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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……..
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 “Unresolved but thorough” 2009-11-08
By Drimble Wedge (Oxfordshire, England)
This is an exhausting book, though very well managed. There are some incongruously informal touches – “stoned out of his gourd”, for instance, or “glommed on to” to mean “monopolised socially” – but also some excellent phrase-making. “Bravura candour” well conveys Cheever’s impersonation of frankness in conversation, and “almost laudable bravado” seems exactly the right description of his using a razor to cut himself out of a webbed straitjacket while being dried out. In Falconer, the newly sober Cheever was able to address his themes most fully and darkly: fraternal hatred as well as love, sex between men, the need for both transgression and punishment. But the tide of gin, as it receded, revealed a man who had lost any sense of humour about his pretensions and a shabby sexual operator into the bargain. The job of impersonating the ideal man had now devolved on his love object, who should therefore (since ideal men don’t have sex with men) be straight. His choice was Max Zimmer, an aspiring writer estranged from his Mormon family. The element of blackmail (break with me and you’ll never get published) wasn’t quite explicit but this is a ghastly, artificial scenario. Just two regular guys, doing what came naturally to one of them. From another angle of vision, it was heterosexuality that was the impossible necessity and Cheever didn’t pay anything like the whole of the price. Mary was attuned to his growing achievement, critical but occasionally overwhelmed. When she first read his masterly story, “The Enormous Radio”, it made a big difference, she has said, “in how I felt about the man I was married to and how he was spending his time”. These marital epiphanies are nowhere near as common as artists hope. In time, Mary gave up quarrelling with her husband, knowing that any sharp comment would end up in his fiction, perhaps years later, on the lips of some dreary monster. Mary Cheever is still incisive and embattled, providing Blake Bailey with one memorable chapter ending: “‘[Bellow and I] share not only our love of women but a fondness for the rain,’ said Cheever. Or, as his wife would have it, ‘They were both women haters.’”

 “Biography as it should be written” 2009-08-29
By Federico (Fred) Moramarco (San Diego,, CA USA)
Blake Bailey has written the definite biography of an amazing writer who was a wreck of a human being. So devastatingly concerned about appearance throughout his life, Cheever lived a tortured existence, a closeted gay life and a bottom of the barrel alcoholic. How he could have lived that life and write the extraordinary stories he did is the subject that Blake Bailey deals with at length and in compelling prose. It supercedes the earlier Scott Donaldson biography, although that too is very much worth reading and gave us our first insights into Cheever’s bifurcated life. And his daughter Susan’s Home Before Dark, is also must reading for Cheever fans. It’s hard spending lots of time in the company of a depressed, closeted alcoholic, but Cheever could write sentences that turn on all the pleasure nodes in my body. And that’s his real legacy.

 “Quick-eyed love” 2009-08-15
By Patrick J. Dooling (Monterey, CA United States)
This is one of the five best biographies I have ever read. Though he would be loathe to agree, John Cheever could not have written a more dramatic, touching and captivating book, extraordinary artist that he was, than this biography. Bailey clearly loves the unlovable Cheever, has apparently read every single short story, novel, journal entry and note he ever wrote, and remembers it all in his desire to comprehesively and honestly present the author. And all who knew Cheever, especially his family, do not hesitate in sharing with Bailey all they knew and experienced.

As a former English teacher, I would only suggest losing, always and forever, the dreadful [and too often repeated in this otherwise flawless work] adverb ‘arguably.’ The fact that Katrina outrageousl interrupted Blake Bailey’s family life and the work under review here is noted but, very unCheeverlife, not overmuch lamented. But enough quibbling: this is a masterpiece and deserves to be widely read and enjoyed.

 “Thoughts about Cheever” 2009-07-02
By Frances Haas
I read the book hoping Cheever would get hold of himself, but he never did. It was a page turner. I have to admire the labor Bailey put into it, but the subject was a ruin. Cheever had a gift for improvisation, odd turns of thought, a sort of slant-wise look he turned on the middle-upper middle classes. Some of his stories are strong, memorable, but he would have accomplished a lot more if he hadn’t been pickled more than two-thirds of his life. Cheever appealed to women and often used them, but he would as often turn on them. He seemed to have a primitive fear of being emasculated and blamed his mother. This part of the biography is treacherous. The reader never sees his mother because Cheever never understood her or cared to. He just didn’t like her. Too strong. When young, he realized he was awkward socially and got into the habit of loosening himself up with alcohol, then he glowed. The biography progresses through one stage of alcoholism to the next. He had a ritual of the first drink of the day. He tried to push up the hour, avoid the wife seeing, but these obstructions were tossed aside and he began the day drinking. All pretense was cast aside. Cheever lived to drink. Before his heart congestion he made a spectacle of himself, out of his mind drunk on the streets near campus. But, as always, Cheever was spared the worst of his behavior from friends who would step in, or his emotionally starved wife helped do what she could. Cheever had LUCK, lucky breaks, good friends, good editors, but nothing filled him: not success, not his children, not a good wife. I had some hope he would pull himself together after he gave up drinking. I was so pleased with him, but, no, a worse horror awaited. When dried out, after writing Falconer, he had the urge to have a sexual affair with an unspecified male heterosexual. His journal entries are explicit in this search. Unfortunately, he used his literary position to gratify his needs, promising the young man liteary help. This was a betrayal of one thing he had been good at: teaching. The man seems to have died in worse shape than he was born. I would say with the appearance of this brutally honest book, Cheever’s luck has finally run out.

 “A Writer in Spite of Himself” 2009-06-23
By M. L. Moser (New York)
This biography reveals the life of a writer who was not only alcoholic (hardly a novel condition), but also conflicted about his sexuality. His life was not a happy one, and while many people found him to be charming, his family, especially his wife, were left to suffer from his emotional turmoil.

Of course, the remainders of his life consist of several novels and hundreds of stories. He also kept diaries. For me, the important part of the story is his final 7 years of recovery from alcoholism. He continued to write in his sobriety and even in his final months with cancer.

This was a very sad life and the alcohol was not just a small factor in his behavior, but the massive symptom of his unmanagibility. He made a lot of art in his career, but also spread his despair to those close to him.

Alcohol did not make him an entertaining literary character, it tormented him and in reading about him I could appreciate how his condition brought chaos to others. I would want to read his work, but I would not want to be near him.

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Are you ready for some adventure, Barry?

The Sun

From the wiki: “Once regarded as a small and relatively insignificant star, the Sun is now presumed to be brighter than 85% of the stars in the galaxy, most of which are red dwarfs.”

From the discussion:”I found myself having to pull out the calculator repeatedly to make sense of the units in this article. The worst offender is the description of the core whose units are given in solar radii!!! That’s self referential!”

Further clicking: Faint young Sun paradox

Potential band name: Faint Young Son

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John Cheever

From the wiki: “At the joint session, however, Dr. Hays claimed (as Cheever noted in his journal) that Cheever himself was the problem: “a neurotic man, narcissistic, egocentric, friendless, and so deeply involved in [his] own defensive illusions that [he has] invented a manic-depressive wife.” Cheever soon terminated therapy.”

From the discussion: “I’ll say it again. I know the definition of plagiarism, sir, but it is you who are making the accusations and it is you who has failed to provide the adequate evidence and substantiation for that accusation. Do so, or cease criticizing the article.”

Further clicking: The Swimmer

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Advance-fee fraud

From the wiki: “The essential fact in all advance-fee fraud operations is that the promised money transfer never happens because the money or gold does not exist.”

From the discussion: “Are there any references to back the claim that billions of dollars are made annually in such scams? Seems high to me.”

Further clicking: Confidence trick (see list of many confidence tricks)

Aunque no me desvele cuidar la frecuencia de publicación, hoy pensaba actualizar el blog. Quizá porque conseguí hacerme un hueco o dejar de lado algunas cuestiones que me mantenían alborotado. Entre ellas, dicho sea de paso, los preparativos junto a la gente de Editorial Ciudad Gótica de La risa de los pájaros, mi primer libro de cuentos. El tiempo que pensaba dedicar a escribir algo, sin embargo, se lo cedí a un placer que venía postergando: escuchar cuentos de grandes autores leídos por escritores célebres. Un pequeño lujo que, gracias al blog de Patricia Kolesnicov, está al alcance de cualquiera.

Sin respetar el orden cronológico, arranqué con Pacho O’Donell leyendo a Felisberto Hernández y disfruté como un chico con El Espejo de Haruki Murakami leído por Santiago Roncagliolo. Antes de pasar al Cheever leído por Claudia Piñeiro y al prometedor Kafka por Sergio Bizzio, sentí la necesidad de venir a publicarlo para compartirlo con los -pocos pero fieles- amigos que se dan una vuelta por acá.

