Word: cheevers
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Rosenzweig said that when students would ask Harding why they were asked to read a story by American novelist John Cheever, he would always tell them to go back to the text until they understood the motivation behind the assignment and could discover its meaning for themselves...
...short list for this poll, the National Book Foundation balloted a number of select writers to pick their three favorite winners. Interestingly, four out the six books chosen were short story collections—the collected stories of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, and John Cheever respectively. Only two were novels—Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” and Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”—which suggests that there should be a different focus in the traditionally...
...cult status of The Catcher in the Rye was fully established. But in some important corners of American letters, there was a backlash forming. In reviews that were on the whole positive, John Updike still found Salinger sentimental, and Alfred Kazin thought he was getting "cute." For years John Cheever told friends that he thought Salinger wouldn't let Hollywood make a movie version of Catcher because Salinger was too old to play Holden. And in a review that is said to have infuriated Salinger, Mary McCarthy accused him of a "terrifying" narcissism and wondered whether Seymour killed himself because...
...Cheever drank himself right to the edge of the abyss but drew back. In 1975 he quit drinking for good. Chastened and sober, he completed Falconer, a magnificent novel of sin and redemption that hinges on a homosexual relationship. One year later, a collection of his short stories became a best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize. He even made a sort of peace with his sexual appetites...
...time of his death, Cheever's lasting fame seemed the safest of safe bets. But 27 years later, his star has dimmed. Bailey says part of the problem is that Cheever's work hasn't been embraced by academics, the gatekeepers of the canon. It might help that the Library of America, which has its own role in picking the immortals, has just admitted Cheever into its canon. In its new two-volume collection of his work, edited by Bailey, you hear Cheever's sly, lambent voice everywhere. Is it true the professors won't make room for him? Open...