Customer Reviews

Cheever: A Life

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As biographies go, this is a page-turner. Even though one knows the broad outline of the story (downwardly mobile youth, short story writer for the New Yorker, alcoholic, bisexual, years as an out-of-print failure, eventual sobriety, author of late-in-life best seller, redemption shortly followed by death, and being outed in a daughter's memoir), the more detailed story is riveting in a painful, compelling way. It always hurts to see people you love miserable and self-destructive, but that is just the picture that Bailey gives us. With total access to all of Cheever's journals, published and unpublished, and with the cooperation of Cheever's wife and three grown children, he takes us farther than we sometimes would wish into the head of this tortured lion. But what makes this book a two-fer is the quality of the literary criticism. Even books you think you know well, like The Wapshot Chronicle, benefit from the analytical light that Bailey shines on them. Cheever was a genius, and he lived a tragic life that was both sad and monumental. He couldn't have asked for a better, more unflinching biographer than he now has.

Two of the reviews so far have related to the Kindle version of this book: one gives 5 stars on the strength of Mr. Bailey's Yates biography, and helpfully suggests that the publisher make a Kindle version available; the other deplores the high cost of the Kindle edition. Neither reader, by their own weird confession, have read the book in question. (It seems a bit hard to give an author one damning star for a fault that can hardly be attributed to him!) For what it's worth in this bizarre critical ethos, I have read CHEEVER and can vouch for the fact that it's one of the finest literary biographies of the postwar era: comprehensive yet astonishingly tight, funny, insightful, beautifully researched, compassionate, merciless, you name it. If you're remotely interested in great American writers with bottomless contradictions--nicely reconciled in this book--and extraordinarily eventful lives (both outer and inner) you will love CHEEVER. And frankly $19 for a Kindle edition strikes me as eminently reasonable.

This is one of the best, most thoroughly researched and revealing biographies on anyone to come along in quite some time. Not sure that 50 chapters and 750+ pages were necessary or desirable--among the best are the first 15 and last 10--for anything but Cheever devotees. But a tour de force by Blake Bailey, who has a gift for really getting under this subject's skin, shedding tons of light, and finding humanity in places large and small. Count me among those, however, who didn't need this or any other bio to make a case for Cheever's "comeback." There have to be legions of us out there who never stopped reading his books and cherish each and every time we re-read them. I, for one, can't imagine a world without John Cheever's stories and am puzzled to read that he isn't a high school or college staple. Also, the continued fixation by many reviewers that this book reconfirms Cheever was no picnic on himself, his family, lovers, friends and colleagues, risks missing an important point. We all know incredibly complicated as well as talented people who we can say pretty much the same about--but very few who accomplished even a fraction of the extraordinary legacy of this hugely gifted writer. There's much more to be found in this book then a documentation of pain, suffering and self-loathing. What emerges is a reminder that truly great, one-of-a-kind art-making remains not only incredibly rare and precious but looks so much easier to the rest of us than it really is and frequently exacts a very high price on the constellation of characters around the artists. That certainly appears to have been true when it comes to John Cheever's wife and three children. But as Mary Cheever is quoted as telling THE BOSTON GLOBE: "What's important is what he wrote, not what he did." If Bailey's effort falls short anywhere, it is perhaps devoting too much attention to what Cheever did as weighted against his sublime writings.

Warning: Direct and frequent association with John Cheever could be hazardous to your mental health.

Over the years, I have read all of John Cheever's 121 short stories and five novels and re-read most of the stories. Until reading Blake Bailey's biography of him (1912 -1982), however, I knew almost nothing about his personal life but - based on what his work suggests - had incorrectly assumed that he was born into an "old money" family, was a graduate of a prestigious New England boarding school (perhaps Groton or one of the Phillips academies) and then an Ivy League college, and was loved and respected by those who knew him best. In fact, as Bailey learned, especially from Cheever himself after reading his personal journals (4,300 pages), he was a profoundly unhappy person throughout his life, consumed by self-loathing and alienated from his family members and associates until a year or so before he died. At one point, he left his wife and family and rented an apartment near Boston University where he was expected to teach. In fact, his only objective was to drink himself to death and he almost succeeded.

After finally making my way through Bailey's 679-page biography and 42 pages of "Notes", I re-read several of Cheever's short stories with even greater admiration and understanding than I had before. I also sensed that so much more of the Cheever portrayed by Bailey is reflected in those stories than I had previously realized. For example, his preoccupation with maintaining appearances and his suppressed fear of proving unworthy of social status in combination with a profound sense of inadequacy, his obsession with water, his reluctance and/or inability to express affection for family members, his ambiguous sexuality, and in response to the course of his life and career, his suppressed rage and frustration, and from childhood until late in life, his dependence on alcohol. These help to explain the patterns of Cheever's life. As Deirdre Donahue suggests in her own review, "Perhaps that's the best aspect of [the book]. Bailey unravels an endless spool of bad behavior. And yet he and thus the reader remain sympathetic to Cheever, in part because of Cheever's own sense of self-loathing seemed to trump the justified fury he generated in family and friends. He struggled endlessly - against himself, his sexuality, his despair, and his addiction to alcohol. The battle with booze was one he eventually won."

