Cheever
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610 “notes scribbled … shopping list”: Michiko Kakutani, “In a Cheever-Like Setting, John Cheever Gets MacDowell Medal,” New York Times, Sept. 11, 1979, C7.
610 “The day before yesterday”: [MacDowell] Colony Newsletter 9, no. 1 (Fall 1979).
611 “Sex is very important to me”: SD int. Leonard, Oct. 23, 1984, Swem.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN {1979–1980}
612 “God have mercy on us all”: John Koster, “John Cheever Reads, FDU Listens,” Bergen Record, Sept. 28, 1978, C8.
612 “Any confrontation between”: Kay Gardella, “Cheever: The Agonies of Suburbia,” New York Daily News, Oct. 21, 1979.
612 hard at work on “another bulky book”: Jesse Kornbluth, “The Cheever Chronicle,” New York Times Magazine, Oct. 21, 1979, 102.
613 “That was the year everybody went to China”: JC, “The Night Mummy Got the Wrong Mink Coat,” New Yorker, April 21, 1980, 35.
613 “This cookbook is a pack of lies!”: author int. Janet Maslin, Feb. 10, 2005.
615 “We dined with the Ettlingers”: GT, 156.
615 “You know, you have this whole other life”: author int. Joseph Caldwell, April 5, 2005.
617 “I love you very much and my endeavors”: JC to MZ, June 11 [1980].
617 “might as well have spent … fishing”: MZ, journal [c. summer 1981], courtesy of MZ.
618 “in which suppuration, corruption and decay”: JC to MZ [c. summer 1977?].
619 “one of the great labors of history”: JJC, 356.
619 “I mean it's about what it's like to fuck”: notes on OWPS, Berg.
620 “Richard, have you ever plagiarized?”: Mahala Yates Stripling, “Emergency at Yaddo,” Praxis Post: In Person (on-line), July 11, 2001.
620 “He began an attack in his little bitchy way”: Peter Josyph, “The John Cheever Story: A Talk with Richard Selzer,” Twentieth Century Literature 37, no. 3 (Fall 1991), 335–43.
620 “we watch a ballgame, screw”: JJC, 362.
620 “I'm working like a streak”: JC to MZ, “The Twelfth” [October 12, 1980].
621 “At first I thought it was a joke”: author int. Joan Silber, May 9, 2005.
622 “I said that my scrotum hadn't retracted”: JC to Bev Chaney, Oct. 21, 1980, Swem.
622 “I'm afraid the seizure jarred”: JC to MZ [c. Oct. 1980].
622 “the utter nothingness”: JJC, 365.
623 “Did you know that I suffer from Grand Mal?”: JC to Valhouli, April 9, 1981, Swem.
623 “It's knocked the shit out of “: JC to Philip Schultz, Dec. 17, 1980, Swem.
624 “The need for chocolet is much finer”: LJC, 360.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT {1980–1981}
625 “I will tell them that our two most conspicuous”: JC to MZ [c. Oct. 1980].
626 “These seem never to have enjoyed”: quoted in George W. Hunt, John Cheever: The Hobgoblin Company of Love (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1983), xiii.
626 “Here they all were—the greatest”: JC, “The Island,” New Yorker, April 27, 1981, 41.
626–627 “in acute distress”: Phelps discharge summary, April 25, 1981, PRM.
627 “I felt like a Calla Liley [sic]”: LJC, 363.
627 “[T]hank you for … plumbing”: JC to Marvin Schulman, July 3, 1981, Swem.
627 “Yet such was his vitality”: OJ, 118.
627 “even if [his] prick fell off “: JU to SD, June 25, 1984, Swem.
628 “transitional cell carcinoma”: both pathology lab reports are in Cheever's medical file, PRM.
628 “I returned from the hospital”: LJC, 364.
628 “I'm sure that Schulman ducked it”: author int. Mutter, Jan. 8, 2005.
629 “I conclude that these are the last weeks”: JJC, 379.
629 “I still feel very frail from the defenestration”: LJC, 365.
629 melancholy but “kind of relieved”: SD int. Donald Van Gordon, June 30, 1984, Swem.
630 “[Cheever] looked thin, ashen”: Dana Gioia, “Meeting Mr. Cheever,” Hudson Review 39, no. 3 (Autumn 1986), 434.
632 “well enough to walk to the dam”: JC to “Tom Smallwood,” Sept. 7, 1981.
633 “The word ‘dear’ is what I use”: JJC, 382.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE {1981–1982}
634 “contracted for a full-length novel”: e-mail from Gottlieb to author, May 9, 2005.
636 Updike had “described erections”: JC to Weaver, Oct. 24, 1981, CFP; this remark was deleted from the letter published in GT, 317–18.
636 Updike wrote that he'd “read at a gulp”: JU to JC, Nov. 15 [1981], Swem.
636 “a viper who was trying to break wind”: LJC, 372.
636 “the most ambitious … single series”: Doug Hill, “Cheever Script Opens ‘American Playhouse,’ “ New York Times, Jan. 10, 1982, sec. 2, p. 23.
636 “Hope is out on the coast”: JC to SC, Feb. 11 [1979], Berg.
