From the acclaimed author of A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates comes the unforgettable life of John Cheever (1912--1982), a man who spent much of his career impersonating a perfect suburban gentleman, the better to become one of the foremost chroniclers of postwar America. "I was born into no true class," Cheever mused in his journal, "and it was my decision, early in life, to insinuate myself into the middle class, like a spy, so that I would have an advantageous position of attack, but I seem now and then to have forgotten my mission and to have taken my disguises too seriously." Written with unprecedented access to essential sources--including Cheever's massive journal, only a fraction of which has ever been published--Blake Bailey's biography reveals the troubled but strangely lovable man behind the disguises, an artist who delighted in the everyday radiance of the world while yearning, above all, "to be illustrious."
Cheever's was a soul in conflict: he was a proud Yankee who flaunted his lineage while deploring the provincialism of his Quincy, Massachusetts, family circle; a high-school dropout who published his first story at eighteen; a pioneer of suburban realist fiction who continually pushed the boundaries of realism; a dire alcoholic who recovered to write the great novel Falconer; a secret bisexual who struggled with his longings and his fierce homophobia in a revolving door of self-loathing and hedonism. We see a man who concealed his anxieties behind the mask of a genial Westchester squire--a paterfamilias in Brooks Brothers clothes whose world was peopled by legendary writers and beautiful women (Malcolm Cowley, Saul Bellow, William Maxwell, Hope Lange, and John Updike, among them); whose groundbreaking work landed him on the covers of Time and Newsweek; a man whose demons and desperation were never quite vanquished by the joy he found in his work.
Blake Bailey has written a luminous biography, a revelation of a writer of timeless fiction and of the man behind the page.
From the Hardcover edition.
Excerpts
Chapter One...
1637--1912
Many skeletons in family closet," Leander Wapshot wrote in his diary. "Dark secrets, mostly carnal." Even at the height of his success, Cheever never quite lost the fear that he'd "end up cold, alone, dishonored, forgotten by [his] children, an old man approaching death without a companion." This, he sensed, was the fate of his "accursed" family--or at least of its men, who for three generations (at least) had seemed "bound to a drunken and tragic destiny." There was his paternal grandfather, Aaron, rumored to have committed suicide in a bleak furnished room on Charles Street in Boston, a disgrace too awful to mention. One night, as a young man, Cheever had sat by a fire drinking whiskey with his father, Frederick, while a nor'easter raged outside. "We were swapping dirty stories," he recalled; "the feeling was intimate, and I felt that this was the time when I could bring up the subject. 'Father, would you tell me something about your father?' 'No!' And that was that." By then Cheever's father was also poor and forsaken, living alone in an old family farmhouse on the South Shore, his only friend "a half-wit who lived up the road." As for Cheever's brother, he too would become drunken and poor, spending his last days in a subsidized retirement village in Scituate. No wonder Cheever sometimes felt an affinity to characters in Ibsen's Ghosts.
Despite such ignominy, Cheever took pride in his fine old family name, and when he wasn't making light of the matter, he took pains to impress this on his children. "Remember you are a Cheever," he'd tell his younger son, whenever the boy showed signs of an unseemly fragility. Some allusion was implicit, perhaps, to the first Cheever in America, Ezekiel, headmaster of the Boston Latin School from 1671 to 1708 and author of Accidence: A Short Introduction to the Latin Tongue, the standard text in American schools for a century or more. New England's greatest schoolmaster, Ezekiel Cheever was even more renowned for his piety--"his untiring abjuration of the Devil," as Cotton Mather put it in his eulogy. One aspect of Ezekiel's piety was a stern distaste for periwigs, which he was known to yank from foppish heads and fling out windows. "The welfare of the commonwealth was always upon the conscience of Ezekiel Cheever," said Judge Sewall, "and he abominated periwigs." John Cheever was fond of pointing out that the abomination of periwigs "is in the nature of literature," and it seems he was taught to emulate such virtue on his father's knee. "Old Zeke C.," Frederick wrote his son in 1943, "didn't fuss about painted walls--open plumbing, or electric lights, had no ping pong etc. Turned out sturdy men and women, who knew their three R's, and the fear of God." John paid tribute to his eminent forebear by giving the name Ezekiel to one of his black Labradors (to this day a bronze of the dog's head sits beside the Cheever fireplace), as well as to the protagonist of Falconer. However, when an old friend mentioned seeing a plaque that commemorated Ezekiel's house in Charlestown, Cheever replied, "Why tell me? I'm in no way even collaterally related to Ezekiel Cheever."