With regard to Cheever's marriage, as Geoffrey Wolff suggests in his review, "The warfare between Cheever and wife, Mary, was Homeric in its magnificent and unremitting cruelty. Susan [their daughter] has described the dinner table as a `shark tank,' her mother muttering to herself or keeping her lips resolutely zipped, her father mumbling incoherent imprecations." Obviously, the Cheevers' marital relationship reflected the nature and extent of his intoxication and consequent behavior. Wolff adds, "Even as Bailey can't help deploring the carnage Cheever left in his wake - more than a couple of wrecked lives of those he exploited - he manages to stand, at essential moments, in wonder."

After reading Cheever's journals, John Updike observed, "Rarely has a gifted and creative life seemed sadder." Years later, in his review of this book, Updike described it as "a triumph of thorough research and unblinkered appraisal" but acknowledged that "all this biographer's zeal makes a heavy, dispiriting read, to the point that even I, a reader often enraptured by Cheever's prose and an acquaintance who generally enjoyed his lively company, wanted the narrative...to hurry through the menacing miasma of a life which, for all the sparkle of its creative moments, brought so little happiness to its possessor and to those around him." That is precisely how I felt on numerous occasions while reading the book but to be fair, Bailey felt obliged to take full advantage of the resources available to him and he probably produced what will remain for quite some time, the definitive biography of John Cheever. I also wish to commend him on his sensitive and perceptive analysis of Cheever's works, especially the short stories. (I do not share others' high regard for the literary value of the novels, including Falconer.) In one of the short stories I recently re-read, I came upon this passage, one that provides an appropriate conclusion to this review:

"He looked at us all bleakly. The wind and the sea had risen, and I thought that if he heard the waves, he must hear them only as a dark answer to all his dark questions; that he would think that the tide had expunged the embers of our picnic fires. The company of a lie is unbearable, and he seemed like the embodiment of a lie." (from "Goodbye, My Brother" in The Stories of John Cheever, 1978)

After reading Blake Bailey's wonderfully comprehensive biography of John Cheever, one still might ask, "who was Cheever?" It's a fair question and author Bailey does a terrific job trying to uncover the layers of this complicated writer, best known for "Falconer". As is suggested, John Cheever never let anyone in all the way and hence will remain as mysterious as he was gifted.

Beset by inner demons....his nearly lifelong battle with alcoholism and his fear of being cast as a "gay author" (let alone known as a gay man)...Cheever, nonetheless, managed to keep up more than a whit of respect in his adopted home town of Ossining, New York. He drove his family to the brink as he drove himself there, too, and it is remarkable that the Cheever family held together at all. There is a curious "hearkening back to another time" quality about Bailey's book which might cause some comparison of a generation or two ago with today's society. First, his wife Mary stayed with him to the end, though their relationship had lost its commonality years before. Would she have stayed with him today? Second, was it simply Cheever's New England background and his being a product of his times that kept him in the closet? (whereas today he might have been that much more comfortable in the open)

Mostly, it is Bailey's ability to look at John Cheever through a continuing prism of his subject's insecurities that makes this book shine. Cheever, the man, wrote fiction and lived fiction. "Cheever", the book, reflects this with an introspective and highly enjoyable narrative. I fully recommend it.

Bailey writes a rich and full portrait of a man divided against himself. He combines sympathy for Cheever's inner torments with a clear-eyed depiction of his many failings. His critical examination of Cheever's work is insightful and refreshingly free of critical jargon--he made me go back and reread several stories with a new perspective. Although there is much sadness in Cheever's story--it's never easy to read about a talented person's self destruction, much less his ill treatment of his family--Bailey also celebrates Cheever's artistic triumphs, his biting wit, and his moments of joy.

In modern lexicon, Cheever has become synonomous with a Seinfeld episode, illuding to his occasional trists with men, this is unfortunite, because Cheever is one of the great writers of 20th century American Literature. His take on American suburbia is a master class in writing. This book fleshes him out, and frankly, he was not a man to admire, he was petty, and ungracious, I think the way he treated his son was the most disturbing. His romances with men, were as flinting as his relationships with woman, he seemed to poison everything he touched, with the only exception being his writing. Cheever seems to have the typical self loathing, you expect, but the fact that he projects this on his children and in his relationships makes it all the more toxic. After you read this well researched, fast paced tome to Cheever, you can't help but by left with the feeling that even with his great writing and influence, his real legacy was wreckage he left in his wake.

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.

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.

Take a brilliant, fair-minded, insightful biographer and pair him with a brilliant, conflicted, journal-keeping, letter-writing writer and you get a superb understanding of a man. Considering that Cheever was a contradictory person to say the least, that Blake Bailey produces such a nuanced, dimensional, credible, and deeply moving study is in my opinion a breathtaking accomplishment. Among the greatest of literary biographies--Ellmann on Wilde, for example, or Homes on Shelley, this biography will forever reside. The book is engrossing, profoundly informative, and exciting. I couldn't put it down and will now live in hope that Blake Bailey will one day produce a biography of Updike to go not just with this one on Cheever but his equally superb study of Richard Yates.