Cheever

by Blake Bailey

120 “with his fatigue hat pulled down”: JC to MC [c. July 1942], Morgan.

  120 “his face sewed up and a pair of dark glasses”: LJC, 79.

  120 “I have a nomination of a writer”: Harold Ross to Lt. Col. Egbert White, May 12, 1942, NYPL-MSS.

  120 “but Dear Jesus I hope and pray”: LJC, 75.

  121 “[Yank] simply got over-manned”: Ross to Irwin Shaw, Oct. 1, 1942, NYPL-MSS.

  121 “The barracks are white clapboard”: JC to WM, Aug. 16, 1942, Berg.

  121 “I have never seen such poverty”: JC to Ames [c. fall 1942], NYPL-MSS.

  121 “homesick for Camp Croft and Sergeant Durham”: LJC, 77.

  121 “southern boys who run around”: ibid., 82.

  121 “the voluminous correspondence”: ibid., 84.

  121 “When the conductor shouted ‘Columbia’ “: JC to MC [c. Nov. 1942?], Morgan.

  121 “Ain't that pretty?”: LJC, 91.

  122 “the first electrocution in the family”: author int. Elizabeth Collins, April 22, 2004.

  122 “[We] went to a dance at the Eagle Club”: JC to MC [c. Nov. 1942?], Morgan.

  122 “[O]h Christ what fun”: JC to Herbst, Oct. 24, 1942, Yale.

  123 “Just a line to tell you”: Bennett Cerf to JC, Oct. 2, 1942, Columbia.

  123 “a fact that impresses no one”: JC to Cerf, Oct. 15, 1942, Columbia.

  123 “I have my schedule down now”: JC to MC [c. Oct. 1942], Morgan.

  123 “Gordon brought the gun up to the salute”: JC, “The Man Who Was Very Homesick for New York,” WSPL, 248-57.

  123 Lobrano thought … “really first-rate”: Lobrano to JC, Oct. 23, 1942, NYPL-MSS.

  123 “There was a nervous, little letter”: JC to MC [c. Oct. 1942], Morgan.

  124 “You'll appreciate his training”: JC, “Sergeant Limeburner,” New Yorker, March 13, 1943, 19-25.

  124 “[The captain] was an odd-looking man”: JC, “The Invisible Ship,” New Yorker, Aug. 7, 1943, 17-21.

  124 “[H]e has an up-turned nose”: LJC, 92.

  124 “I feel like a dope”: ibid., 86.

  125 “Three stripes,” wrote his father: FLC Sr. to JC and family, Nov. 14, 1943, CFP.

  125 “that the women in Africa”: JC to “Gus or Bill,” Jan. 9, 1943, NYPL-MSS.

  125 “On Lincoln's Birthday”: JC to Lobrano, Feb. 14, 1943, NYPL-MSS. 125 “I don't know how the Major will take it”: LJC, 95.

  125 “a special fire issue”: ibid., 96.

  125 “My family settled in Salem in 1632”: JC to Cerf [c. Feb. 1943], Columbia.

  126 “I know you have no more illusions”: Cerf to JC, Oct. 19, 1942, Columbia.

  126-127 Reviews of The Way Some People Live: Rose Feld, in New York Herald Tribune Book Review, March 14, 1943, 12; William DuBois, in New York Times Book Review, March 28, 1943, 10; Weldon Kees, in New Republic, April 19, 1943, 516-17; Struthers Burt, in Saturday Review of Literature, April 24, 1943, 9.

  127 “[A]ll in all—even though they don't like me”: LJC, 101.

  128 “I find all this early work intensely embarrassing”: JC to McLoone, March 11 [1968], Georgetown University Library.

  128 “were not rueful vignettes”: JC, in Atlantic Brief Lives, ed. Louis Kronenberger (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 275.

  CHAPTER TEN {1943–1945}

  129 the author's “childlike sense of wonder”: GT, 58.

  129 “Between long-distance calls to Frank Capra”: ibid., 2.