637 “very peculiar” set pieces: SD int. Paul Bogart, Feb. 11, 1985, Swem.
638 “as gooey as a box of Mallomars”: Harry F. Waters, “PBS's American Triumph,” Newsweek, Jan. 11, 1982, 67.
638 “bright, funny, accurate”: Jack Thomas, “Cheever Leads Showcase Series,” Boston Globe TV Week, Jan. 10, 1982, 2.
639 “I am not at all infirm”: quoted in Martha Frey, “Achiever (in Memoriam),” Vassar Quarterly, Summer 1982, 7–8.
639 “unusually vigorous” bone cancer: LJC, 373.
640 “Some parents will do anything”: NFB, 147.
641 “those rags that are mandatory hospital dress”: JJC, 385.
641 “While my beloved wife and my good friend”: ibid., 386.
641 “Get out! And don't come back!”: author int. Robert Schneider, June 29, 2005.
642 “My beloved daughter calls”: JJC, 385–86.
642 too frail to “throw backgammon dice”: JC to Clare Thaw, Jan. 23, 1982.
644 “Since we spoke on the phone”: quoted in James Atlas, Saul Bellow: A Biography (New York: Random House, 2000), 504–5.
645 “I have been ill and I wanted to be the one”: LJC, 374.
645 “to break through the misunderstanding”: WM to SC, Oct. 16, 1982, CFP.
645 “The stories are safe”: WM to JC, n.d., CFP.
646 “It was Tad who suggested”: LJC, 370.
647 choice of wife was “highly mature”: JJC, 389.
647 “You have been a splendid son”: LJC, 373.
CHAPTER FIFTY {1982}
648 “ecological romance”: CJC, 226–28.
651 Reviews of Oh What a Paradise It Seems: John Leonard, in New York Times Book Review, March 7, 1982, 1; Anatole Broyard, in New York Times, March 3, 1982, C28; JU, in New Yorker, April 5, 1982, 189; Geoffrey Stokes, in Village Voice, March 16, 1982, 93.
653 “You were bald as billiard ball”: FLC Sr. to JC and family, Oct. 17, 1943, CFP.
653 “[I] am determined”: JC to McConkey, March 31, 1982, Swem.
653 “a pollution that is distilled from the Adriatic”: LJC, 378.
653 “Gaunt, limping”: Geoff Walden, “Illness Aside, Cheever Full of Surprises,” Ossining Citizen Register, April 25, 1982.
654 “[T]here's never a word”: SC to Spencer, April 6 [1982], Canada.
654 “anything we do … palliative”: LJC, 380.
654 “What I am going to write”: JJC, 393.
655 “It was more than fifty years”: Malcolm Cowley, “John Cheever: The Novelist's Life as a Drama,” Sewanee Review 91, no. 1 (1983), 16.
656 “He [Tom] is a pleasant young man”: JJC, 394.
656 “I have never known anything like this fatigue”: ibid., 394–95.
657 “The conversation was brief “: LJC, 359.
658 “To see that vital, brilliant, charming”: “John Cheever and Family,” TV documentary, BBC Bookmark (1994).
658 “[Cheever] was struggling”: Susan Merrill, “The Everyday Ossining Haunts of John Cheever,” Patent Trader (Mount Kisco), March 19, 1986, B34.
658 “I just saw him on the Cavett show”: Howard Kissell, “Susan Cheever: Crossing a Frail Bridge,” W, Jan. 25–Feb. 1, 1985, 26.
EPILOGUE
661 “Greater authors there are than Cheever”: editorial, Boston Globe, June 22, 1982, 18.
662 “John Cheever's death Friday at 70”: editorial, Patriot Ledger, June 22, 1982, 18.
662 “a typical graduate of the ‘New Yorker’ school”: Times (London), June 21, 1982, 12.
664 “And I wonder whether you saw”: John Hersey to MC, June 23, 1982, Swem.
664 “Ossining's most prominent treasure”: “Ossining Loses Literary Treasure,” Ossining Citizen Register, June 22, 1982.
665 “I never really had a ‘hair-down’ talk”: SD int. Burton Benjamin, June 19, 1984, Swem.
665 “He was marvelous … full-of-life John”: Paul L. Montgomery, “Friends and Colleagues Recall Cheever at a Memorial Service,” New York Times, June 24, 1982, D23.
666 “a book that would make people love my father”: Gioia Diliberto, “A new Cheever Chronicle—by John's Daughter, Susan—Reveals His Tormented Life,” People, Nov. 5, 1984, 46.
666 “john cheever a fag”: GT, 18.
666 “a sexual omnivore”: Nathan Cobb, “Mixed Reviews from Family and Friends,” Boston Globe, Oct. 23, 1984, 29–30.
667 “dropped John like a hot rock”: author int. Barrett Clark, July 14, 2004.
667 “Oh, that's just Susie!”: author int. Pamela Spear Goff, March 26, 2005.
667 “a quality Walt Whitman once described”: Justin Kaplan, in New York Times Book Review, Oct. 21, 1984, 7.
668 “My usual feeling about mail”: JC to Litvinov, March 15 [1965].
