Three Early Cheever Stories
Wealthy Drunks
I am currently trying to figure out what to say about “The Housebreaker of Shady Hill.” I was originally going to say that it was a bad story but much better than his early bad stories, because it’s still surprising. Only, I’m not sure that it’s a bad story. It’s a messy story and it has an anti-climatic ending, but I’m not sure if it’s bad. I’m also writing an article about editing my first anthology and accidentally starting Dybbuk Press, which should come later today.
So in the interest of actually getting something out to my readers, here’s my earlier articles on John Cheever stories.
First, there’s “Goodbye My Brother” where I spend more time talking about John Cheever’s literary legacy than the story. This would be a theme in these early articles.
"Goodbye, My Brother" (The Stories of John Cheever)
John Cheever is one of those writers that you more often hear about than read. He inspired other writers and television shows. Mad Men owes a lot to his meditations on vaguely dissatisfied upper middle class white guys in the 20th century. That one Seinfeld episode name checked him as the lover of George's fiancee's father (they eventually killed her of…
Next comes “The Common Day” in which Cheever writes a story that takes place over the course of a day as if he’s a Neoclassical playwright.
"The Common Day" (The Stories of John Cheever)
This is not one of the John Cheever stories that you love and recommend to friends. This is the kind of story that John Cheever that seems like a quintessential John Cheever story if you’ve only heard Cheever’s name. It could also be a John Updike story or a Paul Auster story or a story by any of the dozens of the white guys writing about white guy angs…
Finally, there’s “The Big Radio,” a story that would have ended up in a pulp magazine had John Cheever not been the darling of The New Yorker fiction editors. It also leads to a discussion about engagement.
"The Enormous Radio" (The Stories of John Cheever)
One of the surprising things about John Cheever, Checkov of Suburbia, inspiration for Mad Men and lover of Susan's father on Seinfeld, is that he's much weirder than his reputation. Yes, he still is the quintessential 20th century white guy writer whose subjects were vaguely unhappy drunks caught in loveless marriages, but he was not afraid to throw mag…
Apologies as they have too many images. I think I had developed the image habit from Tumblr and had yet to find a good compromise between one picture and a picture every two paragraphs.
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