"O City of Broken Dreams" (The Stories of John Cheever)
Whether from the country or the city, these people are idiots
Long before Californication promised that a writer could live off the royalties of one novel indefinitely while entertaining dozens of sex crazed fans, people have dreamed of being successful writers. They shove their screenplay at their friends and talk about all the meetings they are taking. Vanity presses and shady agents have profited from their gullibility.
In a story that was obviously inspired by an acquaintance yammering on about an unfinished novel or unproduced screenplay, John Cheever wrote the most ridiculous country mouse vs city mouse take with an extremely stupid couple and utterly ridiculous con artists. Nothing in this story holds up to scrutiny, but Cheever liked to play fast and loose with the tropes, offering up exaggerated characters and impossible situations under the guise of realism. The characters seem genuine at first. They don't have telepathy or fairy wings. Yet, rarely do his characters maintain their authenticity to the end of the story.
Later John Cheever stories would see him flying his freak flag proudly (especially in “The Swimmer”) but for now, it's best to consider 1948 John Cheever as the short story equivalent of Sam Shepard's middle and late period where all the symbolism and surrealism were just below the surface.
The first thing the reader might notice is that the main characters, Alice and Evarts Molloy, are ideal country bumpkins. These are the kind of people who should never leave their home town. In another story, they'd be trading their house for magic beans. In this story, they are telling everyone who will listen about their good fortune in finding a Broadway producer in Indiana. They don't just brag about going to New York to see their play produced. Oh no. They have to tell the whole story about seeing Tracey Murchison lecturing at the Women's Club and shoving the first act of Evarts' unfinished play in his face.
From the first conversation with the train conductor to getting lost on the way to the rundown hotel (it was advertising on the train), it becomes obvious that these characters are too stupid for credibility. Alice doesn't want to ask for directions because she's afraid of someone taking advantage. So they get lost. Then they tell their story to the bell boy who immediately refers them to his agent cousin and even though he's a bell boy, they not only take him seriously, but they ask him to watch their kid.
It also doesn’t help that Evarts can’t keep his eyes off of every woman he sees. He’s the one who is supposed to be finishing the play, yet he’s already dreaming about groupies.
Cheever isn't so obvious as to depict them walking around Time Square and staring up at the skyscrapers, but almost everything else about this couple is a parody of the New York tourist. Every day, they eat at the automat, the staple of noir movies that combines fast food with vending machines. The food is behind windows. You put money in and out comes to food. Not only are they excited to eat at this place, but they also order the food that's most likely to go bad.
However, even as we know that everyone is swindling this family, the rest of the characters prove just as ridiculous. Why was Murchison giving a lecture in a small Indiana town in the first place? Did he really mean to produce a one act play? Did he think that a bus driver without writing experience would actually finish the one play that he was working on and it would make him money? Was he doing it to please his friend who needed work.
Then comes the bell boy's cousin who doesn't even read the play before waxing poetic on all the money they can make with it. Mr. Leavitt wants to sue Murchison and even as he is working out of a dump with a secretary has to sell eggs to make up for the low wages, he sells himself as a master agent. Then he tells Evarts to relax because he's going to handle everything and poor Everts believes him.
One place where Cheever outright curses both “city slickers” and “country bumpkins” is Murchison's party where Alice and Evarts meet many people who turn their backs on them. Everyone is a snob and no one has time for this couple, at least until Alice is asked to sing a song. As she sings, Evarts realizes that she's singing the song that always ends with her dramatically falling to the floor. Evarts knows that this move was cliché even in Indiana, but he can't stop her. So once she takes that fall, the entire audience laughs, because ironic laughter was not invented by Generation X.
Then the woman that Evarts based his unfinished play shows up because Murchison invited her to New York to sue him, for libel. Again, the reader is forced to doubt Murchison's logic. Even though Evarts and Alice are counting their millions because one agent promised them that they would make millions, it's obvious that they are not going to make a cent off the play. Evarts can't even be bothered to finish it. They spent their life savings on a rundown hotel room and automat dinners. How much money does Murchison expect to make off of them?
The last paragraphs see the Molloys leaving New York but uncertain about their next step. The narrator tells us that they could either go back home or they could keep going onto Hollywood and try their luck there. Most critics call this an ambiguous ending, but it seems pretty definitive. No matter where the Molloys go, they will believe that they are just one agent or producer away from a fortune. They are really that delusional.
Leave it to Arthur Miller or Eugene O'Neill to make a tragedy out of these delusions being stripped away. Cheever would rather smirk and point out that it takes more than a bad week in NYC to destroy someone's dreams, no matter how much those dreams should be destroyed.