The Journals of John Cheever [Paperback]

John Cheever (Author), Benjamin Cheever (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1993

"Heartrending...Can be read as a writer's notebook, a family chronicle, a brutally honest autobiography, and almost as an unfinished novel...A daring contribution to American letters."--New York Times

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From the late 1940s until a few days before his death of cancer in 1982, the eminent American author recorded daily encounters--with family, friends and, most powerfully, with conflicting impulses in himself--in these journals, which will likely prove as lasting a body of work as his fiction. A BOMC alternate; nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

As explained in the editor's note, the published volume contains selected portions of Cheever's extensive personal journals. Published with the cooperation and assistance of the author's family, it represents one-twentieth of the actual journals, which span a 35-year period. The journals served Cheever both as writer's notebook and memoir, clarifying much of his method of working. The inner life of a writer is revealed in these highly introspective memoirs. Cheever writes of his alcoholism and his bisexuality; his "war with the world"; his loneliness, alienation, depression, and carnal fantasies; his love for his family; his religion (Catholicism); his perception of the role of the writer in society; and his enjoyment of the rural life at his home in the Hudson valley, all with remarkable powers of description. A candid, beautiful, often startling portrait of a 20th-century American writer. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/91.
- Lesley Jorbin, Cleveland State Univ. Lib.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 399 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st edition (June 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345358961
• ISBN-13: 978-0345358967
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,012,001 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars throughways and bridges.., November 16, 2002

By 

J. Anderson (Monterey, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Journals of John Cheever (Paperback)

Cheever says "I am fifty-four, but I still think myself too young...to suffer nightmares about throughways and bridges." Daily peril is ever close at hand in the self-abusive pain and duty of the observed life of a 20th century master of English prose. The only peril in reading this book is a broken heart. I would stand anywhere and say there are paragraphs in these journals that rival in beauty and perfection any other in English literature you may produce. Cheever can't help it; this kind of genius is inevitable. What does it matter that misery formed a life? The pages written in Italy in the late '50's, especially, nurse a kind of transparent abiding of deep misery - seeking, arranging and soldiering it, all the while writing, fortunately for us. However alcohol and inner troubles may have crippled aspects of Cheever's career, nothing but glory shadows his paragraphs of light! The book is more like an autobiographical duel in the form of a novel, so raw is Cheever's self-reaching, and so moving his conclusions. Barely able to escape the intense life of the mind, Cheever's art almost threatens confessional literature by refusing to confess. He keeps his writer's mind, and makes the rest serve. As a result, the book full of a beauty that will never disappear. It's a worthwhile idea to get a copy just to read the paragraph written in 1981, after taking the dogs walking deep into the rainy woods, returning & listening to Bach's Concerto for Two Violins on headphones, while the wet and muddy dogs dry on the porch. It's an amazing book by a peerless writer.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars harrowing reading, March 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Journals Of John Cheever (Hardcover)

I am a big Cheever fan and it took me about a month at 10-12 pages a night to finish this book. Before buying this book, you should consider if you want to sit through 395 pages of drink, depression, marital strife, adultery, hypocrisy (Cheever's), and bisexuality; all set in a prose that is often beautiful and sometimes fragmentary. Please be forewarned, this is a journal, not a narrative, and Cheever is not at all concerned about clarity. PS: I was struck by how much he admired Hemingway. "I think of Hemingway, what we remember of his work is not so much the color of the sky as it is the absolute taste of loneliness."

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tough slogging amply rewarded over and over, December 15, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Journals of John Cheever (Paperback)

Read these journals and you will meet this man. Not just the sardonic detached observer of the cocktail party set. Yes, the journals verify that he is that. And not just the gentle introspective genius who pours his heart out to the labradors as he empties his nth glass of gin sitting on the porch as a warm summer night drifts to an end. (is that too). But the man who, when a grand and ancient 3 and a half foot snapping turtle dares trample his flower bed, pumps 10 shotgun rounds unceremoniously into its head. Ten. (and remember, this is in Westchester). A man who basked in his celebrity and yet felt insecure around people of learning (he was high school dropout). A man who loved his wife as deeply as he resented marriage (ok, that's most of us - but he captures it). Some slogging, no doubt. But the gems make it overwhelmingly worthwhile. To read it is not just research, but a prose adventure into a soul.