Eso sí: si alguno encuentra la explicación (sospecho que hay alguna) a la abundancia de lugares comunes en cierto párrafo del cuento de Murakami (“luz pálida” de la luna; “negro como el carbón”; “oscuro como boca de lobo”) y es tan amable de compartirla con este torpe escucha que no consiguió arañarla, le estaré muy agradecido.

The following extract comes from a book by the Rev. Henry T. Cheever, Life in the Sandwich Islands, 1851 (p.107).

We arrived at half-past twelve the first night at a village where we thought to have stayed until day; but the kamaainas, inhabitants, were all away, and so we had to lay down as we were, supperless, (our man with food having fallen behind,) upon the round-stone floor of the meeting-house. Hard as it was, it would have been a grateful resting-place, but for the warfare of merciless fleas, ukulele, who, when they found what we were, and what a royal supper they might make on the blood of two haoles, set to so fiercely, that, after many vain struggles, we were forced to enter a nolo contendere, and leave the honours of the field to our insatiate foes.

We decamped about three, and rode on to Nuu, in Kaupo, where they hospitably entertained and lomilomied us, and I drowned several flying detachments of the ukulele tribe, by a bath in the sea.

This is the earliest European reference to the ukulele that I have found.

Well, I may be a few dollars short, actully, but my title ment a different, metephorical kind of dollar. Ish. Eh, whatever.

I’m late, as you can see, for my Wednesday update. Thankfully, or unthankfully, I have no readers yet to be bothered by my tardiness. Yay?

I was busy all this week in a very wonderful way. My girlfriend, Katie, came down from Oklahoma to visit and it was a terrific trip. ^____^ I just hate it when it ends, as she left this morning as I went to work. As you might guess, I’m going to drown myself in videogames and books for the rest of the day, starting as soon as I’m done here. But her presence is all I need to explain why I’m late to the blogging, I presume.

Anyways, I’ll throw a little info dump your way concerning my week. Katie arrived Sunday, and we had a fun evening with the family, going to eat at Taco Bell and then seeing Transformers 2. <quick aside> Aside from the asanine and near-racist black stereotypes present in the movie I genuinely enjoyed it. I wanted fast paced explosion sexy wowie robot action, and I got it. No I wasn’t really emotionally invested in the characters, and yes plot points and miracle elements come out of nowhere, but I knew that going in, and I didn’t let it effect me much. Needs more Optimus Prime and less Sam. Yes, please. </quick aside> The next day we chilled around the house and watched the original Grease. </quick aside 2> It was my first time ever seeing the movie. Katie was horrified that I hadn’t seen it. Well, now I have, and I’ve got to say I really liked it, despite how strangely everything seemed to wrap up (if that’s even the correct term for what happened). It was a lot of fun, and the music was good and classic. </quick aside 2> The next day, Me and Katie went on a date to Olive Garden, and then to the Videogames Live concert. <quick aside 3> That was some of the best Eggplant Parmesian I’ve eaten yet. And Videogames live was excellent, though perhaps parts of it could have used tweaking. I would have liked game footage instead of disney movie footage during the Kingdom hearts segment for example. I was hoping to see Solid Snake during the Metal Gear segment, but all we got was a guard with an exclamation point over his head and a moving box. Fun, but not entirely satisfying. Also, a small part of me wanted it a bit classier feeling, as the concert seemed 1/3 anime convention, 1/3 rock concert, 1/3 classical music. It’s a fun combination, but I was hoping to see something that proved to me a little more that people treat videogames as serious as other forms of art. Not to say it wasn’t fantastic, don’t get me wrong! I LOVED the show, and the music was fantastic! Go see it if you can! </quick aside 3> The next day, me and Katie went to Borders and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. <these-aren’t-s0-quick-asides-it-seems 4> Borders is expensive and tempting. Just ask my poor violated wallet. As for HP6, I think it was the best of the movies so far, far better than the terrible 5 and even better than the Prisoner of Azkaban. It was the most mature, well directed, best shot, best visualised and most character based of the lot. The ending felt a little anti-climactic though (I know it was supposed to be a downer, but it didn’t feel dramatic enough). That’s the first time I’ve seen a Harry Potter movie and walked out of the theatre feeling satisfied. Of course, from a fan’s perspective, there was loads of stuff they didn’t include that was sad, but that isn’t likely to change soon. </these-aren’t-s0-quick-asides-it-seems 4> The following day we went and saw Ice Age 3. It was cute, but a silly kids movie without some of the charm and wit that made the previous 2 entries more enjoyable. Some of the action set-peices were well-done though.

Of course other things happened this week, but I’d rather not spend much more time on it all, so I’ll leave you with this today. See you later!

I picked up this book on the strength of a James Wood recommendation (via The Elegant Variation). In 1994, the renowned critic listed Cheever’s FALCONER as among the best American and British writing since 1945. The writing is phenomenal, as one would expect from Cheever and a James Wood recommendation.

While largely set in prison, this book is not what I would call a prison novel. FALCONER does touch on some common prison novel tropes and, indeed, a number of parallels can be drawn between FALCONER and Stephen King’s RITA HAYSWORTH AND SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. Both main characters come from relatively moneyed pasts, they are not career criminals, and both obtain clerical jobs within the prison that allow them special privileges. There are, of course, differences. The main character in this novel, Farragut, is guilty, importantly so. The reader also quickly learns that he has a severe heroin addiction. While these details are consistent with a prison setting, the prison itself is not always convincing. Or perhaps prisons have changed this much. At any rate, the prison seems to be primarily a device to separate Farragut from his wife. In fact, the prison could be read as a metaphor for Farragut’s marriage.

The book, however, is not about marriage either. Early in the book, there is a description of Farragut’s wife:

She had an authenticated beauty. Several photographers had asked her to model, although her breasts, marvelous for nursing and love, were a little too big for that line of work…”You know,” [Farragut's] son had said, “I can’t talk to Mummy when there’s a mirror in the room. She’s really balmy about her looks.” Narcissus was a man and he couldn’t make the switch, but she had, maybe twelve or fourteen times, stood in front of the full-length mirror in their bedroom and asked him, “Is there another woman of my age in this country who is as beautiful as I?” She had been naked, overwhelmingly so, and he had thought this an invitation, but when he touched her she said, “Stop fussing with my breasts. I’m beautiful.”

This early scene is prelude to an account of their courtship and a meeting of husband and wife at prison. At the meeting, his wife foreshadows the true subject of the novella: “I wouldn’t want to be married to a homosexual, having already married a homicidal drug addict.”

The prison, in my reading, seems a metaphor, if a metaphor of anything, of the proverbial closet and anti-homosexual prejudice. In FALCONER, Cheever explores homosexuality, particularly among men who are, at least outside of prison, heterosexual men and prejudice against them. Cheever fares better in this exploration, than in his descriptions of prison life. Some aspects of the novel, published in 1975, seem almost quaint by today’s standards. The novel was written well after other authors had written explicitly about homosexuality, but well before the only significant public policy question became whether homosexual relationships will be accorded equal standing before the law. The characters’ attitudes betray this particular datedness. But it is a dating of the setting, not the novel.

Cheever manages to create a portrait of the in-closet community at a particular time, his time. This was for me the most engaging aspect of the novella. I would not say Cheever misses with his many, explicit attempts to find universality, but they stand out. The examples can be mundane: “He waited for [his wife and son] to emerge [from the visitor's room] like a waiter in an American-plan hotel waiting for the dining room doors to open, like a lover, like a drought-ruined farmer waiting for rain, but without the sense of the universality of waiting.”; “There was, Farragut thought, some universality to a full bladder.” But his extrapolations from individual moments to universality strike most honestly when touching upon sexuality, as when Cheever describes a line of prisoners masturbating in “the Valley”:

The wall above the urinal was white tiling with a very limited power of reflection. You could make out the height and the complexion of the men on your left and your right and that was about all…There was some rightness in having the images of the lovers around them opaque. They were universal, they were phantoms, and any skin sores, or signs of cruelty, ugliness, stupidity or beauty, could not be seen. Farragut went here regularly…..

or when used to sketch a character:

Marshack…was very useful. He was indispensable at greasing machinery and splicing BX cables and he would be a courageous and fierce mercenary in some border skirmish if someone more sophisticated gave the order to attack. There would be some universal goodness in the man – he would give you a match for your cigarette and save you a seat at the movies – but there was no universality to his lack of intelligence. Marshack might respond to the sovereignty of love, but he could not master geometry and he should not be asked to. Farragut put him down as a killer.

