Cheever

by Blake Bailey

  55 “On the floors and on the beams”: JC, “Fall River,” The Left, Autumn 1931, 70-72.

  56 “It had rained hard early in August”: JC, “Late Gathering,” Pagany, Oct.-Dec. 1931, 15-19.

  56 “[Amy] thinks about her forty-fifth April”: JC, “Bock Beer and Bermuda Onions,” Hound & Horn, April-June 1932, 411-20.

  56 “One could tell it was bath-tub gin”: JC to Richard Johns, Oct. 17, 1967, Delaware.

  56 Hawthorne was “one of the original beats”: quoted in Alwyn Lee, “Ovid in Ossining,” Time, March 27, 1964, 69.

  57 “the Compleat Wasp”: Roger Skillings to author, Feb. 14, 2005.

  57 “hop along”: SD int. Hazel Hawthorne Werner, July 1, 1984, Swem. 57 “Their kindness … was exhaustive”: JC to Coates, April 22, 1974.

  57 “His hair was nearly gone”: quoted in Michael Janeway “Glimpses of Cheever,” Boston Globe, June 27, 1982, A22.

  58 “a wood-burning locomotive”: CJC, 104.

  58 “A writer is a Prince!”: JC to Laurens Schwartz, Oct. 16 [1975], Swem.

  58 “Get out of Boston, Joey!”: CJC, 206.

  58 winning smile and “stubborn jaw”: Malcolm Cowley, Dream of the Golden Mountains (New York: Viking, 1980), 260.

  58 “You taught me to be polite”: JC to Cowley, Aug. 20, 1977, Newberry.

  I was offered two kinds of drinks: quoted in Malcolm Cowley, “John Cheever: The Novelist's Life as a Drama,” Sewanee Review 91, no. 1 (1983), 2.

  59 “human employer of forty-two people”: CJC, 209-10.

  60 “gleaming with tears”: ibid., 189.

  60 “I still remember”: JC to Denney [c. Feb. 1935], Dartmouth.

  60 “I can remember night after night”: ibid.

  61 “Other than Malcolm's word”: JC to Elizabeth Ames, April 24, 1933, NYPL-MSS.

  61 “I don't expect to do anything worth publishing”: LJC, 32.

  61 “The idea of leaving the city”: ibid., 33.

  61 “Fred, I'm leaving”: CJC, 189.

  CHAPTER FIVE {1934–1935}

  63 “Call it Yaddo, Mama, for it makes poetry!”: Jean Nathan, “Yaddo,” New York Times, Sept. 19, 1993, sec. 9, p. 1.

  64 “the romantic culmination of a rare triangular friendship”: “Historical Note,” Yaddo Records, NYPL-MSS.

  64 “When a beam of light”: JC,” The Hostess of Yaddo,” New York Times Book Review, May 8, 1977, 3, 35.

  64 “When you have a suggestion to make”: Ames to Blitzstein, n.d., Yaddo Records, NYPL-MSS.

  65 “If Elizabeth Ames was fond of you”: SD int. Nellie Shannon, July 17, 1985, Swem.

  65 “to a Newport ‘cottage’ “: quoted in A Century at Yaddo (Saratoga Springs, N.Y: Corporation of Yaddo, 2000), 13. a not-so-subtle “climate of repression”: JC to George Biddle [c. Dec. 1954?], LC.

  66 “the Yaddo effect”: Nathan, “Yaddo,” sec. 9, p. 1.

  66 “Hooves of fire!”: “Hostess of Yaddo,” 35.

  66 “[M]oving with great Hermian grace”: unpublished memoir, courtesy of Allan Gurganus.

  66 “I am told that he is twenty-two years old”: Ames to William Soskin, Feb. 18, 1930, Yaddo Records, NYPL-MSS.

  67 “unwise attachments”: JC to Josephine Herbst [c. fall 1938], Yale.

  67 “‘I'm glad you did, John’ “: JC to Denney Dec. 15, 1934, Dartmouth.

  67 “I realized for the first time”: JC to Coates, July 9, 1974.