668 “I thought with some bitterness”: quoted in Charles Baxter, Michael Collier, and Edward Hirsch, eds., A William Maxwell Portrait (New York: Norton, 2004), 113.
668 “his joy and the talent he had”: LJC, 17.
668 “Nailles is too good to be anyone you ever met”: ibid., 268.
669 “give [his] papers to Harvard”: Francis Bosha, “The John Cheever Manuscript Collection at Harvard,” Resources for American Literary Study 22, no. 1 (1996), 104.
669 “almost gleeful about the prospects”: JJC, ix.
670 “The image of Cheever”: Ted Solotaroff, in The Nation, Nov. 18, 1991, 616–20.
670 “What a good man he is!”: JJC, 240.
670 Reviews of The Journals of John Cheever: Mary Gordon, in New York Times Book Review, Oct. 6, 1991, 1; Jonathan Yardley, in Washington Post, Sept. 22, 1991, X3; JU, in New Republic, reprinted in More Matter (New York: Knopf, 1999), 279–86.
671 “Cheever spent an hour”: New York Times Book Review, Nov. 24, 1991, 37.
672 “a well-known writer who was gay”: author int. Larry David, April 5, 2004.
672 “the most expensive, protracted and vicious”: quoted in Anita Miller, Uncollecting Cheever: The Family of John Cheever vs. Academy Chicago Publishers (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), ix.
673 “[M]y father loved his children”: HBD, 218.
674 “a minor character in someone else's book”: TT, 169.
675 “If there's someone who never loved himself “: SD int. MZ, June 27, 1984, Swem.
676 “endure and be read by future generations”: “Inquirer Sponsors Poll on Immortal American Authors,” Publishers Weekly, March 26, 1979.
676 “Groping about for ways to understand”: Robert A. Morace, “Long-Distance Thoughts on ‘Cheever Studies,’ “ paper read at Northeast MLA meeting, March 1986, Swem.
677 “Superintendent Wishnie moved”: JC to Dirkses, March 13, 1982.
677 “There are no Cheever ghosts”: Lane Lambert, “Famous and Forgotten: Cheever's Literary Legacy Unheralded in Quincy,” Patriot Ledger, June 17, 2000, 1–3.
677 “I'm not inclined to think of myself “: John J. Mullins, “Cheever Writes on Matters of Urgency,” Times-Picayune, Feb. 22, 1979, sec. 4, p. 6.
677 “He was often labelled a writer about suburbia”: OJ, 109.
677 his “favorite” Western writer: James Kullander, “Why China's Culture Minister Got Sacked,” Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 15, 1989, 19.
678 “that Cheever writes beautifully”: Foreword, WS (New York: Perennial Classics Edition, 2003), ix.
678 “short, pithy, and pointed quote”: New York Daily News, June 23, 1982, 8.
PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Susan Cheever: Excerpts from Home Before Dark by Susan Cheever. Reprinted by permission of Susan Cheever.
HarperCollins Publishers: Excerpts from The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever, copyright © 1954, 1956, 1957 by John Cheever; and excerpts from The Wapshot Scandalby John Cheever, copyright © 1959, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964 by John Cheever. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company: Excerpt from “Meeting Cheever” from New and Selected Poems by Michael Ryan, copyright © 2004 by Michael Ryan. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
Newsweek: Excerpt from “A Duet of Cheevers” by Susan Cheever Cowley (Newsweek, March 14, 1977), copyright © 1977 by Newsweek, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of PARS International, on behalf of Newsweek and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copyright, redistribution, or retransmission of the material without express written permission is prohibited.
Simon & Schuster: Excerpts from The Letters of John Cheever, edited by Benjamin Cheever, copyright © 1988 by Benjamin Cheever. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The Wylie Agency, Inc.: Excerpt from “John Cheever: The Art of Fiction LXII” by Annette Grant (The Paris Review, Fall 1976), copyright © 1976 by The Paris Review. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency, Inc.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BLAKE BAILEY edited a two-volume edition of Cheever's work, published in 2009 by The Library of America. His last book, A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2005, and his articles and reviews have appeared in Slate, the New York Times, the New York Observer, and elsewhere. He lives in Virginia with his wife and daughter.
This Is a Borzoi Book
Published by Alfred A. Knopf
Copyright © 2009 by Blake Bailey
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by
Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Portions of this work originally appeared in the following: The Believer,
The Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, Virginia Quarterly Review,
and Vice.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to The Estate of John Cheever for the
use of photographs, documents, letters, and other archival material and
unpublished text by John Cheever.
Material from the following Alfred A. Knopf titles appears courtesy of
Random House, Inc.: Bullet Park, Falconer, The Stories of John Cheever,
Oh What a Paradise It Seems, and The Journals of John Cheever.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bailey, Blake.
Cheever : a life / by Blake Bailey.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“This is a Borzoi book”—Tp. verso.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN: 978-0-307-27137-2
1. Cheever, John. 2. Authors, American—
20th century—Biography. I. Title.
PS3505.H6428Z53 2009
813’.52—dc22
[B] 2008042277
Blake Bailey, Cheever