Glad Tidings: A Friendship in Letters : The Correspondence of John Cheever and John D. Weaver, 1945-1982 [Hardcover]

John Cheever (Author), John D. Weaver (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1993

Spanning forty years, the correspondence between John Cheever and his friend, fellow writer John Weaver, offers an intimate portrait of Cheever's life, showing a funny, moving side of the great writer that is very different from his famed journals.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Weaver, a writer of fiction and non-fiction, first met Cheever (already an established short story writer) in 1943 in New York City at the old Paramount Studio in Astoria, Queens, where both were assigned to write training films for the Army Signal Corps. After Weaver's move to the West Coast, the two met infrequently, but continued to correspond; by the time Cheever died at the age of 70 in 1982, Weaver had received 234 letters from him, which form the bulk of this epistolary collection. Arranged by decade, the letters deal mostly with the minutiae of Cheever's domestic life and the stresses and successes of the two men's writing careers, such as Cheever's witty letter describing the 1958 National Book Awards ceremony, at which his novel, The Wapshot Chronicle , was honored. Although Cheever's letters invariably strike a light tone, they do shed light on his descent into alcoholism and on the love affairs he hid from his wife. Of primary interest to Cheever devotees.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

When the editor and John Cheever met in the service in 1943- -they were both stationed in Queens--Cheever was already well along in his career as a short-story writer. For the next four decades, until Cheever's death in 1982, the two maintained a correspondence that is, not surprisingly, lopsided in quality. An amiable hack writer, Weaver intersperses among Cheever's 234 letters lots of chatty and curious material, much of it having little to do with Cheever. He quotes from his own journals and his wife's diaries, and the result is a true literary curiosity--an indulgence that can be as charming as it is exasperating. The meatiest letters from Cheever seem familiar from son Ben Cheever's earlier selection (1988), though Weaver never tells us exactly how many here are repeats. Nor does he explain his use of ellipses: When are they part of the letter and when do they indicate elisions by Weaver? In any case, Cheever's letters include vintage descriptions of domestic details; of chronic boozing; and of endless money problems. Cheever's humor at his own expense is always ingratiating, and his travel reports equal details in his fiction. All in all, though, both writers avoid being too serious, and live down to Cheever's own description of a good letter: It ``should be like a daisy in the field, charming for a moment, not much to smell, soon dead.'' A running joke about the ``wrinkled crotch'' in Cheever's pants grows tiresome, and suggests how little of substance the two friends discussed in their letters. Occasional brilliant passages by Cheever make up for Weaver's detailed brushes with fame. An oddity of interest only to Cheever fans. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 357 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins; 1st edition (September 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060169575
• ISBN-13: 978-0060169572
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,787,801 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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