Cheever named his first son after his great-grandfather Benjamin Hale Cheever, a "celebrated ship's master" who sailed out of Newburyport to Canton and Calcutta for the lucrative China trade. Visitors to Cheever's home in Ossining (particularly journalists) were often shown such maritime souvenirs as a set of Canton china and a framed Chinese fan--this while Cheever remarked in passing that his great-grandfather's boots were on display in the Peabody Essex Museum, filled with authentic tea from the Boston Tea Party. In fact,...
Reviews
The New York Times...
"A definitive, Dickensian rendering of a complete and complicated life, addictively readable and long overdue . . .Mr. Bailey, with uncommon grace and evenhandedness, tracks Cheever's artistic brilliance amid chronic self-delusion and paranoia."
Christian Science Monitor...
"[An] expansive, wonderfully written biography. . . . Unstinting. . . . Bracing. . . . To read Bailey on Cheever is to arrive at a much fuller appreciation of a deeply gifted chronicler of American life."
Time ...
"A portrait of the man drawn judiciously but compellingly and in harrowing detail . . . . [a] fine biography."
Vanity Fair...
"A biography of monumental heft . . . that certifies Cheever's enduring relevance."
The Economist...
"Elegant. . . An insightful, clear-eyed life of the man."
The Oregonian ...
"Bailey's meticulously researched and eminently readable biography of almost 800 pages reveals with great sensitivity and clarity all the details of Cheever's troubled life."
New York Post ...
"Bailey manages to write with infectious engagement ... A little more than two months prior to his death, Cheever had received the National Medal for Literature, remarking in his acceptance speech that 'A page of good prose remains invincible.' Bailey's biography comes close to that invulnerability."
Chicago Sun-Times ...
"Quite successfully sorts out the facts, masks and contradictions of this unique American life."
Slate ...
"Masterful."
The Seattle Times...
"Impressive. . . . Finely written. . . . Bailey has done a near-perfect job of making the connections between the man and his masterpieces."
Philadelphia Inquirer...
"The appearance of Bailey's poised, thorough biography is both timely and corrective . . . Bailey presents his subject in all his contradictory fullness . . . Cheever: A Life succeeds by balancing insight, judgment, empathy, and clarity."
Richmond Times-Dispatch...
"Fascinating . . . powerfully moving . . . a brilliant example of literary biography at its best."
The New York Observer...
"Definitive. . . Judicious and nuanced. . . Mr. Bailey's research is impeccable and exhaustive--a mighty feat."
Miami Herald ...
"Balancing sympathy and judgment, Bailey illuminates Cheever's dark side with meticulous comprehensiveness."
The Times Picayune ...
"Cheever is not simply an elegant craftsman; he chronicles America's obsessions with a dark honesty. Bailey captures all this in his biography with a rare ability to tell all without gloating on the foibles of the man behind the artist."
Pittsburgh Post Gazette ...
"Written with style, grace, and wit."
Kenyon Review...
"Bailey's biography is sure-handed, thorough and comprehensive."
Bloomberg News...
"Exceptional. . . . Along with sensitivity and dispassionate thoroughness, it's his smooth blending of sources into a readable narrative that sets Bailey apart as a biographer."
Orlando Sentinel ...
"A compelling portrait of a complicated and tortured author, some of whose stories are among the best ever written."
Library Journal...
"Bailey's portrait of Cheever as author, family man, lover, and public figure contains everything readers would want to know about this important figure in American literature. The biographer is sympathetic toward his subject, but presents all sides of Cheever's complex character."
About the Author
Blake Bailey is the editor of a two-volume edition of Cheever’s work, forthcoming from 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.
