Word: cheevers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...funny and strange and more then a little wonderful when a writer who has shown talent and yet been a disappointment in the past--and whom seemingly every-one else has lauded to the ends of the earth-creates something genuinely entertaining and even a bit enlightening. John Cheever's new novella. Oh What A Paradise It Seems, is a small package of this kind of eye-opening, pleasant strangeness. Perhaps because it rings more honest than many of his earlier efforts, the work pulses in a way much of Cheever's other work does not. Most important, Paradise given...
Interestingly, the success of Oh What a Paradise It Seems results not from Cheever's discarding his old tactics but from loosening them Cheever has long been called America's preeminent "storyteller" by many diverse critics and colleagues as well as eager book jacket hacks because he clearly has some kind of talent, and "storyteller" is the category of last resort. When you're not a novelist of ideas, a spelunker of the soul, or failing that, a lister of the lusts, you are defacto a storyteller Unfortunately, that is not quite the appropriate term For Cheever has, over...
MARVELLOUS THEY ARE. Ostensibly, the plot concerns the time Scars spends trying to save a beloved elbow-shaped lake from being turned into a landfill. Both Cheever and his protagonist believe there is a close affinity between the beauties of clean fresh water and the splendors of love. And so, not surprisingly, the sporadic affair Scars has with the curvaceous blond he accosts in a bank queue provides the occasion for plenty of libidinous raptures and a good deal of bewilderment. The novella shuttles, thee, back and forth between a blasted landscape that aches for renewal-the highways stretch...
Love has its own secrets, but the "water" sub-plot of this forked work has a complexity too. In fact, it gives Cheever an ideal playground for assembling one of his patented concatenations of weird events. A down and out barber shoots his dog in full sight of his neighbors, two women wrestle in a supermarket, a baby is mistakenly abandoned. Also, Cheever cannot was quite to eloquent nor so humorous about the country side as he can about sex. But he succeeds in constructing his labyrinth of characters and circumstances more significantly and puts forth a well-crafted threnody...
...rest is all more of what Cheever has done well for years. His Sentences remain gently illuminated gems of language, uncomplicated by any wordplay and unfailingly rhythmic. He controls the pace masterfully, whether guiding the action over a cascade of toxic wastes or through a freshet of afternoon passion. And he can toss in a wisecrack at any moment. Running into his friend Eduardo the elevator man sometime subsequent to their tryst. Sears remarks. "We've got to find something else we can do together...Do you like to fish' Would you like to go fishing...