Customer Reviews

The Stories of the Supernatural/2 Cassettes

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

John Cheever is one of the greatest writers ever to come out of this or any other country. He's incredibly unsung and my suspicions are that in twenty years we'll be singing his praises the way we do Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Few stories in this collection will disappoint, my favorites being "The Enormous Radio" and "The Swimmer." Still, read them for yourself and judge. Would also recommend Jackson McCrae's "The Bark of the Dogwood" for another excellent read.

Wanting to have good national writers is a powerful motivator. I think that this has happened with John Cheever, from the retrospective praise of his work to our fascination with his bisexuality and persistent alcoholism. Indeed, his personal demons are far more interesting than his prose.

While I read isolated stories in mags and liked them, reading them in a lump like this makes his weaknesses seem very plain indeed. His stories almost all revolve around a common plot: things in the suburbs don't turn out the way we want, and most often, a lot of alcohol does little to soften the blow of deteriorating reliationships, alienated children, and nothing to do in retirement. When you read 20 stories like that in a row, Cheever appears as a feeble writer indeed. This a throwaway magazing writing, not some timeless achievement that should enter the pantheon.

Not recommended.

Stories of family and friends that incorporate life's normal occurrences and provide a feeling that we all experience the same things.

I loved every one of John Cheever's stories and in fact, I go back every now and then to re-read them. Each story is perfectly crafted with characters that pull you in right at the beginning and plots that rise to a climax and ebb with precision. What I find compelling about these stories is that they are about everyday life in cities like New York. No weird characters in exotic locations served up by attractive, young, hip boho writers (preferred these days by "literary critics"). John Cheever's stories are about people like you and me who find themselves in the most painful, intolerable situations.

Most of my students scratch their heads and mutter "Who?" when I tell them they will be reading the selected stories of John Cheever. When I tell them that Cheever is a representative of upper crusty, mid-twentieth century, cosmopolitan American cities, the sighs and groans can be heard crosstown.
Then they read the stories: "Goodbye, My Brother", "The Swimmer", "The Enormous Radio"... And the discussions are as lively as any instructor could hope for.
And their excitement reminds me over and again of the thrill I had reading these stories for the first time. (I'm almost jealous of my students--I miss that first time pleasure.) These are stories perfect in their craftsmanship, memorable in their characters, and decidedly superior to anything of his time, and just about anything since. Pick up this collection and enjoy.

Rocco Dormarunno,
College of New Rochelle

Like most good short story writers, John Cheever has his niche in time and place. His is the world of New York middle class life in the 1940s -- as he himself puts it, "when almost everyone wore hats." It was also, it seems, a time when every man worked a nine to five office job and took the commuter train home to Shady Hill. A time when his wife, who regretted giving up her talent and ambition for the life of a lonely housewife, would either have an affair with the milkman or pass her time shopping and catching matinees in the city. A time when cocktail parties were the Friday night routine, and every other family was named Farquarson. Yes, this is Waspy America at its peak, in its heyday, and no one that I know of has captured it so crisply, so honestly, and so compassionately, as John Cheever. If F. Scott Fitzgerald captured a generation in the 1920s, the same can be said of Cheever two decades later.

Born in 1912, John Cheever gives a unique survey of the bright American mid-century through his stories. Like his literary brother, John Updike, having a life both lucky and lusty hardly spoilt his acuity.

Cheever made his name as the laureate of Shady Hill, a pleasant post-war borough of bliss and torment, just a train ride beyond Manhattan.

Many of these stories were initially penned for the New Yorker magazine. In the original 1979 introduction to this omnibus, he gently mocks its "dated paraphernalia".

The stories still soar beyond their time, through a faultless touch for manners and mores. For Cheever's natural field of study is "decorum" as he puts it. This he studies with great artifice but never drily.

Once imagined, savoured and named, "The Enormous Radio" could only have been his. This monstrous gift mysteriously pipes the loves and quarrels of surrounding families into the apartment of a "satisfactorily average" couple. Surreal snatches of Edward Lear bedtime reading are siphoned in. The couple lose their usual protective static and face again their own wickedness.