  67 “Only dogs, servants, and children”: SD int. Gurganus, Sept. 16, 1984, Swem.

  67 “Do you want me to talk to him?”: Nellie Shannon to Philippa Walker, May 21, 1993, Yaddo Records, NYPL-MSS.

  67 “only place I've ever felt at home”: SD int. John Leonard, Oct. 23, 1984, Swem.

  68 “a footnote to scholarship history”: New York Times, May 12, 1995, D17.

  68 “I was one of the first to recognize”: Tony Quagliano, ed., Feast of Strangers: Selected Prose and Poetry of Reuel Denney (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999),46.

  68 “Sympathy and patience”: JC to Denney [c. July 1, 1934?], Dartmouth.

  69 “[S]eeing the importance you give”: JC to Denney [c. Oct. 1934], Dartmouth.

  69 “Being likened to a decadent intellectual”: JC to Denney [c. Aug. 1934], Dartmouth.

  69 “sane conservative” phase: JC to Denney [c. July 1, 1934?], Dartmouth.

  69 “There is something immense”: JC to Denney, Sept. 20, 1934, Dartmouth.

  70 “He's a liberal, a gentleman and a romantic”: JC to Denney [c. April 1936], Dartmouth.

  70 “I think of Europe as a rat-toothed bitch”: JC, “Letter from the Mountains,” unpublished manuscript, Newberry Cowley's halfhearted endorsement of the piece is handwritten on the manuscript itself, as is the reply (“defeatist”) of a fellow editor initialed “G.S.”

  71 “[A]cross the street from me”: JC to Denney [c. Aug. 1934], Dartmouth.

  71 “I almost destroyed my teeth”: CJC, 190.

  71 “His only capital was a typewriter”: Malcolm Cowley “John Cheever: The Novelist's Life as a Drama,” Sewanee Review 91, no. 1 (1983), 2.

  71 “It was the torpor we objected to”: Joseph Barbato int. JC, Oct. 27, 1978, Swem.

  72 “Hudson Street is a far cry from … Boston”: LJC, 34.

  72 “one of the finest tongues”: JC to Denney [c. Nov. 1934], Dartmouth.

  72 “On Saturday night Muriel gave a reading”: JC to Denney [c. Aug. 1934], Dartmouth.

  72 “Nice people to drink beer”: JC to Denney [c. Nov. 1934], Dartmouth.

  73 “Malcolm produced … silver spoons”: SD int. Frances Lindley Sept. 17, 1984, Swem.

  73 “I know more about the history of literature”: JC to Denney [c. Oct. 1934], Dartmouth.

  73 “I've done one lousey detective story”: JC to Denney [c. Aug. 1934], Dartmouth.

  73 “Silas Crockett, the first in line”: JC, “Way Down East,” New Republic, Dec. 11, 1935, 146.

  74 asked to make a “small contribution”: Ames to JC, Aug. 23, 1934, Yaddo Records, NYPL-MSS.

  74 “It now seems best to set your departure”: Ames to JC, Sept. 24, 1934, Yaddo Records, NYPL-MSS.

  74 “the lowest of the low”: JC to Denney [c. Oct. 1934], Dartmouth.

  74 “I have a lot of things to thank you for”: JC to Ames [c. Dec. 1934], Yaddo Records, NYPL-MSS.

  75 “I am certain of my own voice”: JC to Denney [c. Nov. 1934], Dartmouth.

  75 “for all of their contempt … preciocity”: JC to Denney, Aug. 29, 1934, Dartmouth.

  75 “I feel confident”: LJC, 51.

  75 “Walker Evans invited me to spend the night”: ibid., 304.

  76 “We all knew John was sort of gay”: author int. Michael Janeway March 28, 2005.

  76 Cowley would later deny having seen “any sign”: SD int. Cowley June 12, 1984, Swem.

  76 Cheever's version of Crane's death: author int. SC, Sept. 7, 2004.

  76 “Poor Peggy … She died”: Cowley to JC, Nov. 29, 1979, Newberry

  77 “If I followed my instincts”: JJC, 219.