And this, in the end, is Cheever’s goal, I think. He manages to sketch the emotional life of closeted homosexuals, including portraying them as regular, if tortured, men, and also to reveal at least some universal aspects of mankind. He achieves this, I think. Not in a grand way, but adequately. I would not characterize FALCONER as a great book, but it is a worthwhile book. Cheever addresses worthwhile subjects with enviable skill and sometimes piercing insight.

I hope I have not cast this as an issue book. It is a well-told story with depth. The writing is topnotch. Some of the themes could be discomfitting for the squeamish, but FALCONER deserves to be remembered and read.

“ACK” by Joy Williams

in Honored Guest (Vintage, 2005)

Review: THREE STARS

When you remember a story is good for just being good, isn’t that important enough? Get out there and read Joy Williams’ stories, even if it means they won’t stick.

“Hunters” by John Edgar Wideman

in God’s Gym (Mariner, 2006)

Review: TWO STARS

While this sociological heartbreak is a mild approach at the racism behind a group of whites raping a black, but the pacing and plot shifts force the story to fall flat on its face just after its initial haunting opening.

“A Radically Condensed History of Post-Industrial Life” & “Death is Not the End” by David Foster Wallace

in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (Back Bay Books, 2000)

Review: FIVE STARS

The former story is a paragraph-long explanation on just about every relationship that can exist in this country; the latter is a rhythmic laugh-spree critique of poet laureates in the United States.

“Mnemonics” by Kurt Vonnegut

in Bagombo Snuff Box (Berkley Trade, 2000)

Review: FOUR STARS

To say I remember all of this story isn’t the point; the point is that if you want a cute story about distraction, memory, and secretaries, jump right in.

“The Shawl” by Cynthia Ozick

in Best American Short Stories of the Century (ed. John Updike) (Mariner, 2000)

Review: FOUR STARS

At the beginning of this yarn, a gaping wound that stinks of Eastern Europe’s charming poverties, you want the shawl to be a part of you. By the end you like the distance.

“The Ideal Village” by John Updike

in Trust Me (Ballantine, 1996)

Review: TWO STARS

It’s hard to hate on Updike, but this story doesn’t settle in any of the ways it begs to. The edges are torn up, and the characters aren’t fleshed.

“Erosion” by Ali Smith

in The Whole Story and Other Stories (Anchor, 2004)

Review: THREE STARS

It’s not difficult reading women writers who have guts; it’s just hard finding them. There’s nothing wrong with ant battles either.

“The Woman at the Gas Station” by Bernhard Schlink

in Flights of Love (trans. John E. Woods) (Vintage, 2002)

Review: ONE STAR

John E. Woods, what happened? Maybe it’s the plot’s fault—trying to take a surrealist approach to the most boring love story ever is fatal.

“The Farther You Go” by Richard Russo

in The Whores Child (Vintage, 2003)

Review: THREE STARS

I’ve always been fond of reading Russo’s Cheeveresque mouth-froth-laden stories, but it’s hard figuring out why middle aged conflict appeals so.

“May We Be Forgiven” by A. M. Holmes

in Best American Short Stories (ed. Salman Rushdie) (Mariner, 2008)

Review: FOUR STARS

Abandon: coincidence, convenience, understanding, smooth settings, known environments, all even trajectories. Get ready to be shocked, too.

After reading the review of the new biography of John Cheever, I decided to sample his short stories. Did I remember any of them from New Yorker days? I wasn’t sure. I certainly did not expect to plow (crawl? amble? swim?) through the entire length of a 693-page book, but I could not disengage. Every day I treated myself to a a half dozen stories and looked forward to another day.

Cheever develops more than one type of story. There is the incident, brief and well told, in which character is all. There is the span of years story – I saw him as a boy and then 20 years later and then last week – and these are not always successful in suggesting the flow of time. There is the story in another voice, the Italian maid telling us of her adventures in the new world.

Best of all, there are the stories where it all comes together: the time, the place, the people. The enormous radio communicates with those who are not worthy to understand its revelations. A man, full of contempt for the weakness of others, develops a fear of crossing bridges until his fear is sung away by an angel. Another man oppressed by an angry wife uses Euclid to escape.

Ten years ago it was not necessary for our family to protect any of our plants. Now, however, no plant is safe. The hosta on the east side of the house has not survived a single season in five years, the holly gets a yearly pruning in winter, and the vegetable garden now requires a six-foot fortress. Perhaps our property has been established as a (Good Grazing Ground (GGG) by the Association of Hungry Deer (AHD).

The article above was published in the New York Times in September of 1905. The previous day an article was published on the impact of deer on Pomfret’s farms.

Vegan gardening. in order to make this Frittata? or possibly to grow lesser-known fruits?

The New York Times has an article on students and recent graduates who are performing internships at farms. The article did not mention any of the Bennington students who have interned at farms (Bennington once had its own farm), but the article did mention that the interns came armed with a Bennington graduate’s book.

Cheever living in CT.

QUÉDATE  DONDE ESTÁS

Miguel Ángel Muñoz

Páginas de Espuma, Madrid,2009

Miguel Ángel Muñoz, autor de “El síndrome Chéjov”, nos obsequia con su segundo libro de cuentos, “Quédate donde estás” publicado en la editorial Páginas de Espuma.

Libro polifónico y ágil, en esta ocasión el autor almeriense vuelve a sorprendernos con un texto mucho más personal, en cuya materia se cata no sólo esa pericia técnica ya manifiesta en su primera colección de relatos, sino también una voz y una temática propias que le sitúan con pleno derecho en la literatura de la más reciente postmodernidad.

Lector avezado y heredero de algunas de las corrientes que transformaron la literatura norteamericana durante el siglo XX (Cheever, Ford, Salinger, Carver, Wolf), en los relatos de “Quédate donde estás”, Muñoz hace un retrato, casi una deconstrucción, de la precaria condición del sujeto contemporáneo, con sus paranoias y su negligencia, sus deseos y sus soledades. Haciendo gala de su habitual meticulosidad de científico, el autor describe esta condición humana valiéndose tanto de lo fantástico hiperbólico como del realismo sucio, la estructura clásica o la narración intimista, el lenguaje lírico, el publicitario e incluso el periodístico.

En la propuesta de los temas Muñoz explora también un plexo de posibilidades de la vida actual: el vacío en las relaciones, el destino, el mundo de internet, el éxito, el dinero, el absurdo, la literatura. Y es así como el lector se encuentra con propuestas tan distintas como la del humor fantástico de “Vitruvio”, en la que un escritor decide ponerse ocho brazos, “Los niños hundidos” sutil inmersión en el ámbito de lo extraño, la cheeveriana e intimista “Ropa de verano” o el sólido relato titulado “El reino químico”, a mi modo de ver el mejor del libro. Todo ello trabado en una amena red de situaciones planteadas con mucha imaginación y mayor destreza, que hará las delicias de los gustos más variados, garantizando algo más que un buen rato de lectura.

Por INÉS MENDOZA

They were talking about John Cheever on the radio today (I think it was PRI). As I listened I was reminded of some of my favorite Cheever stories. He was mainly a short story writer with sort of a surrealist style. His most famous story is probably “The Enormous Radio”, a story about a couple whose radio lets them hear their neighbors conversations. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1979.

By far my favorite Cheever story is “The Swimmer”. The story begins on a light note as the main character, a man named Neddy, decides to get home by swimming through all of his neighbors pools. However, the story becomes progressively more dark as he journeys home. His neighbors begin to make cryptic remarks to him and the nice summer weather begins to get colder and colder. By the time he reaches his home he finds it abandoned as if a lifetime has passed. It really is a wonderful and moving story and I will highly recommend it.

You can read the full story of “The Swimmwe” online here: http://shortstoryclassics.50megs.com/cheeverswimmer.html.