  130 “Kennedy? Kenelly? Kovacs?”: JJC, 164.

  130 “You and I are survivors, of course”: JC to David Rothbart, May 9, 1978.

  130 “We spend all of our Sundays rooting around”: JC to Herbst, May 17 [1943], Yale.

  131 “Make it clear, make it logical”: Col. Emanuel Cohen, “Film Is a Weapon,” Business Screen 7, no.1 (1946).

  131 How to Carve a Side of Beef: author int. Arthur Laurents, April 4, 2005.

  131 “lean purity” of his language: Ted Mills to SD, March 19, 1985, Swem.

  131 “There wasn't enough work”: Leonard Spigelgass to SD, Sept. 11, 1984, Swem.

  131 “flatten their backs against the wall”: Arthur Laurents, Original Story By (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 23.

  131 “Good John” … “Bad John”: Caskie Stinnett to SD, Dec. 12, 1985, Swem.

  132 “wild and hilarious”: SD int. Don Ettlinger, July 6, 1984, Swem.

  132 “Lennie, your mascara's running”: GT, 4.

  132 “never been so well regulated, moderate”: ibid., 2.

  133 remembered how “terribly intolerant”: SD int. Ted Mills, Oct. 17, 1985, Swem.

  134 refused to let anyone “touch or chastise”: SD int. Peggy Murray, June 11, 1984, Swem.

  134 “Codfish was not a thing I cooked”: author int. Ruth Denney, July 29, 2004.

  134 “funny, funny pieces for The New Yorker“: JC to Herbst, Nov. 1, 1945, Yale.

  134 “She ate as though”: JC, “Town House II,” New Yorker, Aug. 11, 1945, 20-25.

  135 “It was the naive”: JC, “Town House IV,” New Yorker, Jan. 5, 1946, 23-28.

  135 “He used to be president of paramount”: LJC, 106-7.

  135 “hanging out of their windows”: JC to MC [c. April 1945], Morgan.

  135 “absolutely nothing over waist-high”: CJC, 50.

  135 “crack[ed] coconuts” with a sailor: JC to Coates, April 6, 1974.

  136 shouting “La guerre est finie!”: SD int. Katrina Ettlinger, June 4, 1984, Swem.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN {1945-1946}

  137 “saga” of “disorder, hysteria, and vermin”: LJC, 112.

  137 “Here we are … living like the wicked rich”: MC to Herbst [c. Aug. 1945], Yale.

  137 “the interminable funeral procession”: LJC, 121.

  138 “She enjoys herself tremendously”: ibid., 123.

  138 his “favorite New York”: JC, “Moving Out,” Esquire, July 1960, 67.

  138 he thought his parents were “terribly disappointed”: SD int. Elizabeth Collins, July 2, 1984, Swem.

  139 “on this oblate spheroid”: FLC Sr. to JC, Jan. 16, 1944, CFP.

  139 “John that's all that makes life worth living”: FLC Sr. to JC and family, Oct. 10, 1943, CFP.

  139 “its layout sure sparkles”: FLC Sr. to JC and family, Nov. 7, 1943, CFP.

  140 “ ‘Too old’ as it looks”: FLC Sr. to JC, Nov. 21, 1943, CFP.

  140 “Got a phone call Th'sgiving”: FLC Sr. to JC and family, Nov. 29, 1943, CFP.

  140 “They told me to take off my clothes”: JC, fragment of The Holly Tree, Berg.

  140 “My letters from now on”: FLC Sr. to JC and family, Nov. 14, 1943, CFP.

  141 “excoriating her”: JJC, 22.

  141 “It was a very long association”: JC memoir fragment, Berg; also see WC, 303.

  141 In 1977 he told John Hersey: see CJC, 156.

  142 “His name is pronounced weasel”: JC to WM [c. June 1947], NYPL-MSS.

  142 “When I scythe I think of Tolstoy”: JC to Litvinov, April 4 [1977].

  142 “kind of like a diploma”: JC to Herbst [summer 1947?], Yale.

  143 “I got too much to do”: SJC, 31.