  77 Denney had never “known or suspected”: Quagliano, ed., Feast of Strangers, 46.

  77 “I wanted to marry almost every girl”: JJC, 247.

  77 “He always had this kind of chuckle”: author int. Dodie Merwin Captiva, June 6, 2005.

  78 “He would never talk to me about his brother”: author int. FC, Aug. 29, 2004.

  78 “He wanted to understand the world”: WM to SC, n.d., CFP

  CHAPTER SIX {1935–1938}

  79 “I don't know how I'll get along “: JC to Denney [c. Jan. 1935], Dartmouth.

  80 “Tomorrow, try writing a story”: Malcolm Cowley, Dream of the Golden Mountains (New York: Viking, 1980), 261.

  80 “refinement, discretion, excessive detail”: LJC, 34.

  80 “I thought we were taking one”: Katharine White to JC, March 22, 1935, NYPL-MSS.

  80 “Things got lower and lower”: JC to Denney [c. March 1935], Dartmouth.

  81 “This story
… we can't believe is for us”: White to Maxim Lieber, April 15, 1935, NYPL-MSS.

  81 “She can't ask about her roomers’ habits”: quoted in White to Lieber, May 2, 1935, NYPL-MSS.

  81 “I should be interested to know how”: White to Lieber, June 18, 1935, NYPL-MSS.

  81 “I've never imagined making a living”: JC to Denney [c. March 1935], Dartmouth.

  82 “Before I left Hanover for the last time”: LJC, 52.

  82 “It would be something as casual”: JC, “Of Love: A Testimony,” WSPL, 43-66.

  83 “a story writer and a novelist”: LJC, 38.

  83-84 “While we were talking about Triuna”: JC to Ames [c. spring 1935], Yaddo Records, NYPL-MSS.

  84 “I have almost always worked”: LJC, 37.

  84 “Yaddo still goes on”: JC to Cowleys [c. Sept. 1935?], Newberry 84 “I can't get a WPA job”: LJC, 38.

  84 “I'm not doing the work I should do”: JC to Denney, Nov. 11, 1935, Dartmouth.

  85 “[P]oor John can't sit over there in the dark”: Walker Evans, Walker Evans at Work (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), 117.

  85 “C'mon, Cheever, join up!”: SD int. Lila Refregier, Jan. 14, 1985, Swem.

  85 “nothing in their faces but a love of money”: JC, “In Passing,” Atlantic Monthly, March 1936, 157, 331-43.

  86 “I hope he hasn't deserted us entirely”: White to Lieber, April 27, 1936, NYPL-MSS.

  86 “But it will be ten times as long”: JC to Denney [c. Jan. 1936], Dartmouth.

  87 “I thought of her not as a distinguished writer”: LJC, 41. 87 “Poor Nathan”: ibid., 152.

  87 “I'm not as satisfied with it”: JC to Denney [c. April 1936], Dartmouth.

  87 “is John Cheever’ right?”: Wolcott Gibbs to JC, June 4, 1936, NYPL-MSS.

  87 “It takes almost no gasoline”: JC to Denney, Dec. 11, 1935, Dartmouth.

  88 discussed their respective “Belle Isles”: FLC Jr. to Sarah Cheever, Feb. 22, 1972, PJC.

  88 “We disagree on everything”: JC to Denney [c. July 1936], Dartmouth.

  88 “I'm a stranger here”: JC to Denney [c. Jan. 1936], Dartmouth. move to Maine “and have a boat and a girl”: JC to Denney [c. May 1936], Dartmouth.

  89 “My father keeps telling me”: LJC, 40.

  89 “Daisey MacAfee Bonner”: JC to Denney, July 3, 1936, Dartmouth.

  90 “I woke one morning with a hangover”: LJC, 42.

  90 “I am sorry that we don't like this story”: White to Betty Shalett, Sept. 18, 1936, NYPL-MSS.

  90 “interested in the Spanish trouble”: “Frère Jacques,” Atlantic Monthly, March 1938, 161-63.

  90-91 “really illuminates the contemporary scene”: New York Times Book Review, June 4, 1939, 4.