Una discoteca periferica, la periferia, l’est. O Qui. La terra. Dove non accade quasi mai che la fame di corpi, e la fame di quei corpi non viene quasi mai mai soddisfatta fino in fondo perché la tombola sociale esige che si possa cacciare solo in zona di caccia, e in tempo di caccia, e le prede sono autorizzate, e mantengono una rigidità regolamentare da esattrici delle Tasse, e i cacciatori mantengono un imbarazzo regolarizzato, sistemandosi il cazzo nelle tasche, aspettando come l’Eden che si spalanchino delle gambe gigantesche, ma nutrendosi sempre soltanto dei buchi nelle calze, quando si ha la fortuna di averli davanti. Oppure no: solo armature, pezzi di carne attaccati ai gomiti, alle mani, ma staccati dal resto del corpo, poveri resti. O si osserva una promiscuità distratta e eccentrica che è ancora più distaccata, ancora paradossalmente meno calore. Come in Houellebecq, in Piattaforma, quando guarda con infinita compassione e dolore le evoluzioni della bestia umana alla ricerca di una trasgressione impossibile. Come Gaddis nelle Perizie, che è l’unica cosa che somiglia allo scherzo infinito per qualità dell’infinito, che rammenta quanto è terribile una spiaggia, quando si è in quel certo stato d’animo. Come Cheever in Bullet Park, quando scrive che una spiaggia è sempre il luogo spaventoso di una perdita, di una vertigine michelangiolesca: solitamente associamo la nudità a concetti come “giudizio”, “eternità”, per cui sulle spiagge, dove ci si spoglia quasi sempre, si creano scenari da Giudizio Universale. Fermi lì sul bagnasciuga sembriamo, del tutto innocentemente, essere stati catapultati in un vortice morale fuori dal tempo.

Si muovono. Si muovono secondo tutti i clichè possibili del movimento, secondo tutti gli spazi miseri che sono permessi; sembrano tanti, ma si mutilano e si digeriscono mentre fingono di aprirsi ad altri spazi ancora, e si serrano intorno a uno strato malsano di aria respirata senza buttarla giù.

Amara è la medicina; meglio inalare soltanto la superficie; dentro, la massa che va imbrillantinata, per lucidare il cedimento. Lucidato, una superficie riflettente: gli specchi dappertutto, perché devono vedersi senza vedersi mentre mettono in pratica solo quanto gli viene Concesso; proibito: peggio ancora che concesso, come una piccola porzione di droga, inalare soltanto una parte dello sconvolgimento dei sensi, perché i sensi ingannati credano di fuoriuscire dalle prese d’aria del corpo, la carne, la carne, la carne, fustigata, condannata per sempre, anche quando viene fuori, anche quando sfiora l’altra. Nel paradiso affaticato dell’intrattenimento. Ma in gioco, la carne che sanguinerà poi nelle loro singole vite.

I loro corpi sono ingombrati, afflitti, tirati a lucido, tappati, azzerati, protesi in fuori senza mai assomigliare a una vera orchidea, giacciono, anche se si muovono, sono supini, anche se alzano le braccia verso l’alto, i loro corpi sono sassi, e dei sassi mortali, quel che è peggio.

Lo stordimento collettivo è una fregatura, l’impostura di un secolo qualsiasi, i loro corpi sono solitari e sono nettamente distinguibili nella loro solitudine come se un riflettore gli si accendesse addosso a turno, il gioco delle luci non è questo? Farti credere che hai l’iniziativa, alcuni aspettano negli angoli, gli angoli sono il riparo senza riparo, i punti di osservazione di un carnevale al quale partecipare sarebbe comunque deludente, il bicchiere in mano che conduce il corpo e non il contrario, lo spingono avanti come le madri spingono le carrozzine, lo spingono in fuori come le spose abbandonate stringono la testa dei figli davanti alla porta di casa, ultimi Capri, vanno ad espiare per sempre la paura di esistere, e quella di non esistere affatto. E l’orrore di esistere comunque vada.

Le luci non devono piroettare, e saltare: devono fermarsi. Si fermano, ed entra con un fruscio di mantello ricamato con tutte le mappe geografiche della Terra, la Vendicatrice, dolente, dritta e curva, la trascuratezza familiare ma trasformata, con il mantello diviso a metà come una lingua divisa a metà o un pene diviso a metà, ciascuna delle tue parti viene trascinata con sforzo indicibile da 24 Esecutori, la pelle lucida per lo sforzo, ma le sopracciglia distese, nudi ma vestiti di armi, decine di armi diverse gli piovono addosso, assicurate al corpo da lacci e da stringhe e da colla e da pezzetti di nastro adesivo, le portano addosso a bandoliera, attaccate al petto, appoggiate ai fianchi, sulle spalle, le portano per usarle.

La folla tace, perché la folla non sa parlare: non sa che sussurrare o spalancare gli occhi quando è tardi, non sa che covare dentro alla gola un rospo indefinito che sputare sarebbe infine troppo ineducato, la Vendicatrice tace ugualmente, gli Esecutori tacciono, salvo uno che ha una tosse rauca, perché al mattino ha preso freddo, un riflettore si mette a cercare nella folla, una donna a caso, il Trofeo del giorno, quello della notte. Ne sceglie una che porta con sé tutte le disgrazie della sua specie: è quella che una volta mi ha guardato le tette disapprovandomi, perché venivano lasciate a cazzo sotto la maglia con una noncuranza che lei studia allo specchio fingendo di contenerla nei ricami inutili comprati al saldo nelle boutique dell’erotismo ammortato e finito, contando i centimetri della sua esposizione al Mondo prima di varcare la soglia: – cosa faccio oggi? Quale illusione voglio scatenare? – , è quella che stringe i libri al petto portando in mano un vaccino contro le delusioni, amuleto costante, è quella ancora che rovescia la testa e ride portando le dita al ciondolo indiano che rappresenta la sua Fondamentale Libertà di pensiero e la sua Attitudine al Dileggio della morale comune, è quella che addossata alla parete geme ma io stasera volevo solo ballare… rinnegando il motore unico della storia, è quella che in questa porzione di Terra si lascia diventare il trofeo, ed essi sono quelli che vogliono che sia così, e la Vendicatrice, nella mia fantasia, rompe per un giorno solo tutte le dinamiche dei sorrisi e delle gocce di sudore per procurarne di vero, e di freddo.

La folla tace e il trofeo viene scelto, due Esecutori bastano a tenerla più che ferma, la retorica della violenza le si stampa in faccia, forse sospetta che la violenza possa essere violenta, ma cosa avrebbe potuto procurale questo pensiero prima d’ora, se il linguaggio è completamente alibi manierato, finora e per sempre? La folla tace in altro modo, perché annusa la violenza come un cane da caccia che deve essere liberato dal guinzaglio troppo corto, e poco importa che il guinzaglio sia lo stesso col quale si impiccano ogni giorno: hanno bisogno di un autorevole coercizione che ricordi loro di staccarselo da soli, non possono staccarselo da soli, non possono staccare, nemmeno la spina possono staccare, vogliono vivere ora qui e dopo laggiù, ma con un portacravatte elettrico, e una macchina mediamente più lussuosa del comune. Aldilà con aspirapolveri, frullatori, condizionatori, giacche a vento tagliate meglio, musica d’ambiente diffusa meglio.

La Vendicatrice monologa, e non riporteremo: il monologo cambia ad ogni sfumatura della stessa fantasia. Dimostrazione che perfino il più timido, perfino il più insicuro non vuole che assaggiare il sangue per cominciare ad essere ciò che è. Il trofeo viene offerto, potrebbe ancora restare una metafora disgustosamente triviale, come sempre lasciano che sia. Ma il suo pallore è troppo concreto: che quella eccitazione che viene fuori sia tutto ciò che vagava anche prima in sospensione, quasi vicino al pavimento, quasi vicino al soffitto, ma soltanto adesso, nominata, possa avere uno scopo dichiarato? Il Trofeo viene spalancato tra due file di devoti. Che ci mettono così poco, ad affidarsi a un culto: ecco il premio dei loro sforzi, credono. Ecco l’autorizzazione a punire ciò che sostengono di amare. Vale a dire: l’inferno della verità che inizia. Inferno per lei, certo. Che non comprende la qualità della violenza, o del potere, come si è espressa per tutta la sua vita intorno a lei. Senza amore, senza compassione la Vendicatrice assicura alla folla dei postulanti la dimostrazione che volevano dilaniare e invece danzavano il minuetto delle approssimazioni graduali; senza amore, senza compassione la Vendicatrice assicura il Trofeo femmina alla folla, che avrebbe dovuto guardarsi dentro e fuori, infilare una torcia elettrica di troppi watt prima in un occhio, poi nell’altro, poi nell’esofago, a costo di guardarsi dentro per guardare cosa offre, cosa offre per dimostrare di esistere come un oggetto di desiderio? Cosa non offre per preservare un potere tanto debole che deve essere continuamente sovraesposto? E a se stessi cosa offrono questi vestiti spiegazzati, queste maniche di uomo, che divorano le pagine di un libro sempre incompiuto senza portare con se una sola parola di durezza?