  143 “There are a lot of Mary's family here”: GT, 38.

  143 “Mary's unstable sister”: LJC, 117.

  144 “I used to put a gin bottle in the window”: JC to Ettlingers [c. 1960?], CFP.

  144 “Now and then he flashes”: GT, 62-63.

  145 “[T]he cost of this comfortable life”: LJC, 124.

  145 “Last night, folding the bath towel”: JJC, 16.

  CHAPTER TWELVE {1946-1949}

  146 “I got out of the army in November”: LJC, 113.

  146 “This letter is to thank you”: Robert Linscott to JC, July 1, 1946, Columbia.

  147 “I like the story but I keep asking myself “: LJC, 123.

  147 “a fairly good chance”: JC to Linscott, July 2 [1947], Columbia.

  147 “eggs in the city”: GT, 38.

  148 “The writing,
or the surface of the book”: JC to Linscott, Dec. 16 [1947], Columbia.

  149 “That's a wonderful presentation”: Linscott to JC, Dec. 22, 1947, Columbia.

  149 “the only man in the East Fifties”: GT, 43.

  149 “I want to write short stories”: LJC, 125.

  149 “as long as there wasn't any explicit”: CJC, 74-75.

  149 “It was one of the most felicitous”: “Interview with John Cheever,” Contemporary Authors 5 (Detroit: Gale Publishing, 1981), 110-11.

  152 “It will turn out to be a memorable one”: Thomas Kunkel, ed., Letters from the Editor: The New Yorker's Harold Ross (New York: Modern Library, 2000), 308.

  152 “unquestionably excellent”: Ross to JC, Oct. 15, 1947, NYPL-MSS.

  153 “This story has gone on for 24 hours”: CJC, 103-4.

  153 “I doubt very much if those lunches”: quoted in Francis Bosha, “The John Cheever Papers at the New York Public Library's Manuscripts and Archives Division (Part 1),” Resources for American Literary Study 27, no. 1 (2001), 83.

  153 “I leafed through the Thurber book”: JC to WM, Oct. 22, 1959, NYPL-MSS.

  153 Ross scribbled, “Eh? What's this?”: JC, “Why I Write Short Stories,” Newsweek, Oct. 30, 1978, 24.

  154 “I think Ross's feeling”: CJC, 123.

  154 “[S]he comes home with a briefcase full of themes”: LJC, 124.

  154 “too late for Mary to take up a musical instrument”: GT, 34.

  155 “independence and extraordinary maturity”: LJC, 132.

  155 “Sue is about the same”: JC to Ettlingers [c. July 1946], CFP.

  155 “[W]hen I picked her up at the party”: LJC, 136.

  155 “We think he's handsome”: ibid., 133.

  155 “All the people came out of a bad picture”: ibid., 121.

  155-156 “This maid has a gray uniform”: ibid., 134.

  156 “saying No thank you very much”: ibid., 129.

  156 Peter Pan, Voltaire, and Bambi: CJC, 5.

  156 “From the shelter halves of Guam”: JC, “The Origins of ‘Town House,’ “ Boston Post, Sept. 5, 1948.

  156 “a sentimental and moderately funny piece of bunk”: LJC, 135.

  157 “a thin, loose, mechanical whizzbang”: Brooks Atkinson, “At the Theatre: Gertrude Tonkonogy's ‘Town House’ Is Based on John Cheever's Short Stories in The New Yorker,” New York Times, Sept. 24, 1948, 31.

  157 “I don't quite know who to blame”: LJC, 136.

  157 “We are as poor as we ever have been”: JJC, 14.

  157 “This is a patriarchal relationship”: ibid., 15.

  157 “[s]corn, ridicule, abuse, and disgust”: JC, “The Opportunity,” Cosmopolitan, Dec. 1949, 44, 174-76.

  158 “I keep telling myself that this cannot go on”: JJC, 20.

  158 “Elizabeth [Ames] has closed the door”: JC to Denney [c. Jan. 1941], Dartmouth.

