Word: cheevers
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...some of the specifics of Cheever's childhood let him down-a fact which may have something to do with the fact that today he wears Brooks Brothers shirts with their conspicuously missing pockets and would never consider having a mongrel dog. Unlike its St. Botolphs counterpart, the old family homestead in Quincy was not the biggest house in town, and his family was not the first family, and Quincy, of course, is a fairly routine middle-class "suburb" of Boston...
...Cheever's father, a model for Leander in the Wapshot books, was a shoe salesman-"a commercial traveler with a flower in his buttonhole," says Cheever. He had a way with and an eye for the ladies, did not marry till late in life. He was 49 when John was born. Soon thereafter he began to have financial trouble...
...never worked again. Says Brother Fred: "Mother was a madam president, but she was never really the president of anything, always just the second level. But Mother used to throw it around: 'I'm a businesswoman,' she would say. John was very hurt by this." Admits Cheever: "It was one of the reasons I left home so early. I'd be damned if I would be supported by a gift shop...
Divided Loyalty. Cheever obviously was torn. Mother was worthy, but father was a character. Like Leander, he kept a journal, and his style is Leander...
...bony structure of many of Cheever's mature stories came from such skeletons in the family closet. Cheever today is at peace with the past; the fabulist's art has exorcised the family dead of the power to hurt the living, and Cheever now gives the impression that he could deal with a whole ossuary of colonial skeletons. "There is something very dark and mysterious about my family," he says with great relish. "My parents would never tell me much about it. Once, when I was old enough to talk to my father as an adult, we were...