Vanno, in fila. E come un plotone di militari guidato verso un nemico che si inventa con la sagoma di uno spaventapasseri, vanno nell’eccitazione dell’intrattenimento, sanguinaria, che altra eccitazione non potrebbero crearsi. E perfino il più smarrito, rosso e bianco per l’angoscia, lo smarrimento e l’imbarazzo, diviene ciò che è: e dopo essersi dimenato per pochi minuti, si riveste come se avesse raso al suolo tutti gli Imperi dei Mongoli, smarrito ancora di aver potuto, di aver saputo: e perché l’uomo è un insetto che viene scosso come niente dall’atrofia e dal sonno del dopopranzo e si nutre del suo cervello, torna indietro un istante come per un ripensamento, per un piccolissimo schiaffo: lo spirito della scala.. I loro corpi sono incoscienti come prima, i loro volti sfigurati: irriconoscibili a se stessi eppure riconoscendosi per la prima volta, quasi si strappano i brandelli a vicenda. Diventano circospetti, perfino puntigliosi nello scegliere le armi; qualcuno, indeciso, ne usa una solo un poco, per provarne un’altra.. Carnefici e vittime preannunciati, sono uguali nella sovraesposizione al mondo. E anche loro devono scontare la triste approssimazione dei loro desideri ammutoliti.

E perfino il più innocente tra tutti (e NESSUNO lo è, nemmeno la Vendicatrice che domani sarà un altro dolore, un altro grumo di dolore smessi i panni della vendetta), un vecchio che forse non è un vecchio, un vecchio che ha il volto della sofferenza, deve esser vecchio perché deve portare su di sé la sostanza della sua condanna – la condanna della possibilità senza isola -  eppure condensa tutta la vecchiaia di mille ere, un vecchio ma non troppo che era entrato nella folla come si entra in una chiesa mille volte profanata, per addolorarsi al suo calore artificiale e vuoto, al calore fasullo della folla, vuole approfittare di un evento che nemmeno lo sorprende. Ma è troppo stanco, e conosce troppo le sfumature della violenza su se stesso per poterne esercitare. Non riesce. E’ l’unico strappo che la Vendicatrice farà alla regola: compassionevole, con una mano sulla sua testa, lo rassicura. Lui entrerà con tutto il suo corpo vecchio ma non troppo, vecchio solo per troppa comprensione, in un trofeo già morto. Così le sue labbra si chiudono ferme intorno al suo cazzo, vecchio ma non troppo, e le sue mani si chiudono dolcemente intorno alle sue palle, vecchie ma nemmeno tanto, per lasciare che lui possa per una volta godersi il dolore del mondo senza farne parte, è uguale gettare i cani in pasto ai cani e il trofeo già morto una di loro una qualunque aspetta in terra, per accoglierlo con tanta ospitalità quanta non ne avrebbe mai avuta nella vita.

E’ allora che si apre una crepa nella terra per ingoiarli tutti.

Fine della Fantasia

No empecé por los cuentos. Descubrí a John Cheever con Falconer (1977), esa novela que no tiene nada que ver con los suburbios y, como supe después, es prácticamente autobiográfica. Cheever, como Farragut, también fue un adicto, tuvo una pesadilla por familia, se casó siendo homosexual y en cierto modo, pasó por la cárcel. No mató a su hermano -Fred, ese lastre insoportable con quien vivió un episodio de incesto antes de los 20 años-, pero ocupó laliteratura para hacerlo: “Te asesiné en las páginas Falconer”, le contó John a su hermano.

La historia es conocida: Cheever fue un escritor exitoso y aparentemente feliz. Sin embargo, después de su muerte The New Yorker -la revista que le compró casi todos sus relatos- publicó varias páginas de sus diarios revelando que era un hombre atormentado, triste y solitario. Una nueva biografía, escrita por Blake Baylei (quien también escribió sobre Richard Yates), insiste en lo mismo: Cheever lo pasó mal. Cheever: A Life tiene una gracia: Baylei tuvo acceso a todos los papeles del escritor. Entre ellos, las 4 mil páginas de su diario (Lo que dice NYTimes, Washington Post, Slate y The New Yorker).

A propósito del libro escribí una nota para La Tercera (aparece hoy -21 de marzo-, El Espía Solitario) y mientras buscaba información me topé con un video increíble. El 14 de octubre de 1981 The Dick Cavett Show recibió a Cheever y John Updike, amigos y próceres de la narrativa gringa. Dura media hora, y no sólo tiene la gracia de que junta a dos pesos pesados, además permite ver cómo era Cheever. Efectivamente, como anotó Rodrigo Fresán, tenía una “dicción engolada y patricia”. Y por sobre todo, se ve tranquilo, amable, hasta feliz. Repite su famosa frase -”escribir no es una deporte competitivo”- y se ríe en varias ocasiones. Véanlo. Véanlo ya.

Dejo dos citas del diario de Cheever. La primera es clásica: entrañable y desoladora. 

“Llevo a Ben y a sus amigos río abajo a pescar. Arañas y abejorros entre las rocas de terraplén. La fuerza de este lugar, de este ambiente. Cenizas, latas de cerveza, las vías oxidadas, un tren de mercancías de cien vagones que desaparece por una curva, un viejo que vacía a vejiga por tercera vez en una hora, muchachos que tiran piedras, el viejo pescador en el bote provoca a los más pequeños y gasta bromas durante el catecismo, las parsimoniosas sonrisas de los pasajeros que viajan en tren el sábado y responden a nuestros saludos. Un lugar sin salida, pero muy tranquilo. Me siento allí, bebiendo cerveza, aunque temo que los chicos se caigan desde el puente del ferrocarril a la caleta. Aunque me parece que lo que temo es tener que tirarme al agua para sacarlos. Soy un cobarde”

La segunda cita es la que todo periodista literario debe tener a mano cuando escriba sobre la obra y figura de Cheever. 

“No nací en una verdadera clase social, y desde muy pronto tomé la decisión de infiltrarme en la clase media como un espía para poder atacar desde una posición ventajosa, sólo que a veces me parece que he olvidado mi misión y tomo mi disfraces demasiado en serio”.

(La foto fue proporcionada por editorial Knopf. El crédito es de Stathis Orphanos)

* “From Comic Book to Literary Classic:” Does The Watchmen deserve all the hype? The WSJ asks. Their answer is mostly “no,” a verdict I concur with.

* Speaking of Watchmen-related hype, Ta-Nehisi Coates summarizes my feeling toward movies:

I think I’m mostly done with comic book movies, and big budget movies in general. I don’t think (with a few exceptions) that they’re made for me. Which is fine. But the more comic book movies I see, the more I value the imaginative space created by books.

(For more on this, see Why are so many movies awful?)

* Orwell wasn’t a mensch or a lout or an ideologue in the normal sense, and trying to define him is as much a challenge today as it must have been in his time. Julian Barnes tries to make some sense of him in “Such, Such Was Eric Blair:”

All prophets risk posthumous censure, even mockery; and the Orwell we celebrate nowadays is less the predictor than the social and political analyst. Those born in the immediate postwar years grew up with the constant half-expectation that 1984 would bring all the novel described: immovable geopolitical blocs, plus brutal state surveillance and control. Today, the English may have their sluggardly couch-potato side; their liberties have been somewhat diminished, and they are recorded by CCTV cameras more often than any other nation on earth. But otherwise 1984 passed with a sigh of relief, while 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall brought a louder one.

Orwell believed in 1936 that “the combines can never squeeze the small independent bookseller out of existence as they have squeezed the grocer and the milkman.” That “never” was a risky call. And on a larger scale, he believed throughout World War II that peace would bring the British revolution he desired, with blood in the gutters and the “red militias…billetted in the Ritz,” as he put it in private diary and public essay. And after the revolution:

The Stock Exchange will be pulled down, the horse plough will give way to the tractor, the country houses will be turned into children’s holiday camps, the Eton and Harrow match will be forgotten….

One out of four on the vision thing; and tractors were hardly a difficult pick.

I’ve mentioned his collected Essays before and will no doubt again; even when they’re infuriating, they’re enormously clever.

* Jacket Copy reports that, 27 years after John Cheever’s death, the man is everywhere. Everywhere, that is, except for my bookshelf: I’ve never read his novels, which are on the ever-expanding “to be read” list. This week’s New Yorker also has an article about Cheever. It includes this bit:

“How lonely and unnatural man is and how deep and well-concealed are his confusions”—no wonder Cheever’s fiction is slighted in academia while Fitzgerald’s collegiate romanticism is assigned. Cheever’s characters are adult, full of adult darkness, corruption, and confusion. They are desirous, conflicted, alone, adrift. They do not achieve the crystalline stoicism, the defiant willed courage, of Hemingway’s.