  158 “[W]henever I heard … brilliantly red”: Ian Hamilton, Robert Lowell: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1982), 146.

  159 Yaddo was “permeated with Communists”: ibid., 115.

  159 “a diseased organ, chronically poisoning”: Barry Werth, The Scarlet Professor (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 115.

  159 “John Cheever was wonderful”: SD int. Robert Penn Warren and Eleanor Clark, July 10, 1984, Swem.

  159 “We feel that the charge”: E. Clark, K. Phelan, J. Cheever, A. Kazin, and H. Breit to the Directors of Yaddo, March 21, 1949, NYPL-MSS.

  159 “I do not know how I should have come through”: Ames to Herbst, April 3, 1949, Yale.

  159 “Nothing that she ever did or said”: quoted in Elinor Langer, Josephine Herbst (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984), 295.

  160 “found so little worthwhile”: JC to Naomi Burton, June 3, 1955, Columbia.

  160 “I am writing principally to say”: JC to Linscott [c. Jan. 1950], Columbia.

  161 “I have told you many times”: Linscott to JC, Jan. 20, 1950, Columbia.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN {1949–1951}

  162 “As decadent, I think, as anything”: JJC, 12.

  162 “I can remember walking”: ibid., 11.

  162 “one of those men who labor”: WS, 204.

  163 “all the characteristics of a failure”: JJC, 15.

  164 “Goddammit, Cheever”: CJC, 74.

  165 “operated in a fantasy world”: Michael Shnayerson, Irwin Shaw: A Biography (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1989), 178.

  165 “I cannot, in good conscience, accept”: JC to Ames, May 21 [1950?], Yaddo Records, NYPL-MSS.

  165 “Tonight Ross is giving a party”: JC to Herbst [March 18, 1950], Yale.

  166 “contemptible smallness”: JJC, 22.

  166 “dread of falling, of loneliness and disgrace”: ibid., 32.

  167 “It is supposed to operate”: JC to WM, July 22, 1953, NYPL-MSS.

  167 “like magicians’ colored scarves”: Anne Tyler, in New Republic, Nov. 4, 1978, 46.

  168 “the best you have ever written”: Linscott to JC, June 7, 1951, Columbia.

  168 “pry a saleable story out of [his] head”: LJC, 147.

  168 “ ‘Eat, eat, eat,’ she shouts at them”: ibid., 146.

  168 “This house is remote and quiet”: JC to Lobrano [c. Sept. 1950], NYPL-MSS.

  168 “It's been sort of a fuckedup summer”: JC to Herbst [c. Aug. 1950], Yale.

  169 “Mary's head was light”: JC to Cowley [c. 1953?], Newberry.

  169 “This is a report on the long-delayed novel”: JC to Linscott, Oct. 13, 1950, Columbia.

  169 “like some kinds of wine”: JC, “What Happened,” in Understanding Fiction, ed. Cleanth Brooks and R. P. Warren (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1959), 571.

  170 “I had spent the summer in excellent company”: ibid., 572.

  172 “troublingly uncertain”: Cowley to JC, Jan. 22, 1953, Newberry.

  172 “The brother story, in its bare outline”: LJC, 160.

  172 “a form with which I seem unable to cope”: JC's fellowship application, Nov. 13, 1950, Guggenheim Foundation.

  172 “I'm not sanguine”: LJC, 147.

  173 “John seemed to have a joyful knowledge”: SD int. WM, Nov. 9, 1983, Swem.

  174 “The whole of my youth is in it”: quoted in James Campbell, “Secrets of the Confessional,” Guardian (London), Jan. 11, 2003.

  174 “Bill never made a secret”: author int. Shirley Hazzard, Aug. 27, 2004.

  175 “very remote from [his] life now”: ibid.

  175 “Mary went wild”: LJC, 305.

  176 “My God, the suburbs!”: JC, “Moving Out,” Esquire, July 1960, 67.

  176 “I was standing on the sidewalk [at the time]”: WM to SD, April 10, 1985, Swem.

