax Day!!! And it’s also a shortened week as I spent Monday in the second day of Pesach. And then when I got on my computer, I had 200 emails to get through. Then I have a few writing jobs this week so I don’t know if I am going to write anything new this week (I do have a Pesach article that will hopefully be up before the end of the week. Else I’ll feel very silly posting it next week).
This means I have no clue how much time I’ll have to do anything this week. So instead of new articles about High Risk, John Cheever and the Book of Job, I’ll be posting another John Cheever retrospective article, so if you’ve missed some of these articles, you can read them now. And if you enjoyed them the first time, please feel free to click on them again. John Cheever’s Shady Hill stories were some of his best stories, so you should definitely read them.
In the first article on “The Housebreaker of Shady Hill,” I make the argument that housebreaking is a metaphor for John Cheever’s love of gay sex. He certainly enjoyed it, if his journals are anything to go on and he got away with it in a time before gay rights, when he was liable to get arrested.
"The Housebreaker of Shady Hill" (The Stories of John Cheever)
“The Housebreaker of Shady Hill” is brilliantly unhinged. By 1956, Cheever has abandoned well-written urban stories with clever endings. His suburban stories are gloriously bizarre.In this sprawling messy story, Johnny Hake engages in an illegal activity that could ruin his reputation and family. Wracked with guilt, he reads many stories about the same …
Next up is a return to Manhattan with “The Bus to St. James” a sad little soap opera about a man who starts an affair with a woman who seems all strong and independent, but is just as fragile as the submissive wife. Attention is also paid to the fact that the characters are racist (1950s rich white people racist? Say it isn’t so!!!) but virtue signaling to look like they are enlightened.
“The Bus to St. James's” (The Stories of John Cheever)
I tried to read Flannery O'Connor, but I couldn't get past the racism – n-word, hard-r “keep them in their place” racism. Even her classics like “A Good Man is Hard to Find” have characters casually going “Look at that N----”. Read the Complete Stories and you get crap like “The Geranium” that frame an old Southerner freaking out because his daughter li…
Finally, we have another Shady Hill story which feels like John Cheever working within the realm of self-parody. It’s either self-parody or a snotty swipe at an editor that challenged him to write a story about a happy marriage. So he presents a happy couple who never cheat on each other or endure tragedy. They disturb their neighbors with that noise. Seriously, what’s wrong with them?
"The Worm in the Apple" (The Stories of John Cheever)
In 9th grade, my friends and I loved the Elric series. We read the books. We talked about the Eternal Champion mythology. We even listened to Hawkwind. One day, I read Michael Moorcock's self-parody story “The Stone Thing” and eagerly showed it to my friend who got me into Elric. He was not amused. He took Elric too seriously to for passages like -
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For more John Cheever stories, you can buy a copy of The Housebreaker of Shady Hill.
My articles on BADASS HORROR are finished but you can still buy a copy.