Really? I’m not sure I agree with the premise that Cheever is slighted in academia, and even if I did, I don’t think I’d buy the reason stated.

* The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, calls Cheever The Audubon of Suburbia:

“Cheever: A Life,” arriving as it does with the publication of Library of America editions of Cheever’s stories and novels, edited by Mr. Bailey, seems intended to spur a rediscovery of the author. It won’t be the first, or the last. Cheever occupies a secure place in the literature of the American dream, forming the link between Fitzgerald and Updike. The formidable achievement of his short stories alone ensures that he is destined to be the subject of periodic rediscovery, reassessment and biographical shading-in.

* Maybe I will read Francine Prose’s Goldengrove:

Prose’s book is filled with characters who comprehend their experience of the world through the lenses that art–high art, popular art, and everything in between–offers up. Even though Goldengrove tells a sad story, I found great comfort and pleasure in reading about these characters and their attachments to and imitations of art, and appreciated Myers’s identification of this kind of activity and attachment as a subject of the novel. “We learn what we were like as children from such books as The Mill on the Floss, C. S. Lewis’s Narnia stories, and Goldengrove,” he says. Our experience of art is as much a life experience as anything else.

I didn’t care for The Mill on the Floss, but the overall point is well-taken.

* The best article on Kindle economics and bookstores that I’ve seen: Digital readers will save writers and publishing, even if they destroy the book business.

* Speaking of book publishing, MobyLives reports:

Exact data on how the used book market is eroding the market for new books is hard to come by but the consensus is — it ain’t helping.

The Wall Street Journal predicted in 2005: “While the market’s size is still modest — about $600 million, or 2.8% of the $21 billion that readers spent on consumer books in 2004 — it is growing at 25% annually. Jeff Hayes, group director for InfoTrends Research Group, suggests that it could reach $2.25 billion in U.S. sales by 2010, or 9.4% of a projected $23.9 billion in consumer book sales.”

 Leo estos días en Le Figaro el fenómeno de la afluencia masiva de espectadores al cine, huyendo, sin duda alguna, de la cruda realidad económica para refugiarse en el mundo de las bellas apariencias. De la apariencia  y de la realidad ya hablé en Mi Siglo en otra ocasión.

Pero ahora, según el estudio anual del Observatorio europeo de lo audiovisual presentado en Berlín a principios de febrero, este fenómeno de la asistencia al cine es mundial. De Estambul a Oslo, pasando por Bombay, Dubaï y Tokio y, naturalmente Estados Unidos, largas colas se concentran ante las taquillas. No así en España donde por causas distintas las últimas noticias informan de la desaparición de 150 cines y del abandono de las salas por 9 millones de espectadores.

Según recoge Le Figaro, Jeanine Basinger, historiadora del cine y directora del departamento del Séptimo Arte de la Universidad de Wesleyan en el Connecticut, asegura que está sucediendo “exactamente lo mismo que durante la crisis de 1929 y que en la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Entonces las gentes se echaron a la calle para ver cine, puesto que el público buscaba cambiar sus ideas. Los espectadores estaban ávidos de films de puro divertimento, pero también deseaban ver películas serias que les permitieran comprender mejor el mundo en el cual vivían. Se sabe que el número de espectadores va a aumentar, ¿pero verán éstos el cine en las salas de proyección, en el VOD de sus casas o a través de su teléfono móvil?”.

El cine – como la literatura – es ficción. Todo gran escritor - recordaba Nabokov en sus cursos universitarios en Cornell – es un gran embaucador. No hay más que reemplazar literatura por cine y tendremos – como he dicho en alguna ocasión – que ” por el sendero de los nidos de araña de la embaucación, las gentes entran en las librerías (en los cines) y pagan por llevarse mentiras encuadernadas que les hagan escapar unas horas de la chata realidad, del metro, de la oficina, de la cocina, del tráfico y del comedor para sumergirse en esa otra realidad del metro, de la oficina, de la cocina, del tráfico o del comedor que cuenta cada escritor a su manera, algunos imitando mucho la realidad, pero entregando la esencia impalpable de una atmósfera familiar de interiores (como Chejov, como Cheever, como Carver) o enriqueciendo también lo auténtico con la inserción de lo fabuloso en la vida real, modificando así esa realidad hasta hacerla pasar sencillamente por los anillos del asombro” (“El ojo y la palabra“, pág 87)

(Imágenes: 1.-”Stard card table”, 1962.-por Peter Phillips.- artnet / 2.-Scarlett Johansson en “Lost in translation”)

It must have been no easy feat for Blake Bailey to corral a life that struggled to not be constrained within borders. But in this tome Bailey reconstructs an identity of Cheever that he kept hidden for almost the entirety of his life. Bailey seems possessed, at times, with Cheever’s signature wit and intelligence to craft sentences that play.

There is no shortage of information in this biography as Bailey had access to everything. EVERYTHING. Bailey never judges Cheever for his choices: his legendary alcoholism, his hidden homosexuality, the emotional abuse of his children, and his seeming struggle with suburban hypocrisy.

Bailey reveals not the how’s of Cheever’s writing, but the deep seated why’s. Updike, as was his want, is revelatory:

““How lonely and unnatural man is and how deep and well-concealed are his confusions”—no wonder Cheever’s fiction is slighted in academia while Fitzgerald’s collegiate romanticism is assigned.”

Stefan loved this book. The biography is long and at a few rare times tedious, but it is always a compelling read and a deep insight into a man that will hopefully explode into relevancy again.

[Published by Knopf in hardcover at $35]

Dick Cavett has a wonderful column in today’s times on these two writers.  Included is the full length video of the two of them on his interview show. 

http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/a-last-look-at-updike-and-cheever/

Yesterday I spent the morning in bed reading Joy Williams’ review of Flannery: A Life in the NYTBR and Charles McGrath’s preview of the new Cheever biography in the NYT Magazine. Here’s my meta-review:

William’s review is meant to come off as a stylized homage–a kinetically-paced list of curios, trivia and back-handed compliments–but it comes off instead as a Lives of the Saints pamphlet written by a skeptic who is nonetheless moved to write because O’Connors’s story is so rich and colorful.

McGrath is the former editor of the Book Review and was, briefly, Cheever’s editor at the New Yorker, so I expected a little something extra. I expected too much. It is a polite account of the serendipitous way the Cheever family came to entrust Blake Bailey with the task of writing the book, but is for the most part a clumsy piece, ending as it does with a perfunctory-seeming narrative ending in which McGrath is taken to the Cheever’s rental home in Westchester that inspired so many of his best stories.

Updike has an honest appraisal of Bailey’s biography of Cheever in the most recent New Yorker. He puts his finger on what’s been bugging me about the book–it’s long (700 plus pages), not dramatically written, and, therefore, freaking torturous. Cheever was a sad case, as everyone knows, but he really belabors the fact.

So I’m on self-imposed deadline to write a review-essay on the forthcoming biographies of John Cheever and Flannery O’Connor, by Blake Bailey and Brad Gooch, respectively. Both biographies have one-word titles (“Cheever” and “Flannery”) followed by “A Life”. Not very clever, but I guess when you’re as well-known as these two you can go simple. Flannery is now available and is selling well, but Cheever is not due out until March 10th.

I’ve been reading both simultaneously looking for parallels, which are numerous. Flannery has been the most enjoyable, but Cheever has been more informative. I think that’s because Flannery, despite her brief life, was not a tragic case. She was a hard-working, earnest and principled person who despised “intellectuals” and characterized herself as a 13th century Catholic, so the very fact that she achieved the acclaim she did in a profession that loves its bad boys is a triumph. Cheever, on the other hand, was a train wreck in slo-mo. His early life and career (he published his first story in The New Republic at 19) was spent writing bad Hemmingway imitations and getting bent with Malcolm Cowley, the Republic’s editor, and his illustrious band of socialist-sympathizing bohemians in the Village, including Hart Crane, ee cummings and Walker Evans. O’Connor, attended the newly-founded Iowa Writers Workshop. Cheever never graduated from highschool. O’Connor was, according to many sources, nunnish, whereas as Cheever was, as Yvor Winters once said of Crane, a “sexual acrobat.”

