From the acclaimed author of "A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work
of Richard Yates "comes the unforgettable life of John Cheever
(1912-1982), a man who spent much of his career impersonating a
perfect suburban gentleman, the better to become one of the
foremost chroniclers of postwar America. "I was born into no true
class," Cheever mused in his journal, "and it was my decision,
early in life, to insinuate myself into the middle class, like a
spy, so that I would have an advantageous position of attack, but I
seem now and then to have forgotten my mission and to have taken my
disguises too seriously." Written with unprecedented access to
essential sources--including Cheever's massive journal, only a
fraction of which has ever been published--Blake Bailey's biography
reveals the troubled but strangely lovable man behind the
disguises, an artist who delighted in the everyday radiance of the
world while yearning, above all, "to be illustrious."
Cheever's was a soul in conflict: he was a proud Yankee who
flaunted his lineage while deploring the provincialism of his
Quincy, Massachusetts, family circle; a high-school dropout who
published his first story at eighteen; a pioneer of suburban
realist fiction who continually pushed the boundaries of realism; a
dire alcoholic who recovered to write the great novel "Falconer;" a
secret bisexual who struggled with his longings and his fierce
homophobia in a revolving door of self-loathing and hedonism. We
see a man who concealed his anxieties behind the mask of a genial
Westchester squire--a paterfamilias in Brooks Brothers clothes
whose world was peopled by legendary writers and beautiful women
(Malcolm Cowley, Saul Bellow, William Maxwell, Hope Lange, and John
Updike, among them); whose groundbreaking work landed him on the
covers of "Time" and "Newsweek;" a man whose demons and desperation
were never quite vanquished by the joy he found in his work.
Blake Bailey has written a luminous biography, a revelation of a
writer of timeless fiction and of the man behind the page.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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