From this early classic, Cheever went on to love and lampoon the Shady Hill domain, its interlocking characters playing out their dramas on Alewives Lane. There, a man may luckily recoup venial and mortal sins, but equally may forfeit everything on a pratfall.

Life's fateful turns are observed with a fine mixture of acid and sympathy. The accomplished grandmother of "An Educated American Woman" cables her accomplished daughter, in perfect Italian, that she cannot make it back from Italy for her grandson's death.

Cheever's striking use of the rhythms and progressions of fairytale is a bonus. In "The Children", the hapless servant Victor stumbles like a lost medieval courtier to ever-declining situations. "The Swimmer's" suburban pool-crawl starts as an alcoholic dare and ends in witchy desolation.

One hand guarding the meal ticket from his comfortable readership, Cheever managed brave sleight of hand with the other. Rarely does he descend into Saturday Evening Post mawkishness.

The 60 stories amassed from five previous collections give a satisfying sense of a skill husbanded and used over a long period, just about as well as we can ask of a writer. Cheever responded to the continuous assessment demands of his craft as did few writers in the class of the 20th century short story.

[The West Australian, Saturday February 23 1991]

You owe it your bookshelf to own this compendium of John Cheever stories. I borrowed mine from the library, and thought I'd read perhaps half in the alloted time. Renewed once, then let the fines pile up, as I kept reading "just one more story." One a night is perfect bedtime reading...but with nearly 5 dozen stories...well you get the picture.

These are dark, dark tales of life at its zenith...ultra confident, comfortable post-war America. Florid description, rich portraiture, and slick storylines, Cheever's stories contain more than a few eye-popping twists and surprise endings. All the hallmarks of championship short-stories.

Warning: Restock the cabinet with gin and imagine the vermouth before reading. Cheever serves his Martini with a capital M.

I recently made a lengthy automobile trip through a boring section of the country, and I spent much of the drive listening to these stories. Of the sixty-odd pieces in this collection, almost all of them first published in _The New Yorker_, I'd previously read maybe one-third, especially the more famous and heavily anthologized ones like "The Swimmer." But my favorites are those in which Cheever experimented with style and content, like "The Enormous Radio" and "The Country Husband" and "The Wrysons" and "Goodbye My Brother." Cheever invented the "New York story" in which the characters are ordinary people living generally ordinary lives, but by whom the reader becomes fascinated. And the last paragraph always seems to tie up the narrative in a neat surgical knot. Amazingly good stuff.

John Cheever's work may not appeal to all; those of us who are not WASP's, from New England, or do not live in suburbs might feel these stories are about the trivialities of elites, but the truth is far different.

Cheever's work is deceptive; all is quiet, forbearing, with little violence or deprivation, a typical New Yorker story. Except, of course, Cheever invented the form, so the so-called "typical New Yorker" story is a knock-off of John Cheever's work. He is of his time and place, like Shakespeare or Sappho, so like all of us, he is limited by what he knew, lived and experienced. But enough objections.

This collection of short stories can only be compared to great ouevres in world civilization; a lifetime's work, an exploration of a life, a comphrensive vision of human life from a distinct perspective. Mozart's concerti, Beethoven's Symphonies, O'Keefe's paintings are akin to this book, this mass-market goldmine.

John Clellon Holmes said of Cheever's work that he was working through his own psychoanalysis on the page. I certainly agree with that. From reading Cheever's letters and journals, one can see that he left little to himself. He was tortured by bisexuality, adultery, alcholism, feeling unloved by his parents, feeling himself socially and financially inferior to the braying socialities around him and his stories explore these conflicts with unflinching bravery.

Those who refuse to see past the social milieu are denying themselves the company of one America's greatest artists. I, too had to get over his settings, but then too, it took me a while to connect with Faulkner who's work is locked with a time and location that is never derided, unlike Cheever's. I assert there is no difference.

Cheever's collected stories are also a great place to understand writing. He is a master of understatement, of terse scenes, of inner horror, of the shabbiness of most people's moral lives.

Does he have nothing to say to us now? No. John Cheever was our last great writer, or the last great writer of the 20th century.
This great book is part of American culture no less than the NFL