Such a study in contrast has me thinking that I will be able to weave the essay into my current book project because they are, as those of you who know me will attest, the Tigris and Euphrates circumscribing the fertile crescent from which my own literary ambitions sprang forth. I fell in love with Cheever after reading one of his early stories, “Goodbye My Brother” in a used paperback copy of his second story collection The Enormous Radio and Other Stories. The story, about two quarreling brothers–one dutiful and the other misanthropic–struck me very deeply because of the trouble I was having at that time with my own brother. Though Cheever is usually cited for his witty, urbanity and his redress of suburbia before it was en vogue, I was attracted to him immediately for his decorous prose. For Cheever, if a story was worth telling, then it was worth telling with the kind of gravity and largesse associated with legend. “We are a family that has always been very close in spirit,” the first sentence goes. It has never left my head since the first time I read it fifteen years ago.

Flannery is a different matter. My love affair with her began before Cheever, and started in a much more charmed place–City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco, while on Spring Break. While my friend, Bryce, a Beat Generation-junky browsed the Ginsberg and Kerouac, I spotted a copy of A Good Man is Hard to Find. I had read the title story once in high school and then again in a sophomore seminar–both times I was amused and puzzled by the story, but I had never thought to track down the book in its entirety. I bought it along with a City Lights Bookstore t-shirt (which I still have) and spent the rest of the morning in a fancy salon reading it while Bryce got his hair cut. I can recall sitting in that salon and stifling a laugh when the cat gets loose from the Grandmother’s valise, sending the car into a ditch: “We’ve had an ACCIDENT!” the children screamed in a frenzy of delight.”
Who was this woman? What upbringing would bring about such a deadly sense of humor?

Now, both of my favorite authors are the subject of biographical treatment, and I am beside myself. On the one hand I feel the drunken joyous release of so many of Cheever’s characters: “His heart was high and he ran across the grass;” “…it is a night where kings in golden suits ride elephants over the mountains.” But on the other, confronted by the vast differences between these authors, I see the troubling bifurcated nature of my influences and myself–the anxiety of influence, I suppose. It is because of O’Connor and her many grotesque characters that my eye is so trained on the human tendency toward duplicity and self-deception, but it is because of Cheever that I am so concerned with the human impulse for lyricism and decorum. These two tendencies are constantly at odds in me.

starry eyed lancaster
pool party gatecrasher
your secrets are safe with me

http://www.reel.com/movie.asp?MID=6663

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swimmer_(film)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063663/

Coldness falls from the air, she thought, as she carried the white roses up the stairs to the paneled library. That, or: How like sandpipers were the children on the beach, she thought, as she stood by the rusty screen door of their rented house on Nantucket. Zap. Blam. Pow. Here endeth my stab at yesterday’s fiction. No one’s been reading it for forty years. It went out with easel painting, and by easel painting one means the sort of painting that used to be displayed on easels. Two curates playing checkers by a cockatoo’s roost. Painting has cast off its frames, and yet one deeply misses these massive and golden celebrations -fruit and angels- for their element of ultimate risk. By framing a painting the artist, of course, declared it to be a distillate of his deepest feelings about love and death. By junking the frame he destroyed the risk of the declaration. He may, as he will claim, have opened doors, porticos, gates, and mountain passes onto an unframed infinity of comprehension: or he may merely have displayed his abysmal lack of vitality. The woman climbing the stairs with her white roses is in a sense a frame, a declaration, and my account of putting a hat on a statue is frameless and may indeed not deserve a frame at all.
The statue of Leif Erikson was wearing a necktie that day when I started to walk down Commonwealth Avenue from Kenmore Square to the Boston Public Garden. The statue’s tie was a foulard, frayed and stained. It was a cold afternoon but I carried my vicuña over my arm because my father had taught me never to wear a coat unless it was absolutely necessary. If I wore a coat I might be mistaken for an Irishman. I think my knowledge of Boston to be comprehensive and vast but framed entirely in the language of a farewell. I claim to know the cheapness of good-byes -that boyish shrug sent up as a lure for some lover whose face I have never seen although I have seen and tasted everything else. I am not a Bostonian but my provincial credentials will get me over the border. I have no true nostalgia for the city because I remember the aristocracy in my youth as being tragic and cranky. Old C.F. Adams was still challenging anyone -anyone at all- to a sailboat race and Hester Pickman was translating Rilke, but I can remember Jack Wheelwright tossing the sandwiches for tea onto the fire because they were unsuitable. The maid cried. She was a pretty Irish girl. The painting over the mantle was a Tintoretto and Jack had been talking about Henry Adams, his favorite uncle, but when I walked home the night was dark and cold and I, having already read Proust, could recall nothing in his accounts of the fall of Paris that seemed to me so horrible as the smoking sandwiches and the weeping maid. My credentials seem to pass; indeed they take some true knowledge of the situation in order to be assessed. “Oh, do sit down.” Mother exclaimed, “do sit down and let me tell you about the funeral of Phillips Brooks! On the day of his funeral there were trumpets in Copley Square. Oh so many trumpets! I don’t remember the time of year but it seems to me that it was cold and brilliant although of course that may have been the loud music of the trumpets. Phillips Brooks was a big man, you know. He was a very big man. He used to go right down to the South End and drink beer with strange Irishmen! He was not the sort of skinny clergyman who drank sherry. And speaking of sherry, did I tell you about your father and the sherry last Thursday?”

I knew the story although she counted so on innuendo that one would have had to know the facts in advance to understand what she was talking about. My father was a celebrated drinking companion. He had drunk Robert Ingersole and James O’Neill under the table at the old Adams House when Frank Locke ran the bar. The story mother was about to hint at had taken place on Thursday morning. This was in the old house on the South Shore. It was eleven. Father wanted a drink. It was Thursday and S.S. Pierce would deliver his potables that afternoon but the delivery wouldn’t be until after three. The sherry decanter on the sideboard was full. He unstopped the decanter and drank the sherry. Then as a precaution -merely a precaution- he pissed the decanter full. The color was exactly right. Everything in the room was as he had found it except that the fireplace was smoking. He gave the logs a poke and, with his spirits greatly renewed, he went upstairs to read the Shakespeare sonnets to his cat as he so often did. Enter the rector, then. Enter Mother, taking off her apron. “Oh, do sit down, Father Frisbee,” she said, “do sit down and join me in a glass of sherry and a biscuit.” So the poor man of God, sitting in a Windsor chair with half its spokes broken, coughing in the smoke of a fireplace that wouldn’t draw, ate moldy pilot crackers and sipped piss. No wonder none of us ever wanted to go to Harvard.
So I banged down Commonwealth Avenue in the cold. The statue of Wm. Lloyd Garrison was wearing a scarf. Statues in parks, I’ve always thought, have a therapeutic effect on one’s posture. Walking among gods and heroes one always keeps one’s head up. I saw two women walking dogs. One of the dogs was a Labrador, a line I’ve bred but when I whistled to the dog and he pulled on his leash, the woman -a good-looking woman- pulled him in the other direction and hurried on to Beacon Street. She seemed in flight and I was hurt. A black man in a sleeping bag lay on a bench saying: “I din’ do nothing wrong. I din’ do nothing wrong.” There were two couples hitchhiking on the avenue. They were ragged and looked dirty. I thought that I had never seen hitchhikers in the city before, not ever in a city that counted so for its strength upon deeply rooted concentric provincialism. Ahead of me I could see the statue of the President of the Argentine. The statue is vulgar and bulky and what in the world was he doing on Commonwealth Avenue? I decided to put my hat on his head. Why should I, a grown man, put a hat on a statue? Men have been putting hats on statues since the beginnings of time. My father read Shakespeare to the cat, my life is impetuous and unorthodox, and I cannot distinguish persiflage from profundity, which may be my undoing. There was a faded ribbon and a handful of wax flowers on the President’s pedestal. I decided to make my ascent by his cosmic and Rodinesque tailcoat.
My hat was a Locke hat. My coat is a very, very rare vicuña, left to me by my fourth father-in-law, a Des Moines haberdasher. My coat is thirty-five years old but I have discovered that there are only three clubs left in the world where the age of my coat is respected. Only that afternoon, when I threw it over an empty barstool in the Ritz, the man on the next stool fingered the material and I was pleased to think he admired the age, radiance and beauty of the vicuña, but what he was admiring, it seems, were the numerous darns. This put him, in my eyes, into the lower classes and presented me, in his esteem, as a straight thrift-shop type; secondhand rose. I put my folded vicuña on the pedestal and started my ascent. The President is difficult to climb. I would sooner write about my mountain-climbing experiences -coldness, indeed, thought, falls from the summit of the mountain- but that would be some other afternoon. I was struggling up the bronze surface when a man said, “Ciao, bello.”
He was a good-looking young man who wore a serge middy blouse with three crimson chevrons sewn to the sleeve. No navy in the world, I knew, had ever issued such a costume, and I guessed he had mostly seen the ocean from the summit of some roller coaster. “Desiderai tu un’amico?” he asked
“You’ve got a terrible accent,” I said. “Where did you learn Italian? Bergamo? Someplace like that?”
“From a friend,” he said.
“Break it up,” shouted a policeman. “You boys break it up.” He came running down the walk from a cruise car that was parked on Exeter Street. “Break it up, break it up or I’ll throw you both in the lockup. You spoil everything.”