  176 “There's this chap named Marples”: JJC, 211.

  176 “There was a paranoid side to him”: WM to SC, n.d., CFP.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN {1951–1952}

  177 “the chicken house in Scarborough”: GT, 63.

  178 “curbed with Italian marble”: LJC, 150.

  178 “If I can raise six kids”: SD int. Dudley Schoales Sr., June 25, 1985, Swem.

  178 “she played the meanest game of chopanose”: GT, 132.

  178 “Mrs. Vanderlip passed tea and sherry”: JC to Eleanor Clark [c. 1954?], CFP.

  179 “kind and gentle people”: JC to Herbst, July 17 [1951], Yale.

  179 Mimi Boyer was from old money: author int. Linda Boyer Gillies, May 29, 2004.

  180 “I don't think the Kaiser”: SD int. Philip and Mimi Boyer, July 8, 1984, Swem.

  180 “fleeting, warm and imperious smile”: JC to Litvinov, Jan. 18, 1965.

  180 “John, can't you try to be a little neater?”: LJC, 305.

  180 “it wasn't too safe”: ibid., 163.

  181 “Arthur is a fishing and drinking companion”: ibid., 250.

  181 “Please don't vote for Goldwater”: SD int. Arthur Spear, July 19, 1983, Swem.

  182 “I cringe to think how much we drank”: SD int. Virginia Kahn, June 5,
1985, Swem.

  182 “It wasn't the fall”: BC, “My Life with the Bourbon Dynasty: Ben Cheever Recalls Growing Up with an Alcoholic Father …,” Independent, Nov. 27, 2000, Features sec., 7.

  182–183 “without a leash”: GT, 55.

  183 “[O]n the third play”: ibid., 85.

  183 “charming, dashing”: author int. Joseph Kahn, May 21, 2005.

  183 “There has never been a more conscientious”: JC to Cowley [c. 1952?], Newberry.

  184 “a depressing place to which Jews”: JC to Herbst [c. 1952?], Yale.

  184 “a man in his shirtsleeves rehearsing”: LJC, 155.

  184 “the peers of Milton”: ibid., 212.

  184 “When the rich people had left”: TT, 91.

  185 Cheever was almost “stuffy”: SD int. Sally Swope, Nov. 8, 1983, Swem.

  186 latest effort had “gone very well”: JC to Cowley, March 24 [1952], Newberry.

  186 “I'd begun to think that the only way”: Cowley to JC, March 29, 1952, Newberry.

  186 “an all around air of profound embarrassment”: JC to Herbst [c. March 1952], Yale.

  186 “but it will probably never ring”: LJC, 151.

  187 “When I reached the office”: JC to Candida Donadio [c. Jan. 1965], Columbia.

  187 “I am like a prisoner who is trying to escape”: JJC, 5.

  188 “He was a man of principle”: JC to Clark [c. April 1954], CFP.

  188 “ ‘Isn't MaCarthy [sic] wonderful?’ “: JC to WM [c. April 1954], Berg.

  189 “Just pass the [vermouth] bottle over the gin”: NFB, 15.

  189 “She would take me out to lunch”: author int. Jane Carr, May 30, 2004.

  190 “an exciting place like New York”: FLC Jr. to Sarah Cheever, Feb. 22, 1972, PJC.

  190 “Where there's a Cheever, there's color“: FLC Jr. to David Cheever, July 15, 1970.

  190 “Hey, Joey!” Fred would hail him: HBD, 203–4.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN {1952–1954}

  193 “because poor little Benjy is dressed in rags”: GT, 71.

  193 “The only thing to come my way so far”: JC to Herbst, July 8 [1952], Yale.

  193 “a quiet man with a twinkle”: SD int. Ezra Stone, Oct. 11, 1985, Swem.

  193 “long-winded suggestions”: JC to Mrs. James Byrne, Dec. 17, 1952, Columbia.

  193 “I don't recall whether”: JC, “Don't Leave the Room During the Commercials,” TV Guide, Jan. 9, 1982, 20.