  91 “I haven't appreciated anything as much”: JC to Gibbs, Oct. 13, 1936, NYPL-MSS.

  91 “I've got to go over the whole novel”: LJC, 42.

  91 “I have a chance of a WPA job”: JC to Denney [c. Oct. 1936], Dartmouth.

  92 “It's the vision of those three sheets”: LJC, 50.

  92 “a good drinking companion”: JC to Herbst [c. winter 1937?], Yale.

  92 “turned his back on his three beautiful Brooklyn novels”: quoted in “DanielFuchs,” Independent (London), Sept. 2, 1993, 30. 92 “It was a pretty idyllic time”: Daniel Fuchs to SD, May 8, 1984, Swem.

  92 “When I was younger”: Barbato int. JC, Oct. 27, 1978, Swem.

  92 “He wanted terribly to be respected”: SD int. Dorothy Farrell, April 9, 1985, Swem.

  93 “crying like a young kid”: “His Young Wife,” Collier's, Jan. 1, 1938, 21-22, 46. 93

  92 “[W]hat's happened between now and then”: JC to Denney Jan. 21, 1938, Dartmouth.

  93 “A literary career”: “Not for Publication,” Patriot Ledger, March 17, 1938, 9.

  CHAPTER SEVEN {1938–1939}

  94 with “clarity, ease and meaning”: Monty Noam Penkower, The Federal Writers’ Project (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 159.

  94 “Every time I saw a beggar in the streets”: LJC, 48.

  94 “a stigma of the lowest order”: Jerre Mangione, The Dream and the Deal (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), 119.

  95 “Have the Bill Fold and the X [$10] enclosed”: FLC Sr. to JC, Dec. 19, 1943, CFP

  95 “an old lady who sits at the head of the table”: LJC, 45. 95 “under the influence of Fitzgerald”: GT, 155.

  95 “What about John Cheever?”: WM to Geraldine Mavor, Sept. 1, 1938, NYPL-MSS.

  96 “like pulling a tooth”: JC to Ames [c. Oct. 1938], Yaddo Records, NYPL-MSS.

  96 “seemed neither interesting nor useful”: Penkower, Federal Writers’ Project,161.

  96 “twisting into order the sentences”: LJC, 47.

  96 “Cheever thinks that the [introduction]”: Henry G. Alsberg to Harold Strauss, Jan. 28, 1939, LC.

  97 “Hey Johnny … it's a long time”: Jim McGraw to SD, June 6, 1984, Swem.

  97 “dreaming out a book”: JC to Denney, July 8, 1939, Dartmouth.

  98 “a howling wind that shakes the island”: LJC, 48.

  98 “We got on one another's nerves”: JC to Denney [c. Jan. 1940], Dartmouth.

  99 “three wonderful writers all named John”: Paris Review 85 (Fall 1982), 130.

  99 “concerning writers and their difficulties”: WM to Mavor, Oct. 20, 1939, NYPL-MSS.

  99 thought only “half done”: WM to JC, Sept. 29, 1939, NYPL-MSS.

  99 “This finds me stranded on an island”: JC to WM, Oct. 1, 1939, NYPL-MSS.

  99 “I appreciate your personal interest”: Mavor to WM, Nov. 21, 1939, NYPL-MSS.

  100 struck by Cheever's “immense charm”: BBC int. WM, April 20, 1993, CFP.

  CHAPTER EIGHT {1939–1941}

  101 “the grey light of New York apartments”: JC to Denney [c. Dec. 1939], Dartmouth.

  102 “[H]e was kind of slumped over”: LJC, 53.

  102 “That's more or less what I would like”: CJC, 239.

  103 “I was the child she didn't want”: TT, 31. 103 “Even now, in a family of doctors”: ibid., 36.

  103 “My own work is extremely confining”: MC's Sarah Lawrence application, April 17, 1935, CFP.

  103 “very little-girlish speech and behavior”: author int. J. William Silverberg, Sept. 23, 2004.

  104 “medical head crashes society”: quoted in TT, 42.

  104 “Each breath you draw”: LJC, 51.

