From Publishers Weekly
John Cheever's letters aren't great literaturethey weren't meant to bebut his unmistakable voice comes through on every page. Bristling with his sardonic wit and "rock-bottom irritability," they reveal a man of dark contradictions: an ardent heterosexual in public, Cheever despised his own secret bisexuality; he scorned the upper-middle class but desperately needed its approval. Letters track a romantic affair with actress Hope Lange, a competitive friendship with John Updike and dialogues with Saul Bellow, Josephine Herbst, Malcolm Cowley, Frederick Exley and Philip Roth. In the late 1960s, Cheever's merry, heavy-drinking attitude swiftly turned into family tragedy. Benjamin Cheever, the novelist's son, interweaves affectionate commentaries with the letters, telling what it was like to be reared by a famous writer who was an alcoholic. In the most affecting letters, every word is in place as Cheever paints a real-life character, comments on contemporary fiction or lays bare his frustrations. We follow the writer from a $3-a-week Greenwich Village room to the wilds of Westchester, N.Y.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This breezy, fast-paced correspondence will delight Cheever's fans. Dashed off in a tipsy or rhapsodic haze, without dates or any other thoughts for posterity, these letters focus not on Cheever's work but on "the common minutiae of lifethe raw materials of most good letters." Though occasionally savage toward other writers, the Cheever revealed here is generally light-hearted, warm, and confident. But middle age finds him "stuck in a morass of alcohol and melancholy," and the letters take on a grim undertone; the chief pleasures of his last decade seem to be his open indulgence of his homosexuality and the achievements of his children. On the whole, a splendid, lively book for anyone who likes to read others' mail. Michael Edmonds, State Historical Soc. of Wisconsin, Madison
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