The man in the middy blouse headed north, and the policeman’s anger seemed so genuine and so despairing that I wanted to explain my purpose but I couldn’t do this without sacrificing any chance to be taken seriously. “I’m very old,” I said. “I’m really terribly old and I insist upon the prerogatives and eccentricities of my time of life. I can remember when there was an elevated train on Atlantic Avenue. I can remember the Boston Police strike! I can remember when every village, homestead, hill, and pasture in this great land was dominated by a tree called The Elm. There were the English Elms, the Portuguese Elms, the Wineglass and the Penumbra Elms. They were shaped like fountains, columns, and explosions of grace. They were both lachrymose and manly. They were everywhere and now there are none.”
“Common’s full of elms,” he said.
“All right,” I said, ‘then Chestnuts. My father told me he could remember when every hill in New England was crowned with the noble, native Chestnut. In the autumn their leaves turned a deep, rich brown and the nuts they bore were delicious. I’ve never seen one of these beautiful trees. Not one! My generation was left with the Chestnut Hill Country Club, the Chestnut Grove Tearoom, and quite a few undistinguished streets called Chestnut.”
“Please go away,” he said. “You spoil everything. Everything.”
I went away. I went up to the Exeter Street Theatre and saw a few reels of a Bergman film in which a woman mutilated herself with broken glass. I do not choose to describe the scene but I couldn’t anyhow because I shut my eyes. Then I returned to Commonwealth Avenue, determined to put my hat on the President. During my absence the light had changed. The light in Boston, on a good day, I’ve always thought, has the incandescence of a sea light. Only the alchemy of sea air could have turned the statue of George Washington into the fairest verdigris. So in this fading sea light I returned to the President of the Argentine. A young girl was sitting on a bench near the statue and I sat down beside her. “May I?” I asked.
“Certainly,” she said.
“What’s your name?”
“Pixie,” she said. “That’s what they call me. My name is Alice-Mae.”
She had marvelous legs and breasts. I don’t mean at all that they conformed to any measured beauty but that there was some extraordinary congruence between their proportions and one’s desires. The legs were not showgirl legs, they had nothing thrilling, lengthy, or brilliant about them. Their gleam and their shape were modest and youthful.
“Do you live around here?” I asked.
“I live in a dormitory,” she said. “We’re not allowed to have men visitors.”
“What’s your university?”
“It’s not a university. It’s really a college. They call it an academy. It’s where my parents wanted me to go.”
“What does your father do?”
“He’s a funeral director,” she said.
Then I knew that she was a student at the embalming school in Kenmore Square. This had happened to me once before. I picked up a very good-looking girl in a hamburger place called The Fatted Calf. At first she said she was studying anatomy but then she came clean, or clean enough to say that her task, her study and vocation, was to beautify death, to make death comprehensible to the cruelly bereaved.
“What do you study?” I asked.
“Well, we don’t have regular courses,” she said. “I mean we don’t study history or arithmetic or things like that.”
“You are learning,” I asked, “how to beautify death?”
“Oh yes, yes,” she exclaimed. “However did you know?”
And so we will end as the movies do when, having exhausted the kiss, the walk-off, the reconciliation, and the boundlessness of faith, hope, and charity, they resort to a downward or falling crawl title giving the facts in the case -usually to the fading music of police sirens. The girl’s real name is Alice-Mae Plumber and she has flunked out of embalming school and is afraid to tell her parents. The man in the middy blouse is named Lemuel Howe and he will be arrested three days later for possession of dangerous drugs and sentenced to five years in the Suffolk County Jail. The man who wanted to put his hat on the statue of the President is I.

 John Cheever

ishi

I read in spurts, and I can be a restless reader, so I tend to have a few books on the go at any given time. Currently I am reading three books, having just finished Ishi, in Two Worlds, by Theodora Kroeber, the seminal story of America’s last “wild” Indian. Even though I am a child of the sixties, I never got around to reading the book until this summer. I’m sure most of your know the story – about the last of the Yahi tribe, who had held out for many years in the hills above Chico, CA, until one day in 1911, many years after all the Indians were presumed to have been finally exterminated, a lone Indian appeared at the back of a remote butcher shed, exhausted and scared. They took him to San Francisco, where he lived in a museum, and taught the white folk all about the ways of the savage. Everybody loved him and they were sad when he died of tuberculosis in 1916.

Then I heard a podcast from Australia’s Radio National program All in the Mind, about a book written by an American anthropologist, Orin Starn, entitled Ishi’s Brain. Starn’s book, written in 2004, is a great companion piece to Kroeber’s 1960 book on Ishi. Starn’s writing is clear and descriptive, while Kroeber’s is ornate and, as it turns out, somewhat dishonest. The original Ishi story, as it appeared in 1960, can be seen as a romanticized product of its times. In it, Ishi is portrayed as the noble savage. His story is the precursor to all things Kevin Costner, an oversimplified attempt to expiate white guilt. Starn’s book attempts to set the record straight, and even chronicles the betrayal of Ishi by his white friends, who, contrary to Ishi’s wishes, allowed an autopsy of Ishi when he died, and even surreptitiously removed his brain to be pickled and sent to the Smithsonian! It’s part detective story, part social history, part anthropological corrective, and entirely readable. I strongly recommend it.

Having traveled in Micronesia myself, I enjoy a good read about Pacific travels, so I recently picked up Passage to Torres Strait, by Miles Hordern (2005). It’s not that great. Hordern is a good writer, but a lousy storyteller. He has obviously read Paul Theroux’s The Happy Isles of Oceania, and Tony Horwitz’ Blue Latitudes, two excellent books on the topic, and attempted (like them) to blend history and personal narrative. But the damn book doesn’t hold together because Hordern doesn’t know how to make the simple transitions between events work. Read Theroux or Horwitz instead. Or Eric Hansen, (The Bird Man and the Lap Dancer) who is another gifted Pacific travel writer .

Bullet Park

Lastly, I am reading “Bullet Park”, by John Cheever (1967). What can you say about Cheever that hasn’t already been said? OK, here goes: if Garrison Keilor were a deeply melancholic alcoholic with repressed homosexual tendencies, he would be John Cheever. It’s Americana through a glass darkly. I started the book yesterday and I will finish it today. I can’t put it down. I have read most of Cheever, and it’s just the thing for this time of year. It’s sad, beautiful, elegiac, funny, and true. It chronicles the dissipation of an unsustainable lifestyle. It’s set in the suburbs, and it’s a glimpse into a time that I remember vaguely – that time when it was still possible to just about remember what it was like to not be completely immersed in consumer culture. Here’s a quote:

“The Ridleys were a couple who brought to the hallowed institution of holy matrimony a definitely commercial quality as if to marry and conceive, rear and educate children was like the manufacture and merchandising of some useful product produced in competition with other manufacturers. They were not George and Helen Ridley. They were “The Ridleys.” One felt that they might have incorporated and sold shares in their destiny over the counter. “The Ridleys” was painted on the door of their station wagon. There was a sign saying “The Ridleys” at the foot of their driveway. In their house, matchbooks, coasters and napkins were all marked with their name. They presented their handsome children to their guests with the air of salesmen pointing out the merits of a new car in a showroom. The lusts, griefs exaltations and shabby worries of a marriage never seemed to have marred the efficiency of their organization. One felt that they probably had branch offices and a staff of salesmen on the road.”

Of course, this seems like broad caricature, and it is, but it’s a set piece in the novel which serves as a springboard to deeper mysteries and profound observations on the ephemeral and fragile nature of what we assume to be our well maintained lives. Cheever links his characters to the cycles of nature, but only to show how far they have diverged from what really matters. They long for meaning, but don’t find it. Nowadays we labor under the “accountability” paradigm: No Child Left Behind, Work Harder, Work Longer, Compete Globally. We’ve take it for normal. We need to read Cheever and see how we got into this mess. The heart has its reasons of which the bean counters know nothing.