  104 “I think he avoided France”: TT, 61.

  105 “The folly of a fool”: SD int. Sara Spencer, Nov. 10, 1983, Swem.

  106 “he would tell a pointless obscene story”: quoted in TT, 87.

  107 “He would like to reduce personality”: LJC, 66.

  107 “Your sweater is on backwards”: “Mary—the Other Cheever,” Suburbia Today, April 19, 1981, 6.

  107 “Oh, the Sarah Lawrence girl!”: author int. MC, Dec. 13, 2003.

  108 “John boy—Quincy your hometown”: FLC Sr. to JC, Oct. 2, 1940, CFP.

  108 “Dad's just been in telling me about Newburyport”: JC to MC [c. summer 1940], Morgan.

  108 “Quincy Youth Is Achieving New York Literary Career”: CJC, 3.

  108 “great moodiness and discontent”: JC to MC [c. Aug. 1940], Morgan.

  109 “a deliberately digressive, episodic … work”: quoted in Dennis Edward Coates, “The Novels of John Cheever,” unpublished dissertation, Duke University, 1977, 35.

  110 “Porter is wonderful”: LJC, 59.

  110 “very kind” but “impossible” offer: JC to MC [c. Aug. 1940], Morgan.

  110 “If there is anything in my memory”: LJC, 106.

  111 “taken off to the booby-hatch”: ibid., 56.

  dialogue was “beside the point”: quoted in Paris Review 85 (Fall 1982), 134.

  112 “ ‘I'm going to be a war profiteer’ “: JC, “The Happiest Days,” New Yorker, Nov. 4, 1939, 15-16.

  112 lacking “direction or focus”: Gustave Lobrano to Lieber, June 20, 1940, NYPL-MSS.

&n
bsp; 112 “You just sit around here”: JC, “I'm Going to Asia,” Harper's Bazaar, Sept. 1940, 61.

  114 “We will have a good life darling”: LJC, 61

  114 “We just decided not to wait much longer”: MC to Milton Winternitz, n.d., CFP.

  114 I'm the old one!”: author int. Bill Winternitz, June 10, 2004.

  114 “My maternal great-grandmother”: Lynne Ames, “The View from Ossining: The Solitude of an Author's Wife and a Poet in Her Own Right,” New York Times, Feb. 19, 1995, Westchester sec. 2, p. 3.

  CHAPTER NINE {1941–1943}

  115 “shopping in Frenchtown”: JC to Herbst, Oct. 24, 1942, Yale.

  115 “spilling martinis all over the Brevoort”: JC to Herbst [c. spring 1942], Yale.

  117 “an inability to draw … lives together”: JC to Herbst [c. Oct. 1954], Yale.

  117 “slipped out of the heavy-drinking set”: LJC, 65.

  117 “keep [him] in mind”: JC to Cowley Jan. 3, 1942, Newberry.

  117 “All I know about war”: LJC, 67.

  117 “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye”: JC, “Goodbye, Broadway—Hello, Hello,” WSPL, 224-27.

  118 Fort Dix was “like a Boy's Camp”: JC to Lobrano [c. May 1942], NYPL-MSS.

  118 “razor-back hogs, grits, thin-bloodedness”: JC to Herbst [c. 1954?], Yale.

  118 “The food is very good”: JC to MC [c. May 1942], Morgan.

  118 “Our sergeant is a strange and interesting man”: LJC, 70.

  118 “five poisonous gases without [their] masks”: ibid., 72.

  119 “an ex-smoke eater named Smoko”: ibid., 82.

  119 “an old ex-prostitute or ex-actress”: JC to MC [c. June 1942], Morgan.

  119 “[M]ail call is the high point”: JC to Lobrano [c. May 1942], NYPL-MSS.

  119 “I too have slept with someone else's boot”: LJC, 83.

  119 “Don't bother to answer them”: Ibid., 75.

  119 “Another grand morning”: FLC Sr. to JC and family, Nov. 7, 1943, CFP.

  120 “having a lot of trouble with negros”: JC to MC [c. Aug. 1942], Morgan.