Word: cheevers
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...Falconer, Cheever...
...Falconer, Cheever...
...feel wholly at ease," and she ran it in that Jamesian way until 1969, keeping Yaddo short on rules (no visitors from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.) and long on big-name residents. They included James Baldwin, Leonard Bernstein, Edward Hopper, Louis Kronenberger, Carson McCullers and Clyfford Still. John Cheever, another visitor, credited Mrs. Ames with a "softly imperious" ability to keep Yaddo running smoothly, though faced with "a zoo of cranky artists...
...Cheever's great strength has always been his ability to charge both the ordinary and the fanciful with emotion. Falconer is strong on feelings, even though they often overflow the novel's loose structure. Farragut is admittedly a man keenly aware of the banal ironies of his life and of his own sententious observations. Yet at times Cheever imposes them on the reader as if the novel itself were a correctional institution. "We prisoners," says Farragut, "more than any men, have suffered for our sins, we have suffered for the sins of society, and our example should cleanse...
Perhaps one of the most palpable feelings that Cheever conveys is of Falconer Prison as a mortal illness that must be overcome. One inmate escapes by disguising himself as an altar boy and slipping out with a visiting Cardinal and his party. That the Cardinal actually aids the man is Cheever's way of saying that miracles are still possible. In the end, Farragut himself escapes like the Count of Monte-Cristo by hiding in a body bag intended for a dead convict. Since - unlike the Count - Farragut has no plans for revenge, the point seems to be that...