Still Reading John Cheever
It seems I’ve hit an obsession in my reading that signals a repetitiveness of thinking that I don’t expect to fade for months. Really, I can blame Simon who is reading our copy of 1Q84, so caused me to seek out another book, which is never difficult.
Blake Bailey’s biography on John Cheever is especially thick and detailed. I’m almost halfway done, though Cheever is halfway done with his life, which makes me wonder about the balance of a lifespan in general and how can the bulk of life be spent at the end? Like his stories, Cheever’s life seems defined by a duality—more or less repressed homosexuality—that must have arrived at a climax the older he got. I have had to remind myself that Cheever was living at a time when homosexuality could be considered a crime, and for someone who was worried about cutting a refined figure, it would be advised to avoid such tendencies, if avoidance was possible. If there will be a lesson I gain from reading Cheever’s life, it may be that the difficulties of being true to yourself can combust under the self-destructive tendencies of the artist.
Usually I come at a writer’s biography after having read a great bulk of the writer’s work. But this was not the case with Cheever. I’m presented with an interesting method for study, for Bailey critiques Cheever’s stories and I’m trying to keep up.
The stories I read last week:
- The Five-Forty-Eight — Considered a classic. Bailey says it was inspired by Cheever’s brother who fired a secretary for being “unstable.” It plays wonderfully with the power balance between a man of some position and an “unstable” woman. The absolute heartlessness of the man was all the more disturbing besides the contrast of Miss Dent’s desire for love. There are some parallels between The Five-Forty-Eight and Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood, which I read in The New Yorker yesterday. It also is about a woman seeking a kind of revenge.
- The Season of Divorce — According to Bailey, this story was conceived when Cheever’s wife, Mary, refused to dance with him one night at a party, driving him home in jealousy, and her home much later. Ethel and the narrator have been married for ten years, “and I can’t even remember when I first met her.” They have two kids. Ethel is trapped in domesticity, and is offered a new life by a man who falls in love with her. At first the narrator doesn’t see the threat, in fact, he can’t even see why a man would fall in love with Ethel, until the man admits it to his face and is made furious.
This story makes me think of Cheever’s love of domesticity, how he came to consider it a harbor and protection when he was having “profane” desires. A woman could never consider a domestic life similarly. The Season of Divorce proves Cheever understood that, though he criticized Mary when she worked out of the house.
- Torch Song — This story was influenced by a woman Cheever called “The Widow,” who he knew when he was a bachelor in New York. Like the above stories, the point of view is male though the story revolves around a woman, Joan, who is attracted to men who mistreat her. Her dark side is kept undercover, besides for the black dresses, as she maintains a cheerful and pleasant demeanor, seemingly unaffected by pain. But as the reader learns, it is pain that she thrives on. Cheever reveals Joan with such mastery of storytelling control, building up to an inevitable ending, which also defines the narrative of The Five-Forty-Eight.
- The Sutton Place Story — This story is also quite disturbing, about a young couple who work and then drink and party in their free time, completely neglecting their toddler daughter to the point of losing her.
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