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Cheever (2009)

by Blake Bailey(Favorite Author)

4.17 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1400043948 (ISBN13: 9781400043941)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Knopf

review 1: An excellent biography of the unforgettable life of John Cheever: a proud Yankee who flaunted his lineage while deploring the provincialism of his family circle. A struggling alcoholic and a self-loathing homosexual whose career and reputation was hijacked in part for two reasons. First because he originally published most of his work in "The New Yorker" magazine, he was typecast as a New York writer. What this meant that while he may be in the Library of America, he is for the most part not on the syllabus. The other thing that hijacked Cheever's reputation were revelations about his personal life. While he was married with three children and wrote of the joys of family life, the real themes of his life were secrecy, doubleness, sorrow, the comforts of sex, the perils of ... morealcohol and the suddenness and fleetingness of joy. His is the most comprehensively documented inner life of any American writer.
review 2: Highly detailed but never boring, this is an exemplary, "warts and all" biography of the acclaimed short-story writer & novelist. Difficult to live with and even more difficult to love, Cheever smoked and drank prodigiously and pursued sexual gratification almost to his deathbed, all of which is chronicled vividly by the dogged Bailey. If I have one criticism it's that we don't hear nearly enough from Cheever's wife Mary, who suffered tremendously from his egocentricity and repressed homosexuality. However, since Bailey states that he interviewed her more than 20 times, it seems likely that any lack of presence is due more to her reticence than to any failure on the author's part. Definitely well worth your time. less

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