Cheever: A Life
In the summer of 1934, the novelist John Cheever left the cozy confines of the writer鈥檚 colony at Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and moved into a tenement on Hudson Street, in Manhattan 鈥� a neighborhood then so rough-hewed that Walker Evans, a friend of Cheever鈥檚, eventually photographed the 22-year-old鈥檚 dingy flat for a series on Depression-era destitution.
Every week, John鈥檚 brother, Fred, would send him a tenner through the post, three of which went to rent; some to stale bread, milk, and raisins; and whatever was left to typewriter ribbon.
A few years earlier, Cheever managed to offload a single story to the New Republic, which had won him the welcome attention of a prominent editor named Malcolm Cowley. He had arrived in New York determined to write a novel, which he viewed 鈥� correctly, it turned out 鈥� as essential to his professional development. Still, the writing came slowly, and on bad days, Cheever would sit in Washington Square Park, wondering how long it might take a man to starve.
He became a fixture at uptown literary parties, where he would quaff Manhattans until he was hopelessly drunk.
鈥淪obriety seemed out of the question,鈥� Blake Bailey reports in Cheever: A Life, his expansive, wonderfully written biography of this brilliant yet deeply troubled man. Bailey quotes one of Cheever鈥檚 first girlfriends, who remembered that the young writer, 鈥渟imply never faced himself, and when he did he didn鈥檛 like what he saw. And nothing relieved him.鈥�
This last statement is not entirely accurate. Cheever had two sources of respite.
One was sex, an activity at which he was endlessly 鈥� and enthusiastically 鈥� profligate. He slept with editors, writers, married women, and, at least once, Walker Evans. Sometimes Cheever鈥檚 escapades sent him spiraling into melancholy 鈥� the 鈥渕egrims,鈥� he called them 鈥� but more often they served to take his mind off the grimier aspects of quotidian existence.
His other great pursuit, of course, was writing, a craft he viewed with equal parts reverence and fear. Writing was a way to expurgate at least some of the demons he鈥檇 collected from a young age.
And yet, if Cheever knew he was meant to write, the very act itself often proved violently agonizing. There was salvation in fiction, he believed, but it was hell to get there. Cheever, who published 鈥淔alconer,鈥� perhaps the greatest novel of the late 20th century, lived a life marred by the most savage emotional trauma.
The heir to one of the storied names in New England history, Cheever鈥檚 parents, Frederick and Mary, managed to fritter away most of their money and sunk into a very public ignominy John would never forget. Although he often affected a lordly Yankee air, Cheever left his hometown of Quincy, Mass., early on and returned only twice, Bailey notes, once for his brother鈥檚 funeral, 鈥渁nd once for his own.鈥�
Cheever once wrote, 鈥淚 have no biography. I came from nowhere and I don鈥檛 know where I鈥檓 going.鈥�
Where did he go? Well, just about everywhere an aspiring writer could imagine. Unlike the other sad, young literary men crowding Manhattan at the time, Cheever did not have a Harvard degree 鈥� he had no degree at all 鈥� and yet his fiction was so pressingly precocious, so fantastically knowing, that, within a few years of his arrival in New York, he found himself surrounded by high-powered editors and agents.
They pressed him to write, and he obliged: 鈥淭he Way People Live,鈥� an early collection, was followed in the 鈥�50s by the 鈥淭he Wapshot Chronicle鈥� and, later, by the enigmatic 鈥淏ullet Park.鈥�
By the time he published 鈥淔alconer,鈥� in 1977, he was one of the pillars 鈥� John Updike was another 鈥� of the modern literary establishment. He appeared on the cover of Time in 1964, picked up the Pulitzer Prize in 1979, and the National Medal of Literature in 1982, just before his death. He wrote 121 stories for the New Yorker, each of them a small masterpiece of observational wit.
Like Richard Yates, author of 鈥淩evolutionary Road,鈥� and the subject of another Bailey biography, John Cheever鈥檚 primary subject was the corruptive influence of the suburbs and the horridly normative patterns of city life. He believed in the possibility of redemption, but doubted that most men had the moral strength to make it that far.
Most of all, he doubted himself. He was buffeted by addiction and melancholy; from an early age, he felt more attraction to men than to women and he spent the rest of his life unsuccessfully wrestling with his sexual urges. Only after he was dead and gone did his children learn the truth. (His long-suffering wife, apparently, had a pretty good idea of Cheever鈥檚 predilections.)
Bailey鈥檚 biography, which relies heavily on Cheever鈥檚 personal journal and letters, is not an easy book to read.聽 Bailey spares us none of Cheever鈥檚 struggles.
In an essay published posthumously last week in the New Yorker, John Updike 鈥� an acquaintance of Cheever鈥檚 鈥� regretted Bailey鈥檚 insistence on documenting his subject鈥檚 every transgression. It makes the biography, he lamented, 鈥渁 heavy, dispiriting read, to the point that ... I wanted the narrative ... to hurry through the menacing miasma of a life, which for all the sparkling of its creative moments, brought so little happiness to its possessor and those around him.鈥�
That seems to me an ungenerous assessment. It鈥檚 true that 鈥淐heever: A Life鈥� is a hard and bracing read, and that Bailey is indeed unstinting in his depictions of Cheever鈥檚 travails. And yet, all that darkness helps pull the genius 鈥� 鈥渢he sparkling of the creative moments,鈥� as Updike has it 鈥� into relief. To read Bailey on Cheever is to arrive at a much fuller appreciation of a deeply gifted chronicler of American life.
Matthew Shaer is a Monitor staff writer.
