John Cheever, novelist, short-story writer, and winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, was "an American master" ("The Boston Globe"). He was also a prolific writer of letters, sending as many as thirty in a week.

These letters, culled from thousands written to famous writers, his family, friends, and lovers, paint an intimate and surprising self-portrait that is as vivid as any character Cheever invented.

Edited and annotated by his son Benjamin, Cheever's letters trace his development as a writer and as a man. They reveal him to be complex, flawed, and full of contradictions. On display are not just his ambitions and weaknesses, or his cloaked bisexuality, but the evolution of his wit and style -- and most of all, his immense love of life.