Customer Reviews

The Wapshot Chronicle

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The fictitious Wapshot family of Cheever's "The Wapshot Chronicle" are old-line New Englanders, prominent but modest citizens of St. Botolphs, Massachusetts. The central characters are Leander, the aging father, who is the captain of a boat that transports passengers between a leisure island and the mainland; his loving wife Sarah; his carefree, irresponsible sons Moses and Coverly; and his elderly, senile cousin Honora, who owns the boat and is in fact the family's financial anchor.

The novel's chain of events is set into motion one night when a car crashes into a tree near the Wapshots' house. The driver is killed, but the passenger, a girl named Rosalie, is taken inside the Wapshots' house for convalescence. It's not long before Moses and Rosalie take advantage of the intimacy of their living arrangement and engage in intercourse, unaware that Honora is eavesdropping. Shocked by this display of debauchery, Honora vows to cut the family's financial ties loose unless Moses learns some responsibility and goes out into the world to make his own way. And so he leaves St. Botolphs to go to Washington to get a job, and Coverly sneaks away from his parents to accompany him.

The two boys go their separate ways and each ends up married but in very different milieus with different sets of values. Coverly marries a poor Southern girl, becomes a technician on a rocket-launching site, and takes up residence in a homogenized modern suburb. His new life represents the modern (as of the 1950's), technical, practical, utilitarian world. It is taken even further into classic Cheeveresque territory when Coverly considers a ... relationship after his wife abandons him.

Cheever's proclivity for ironic romanticism is represented in Moses's new life, which is quite a contrast to his brother's. After his prospects in Washington go sour, a chance encounter gives him a new opportunity as an aspiring banker. With his new connections, like Jack climbing up the freshly-sprouted beanstalk of society, somehow he ends up in a sort of fairy-tale world. He marries a beautiful princess named Melissa who is the ward of a wicked witch (the imperious harridan Justina Scaddon, heiress to a five-and-dime store fortune). He and Melissa are imprisoned in the wicked witch's castle (Justina's ancient expansive mansion), staffed by a legion of harried servants and cohabited by Justina's companion, the foppishly ... Count D'Alba.

Leander keeps a journal, a sort of combination autobiography/family history, in which his entries are written in a choppy style of sentence fragments, as though he doesn't have enough time to put subjects in his sentences, and he writes letters to his sons in the same style. A problem of his own rears its ugly head in the form of a woman who claims to be his daughter from a previous marriage. This is an interesting plot line that unfortunately is not developed as fully as it could have been.

I don't feel this novel is quite as great as Cheever's best short stories, but unlike his short stories, which generally tend to be depressing or somber, this novel has quite a bit of humor in it. I found many symbols in the novel, the most important being that the father or head of a family is, in a way, like the captain of a ship, and no matter how hard he tries, sometimes he can't keep the ship from breaking up and sinking. It is this sharp use of symbolism, the rhapsodic prose, the juxtaposition of the bizarre and the familiar that lends Cheever's work its considerable charm.

I've got a thing for John Cheever. Surely one of the best American authors of the 20th century, Cheever has written several books that I've never stopped raving about (see the following for confimation . . .)

The Wapshot Chronicle is essentially more of the same, more of the short story magic that established Cheever as what he was (and at least to me shall always remain): a magnificent story-teller and stylist who weaved brutal honesty into his poetic tales of tragedy and disillusion. There were passages--pages--of this book that I turned back to and reread not out of confusion or misunderstanding of identity, but simply for their beauty, for the firm, strong images that glimmered in the splitting of the waves crashing in my brain. I couldn't get it out of my mind for a while after reading which caused the next thing I read to suffer in comparison.

Absolutely one of the best books I have ever read.

The two Wapshot novels ("Chronicle" followed by "Scandal") are John Cheever's first two novels. "The Wapshot Chronicle" follows Leander Wapshot's attempts to keep his dignity intact in spite of encroaching old age and his loss of career as a seaman. Leander's two sons, Moses and Coverly, have to make their own way in Cold War America armed with the airs and attitudes of 19th century New England WASPS; their encounters are both funny and poignant. In fact, "funny and poignant" characterizes much of Cheever's writing: he can have you chuckling at situational comedy in one instant and then ping your heart with human frailty in the next.

"The Wapshot Chronicle" is a great introduction to Cheever, but if you think it's too much of a stretch, go for the stories or the more accessible novel "Falconer."

Cheever is a goldsmith of words, and, if you love language, the sheer pleasure of how he puts them together is enough to carry you though this picaresque family novel. The eccentric Wapshots are as unpredictable and plotless as life, and if they have dull days the author never lets us see them. In this loose, richly inventive account of Leander and Sarah and their sons, Moses and Coverly, Cheever ambles through marriage, lust, loyalty, death, and the eternal pleasures of place. Even the house has a personality: "The heart of the Wapshot house had been built before the War of Independence, but many additions had been made since then, giving the house the height and breadth of that recurrent dream in which you open a closet door and find that in your absence a corridor and a staircase have bloomed there." Reading the novel is like constantly discovering such surprises in the lives of seemingly ordinary people.

One previous reviewer rightly noted that Cheever is a much stronger short story writer than novelist. I have to agree. I did enjoy this book, but had a number of problems with it. The novel chronicles three generations of the Wapshot family, an eccentric group of people living in St. Bolophs. The story primarily follows the three men - father Leander and sons Moses and Coverly, and we watch as tragedy and an essential "settling" for what life has handed to them takes place. The novel starts off slowly, but picks up when Moses and Coverly leave their small town to make their fortunes. The end is tragic, similar to many of his short stories, but it is in the sadness and despair that you see the power of Cheever's writing.

As much as I enjoyed the story, there were two major issues. The first was the level of intricate detail that at first was interesting as he painted a picture of the small town, but then became too much. It was as if he was trying to create the same level of detail you find in a short story, but without realizing that a novel has a different kind of pacing, a different kind of arc. My second main problem was the number of loose ends and events that never are resolved or revisited. I understand the "realness" of the story Cheever has created, but so many little characters who are built up as being important dart in and out of the story at such a rate that you wonder when something substantial is going to happen. Artistically, it places more emphasis on the Wapshots, but it takes away from the vibrancy of the prose.

Overall, it's a decent novel from someone who is a master of a different literary form.

Caution: The Wapshot Chronicle makes many coarse references to sex for hire. This language and the scenes described would probably earn this book an R rating if it were a motion picture.

The Wapshot Chronicle is one of those big family stories that details parts of the lives of three generations, while providing a sense of those who came before. This is a family of sea-faring New Englanders who explored the far reaches of the Pacific and also produced missionaries who served in Hawaii. If you have read James Michener's Hawaii, you will have a picture in mind that will be accurate about the Wapshot forebearers. In the current generation, there's plenty of money in the hands of eccentric, elderly Cousin Honora. She provides for her cousin Leander, his wife Sarah, and their sons, Moses and Coverly. Cousin Honora does this in the spirit of honoring the family heritage, and she is quite interested in seeing the family continue on. The book focuses in on her efforts to encourage this continuity, and what resulted.

John Cheever's greatest strength is his ability to conceive of highly original and interesting characters. In The Wapshot Chronicle, you will find two of the 20th century's most original fictional females, Cousin Honora and Justina Wapshot Molesworth Scadden. The men, by comparison, are pretty bland. They are so obsessed with their sexual desires and wanting to have a superior, independent position that they become predictably limited.

His second greatest strength is that he is able to weave a novel out of a series of short-story-like episodes that have unexpected twists and cliff-hangers near their ends. Each is a gem, and glitters shiniest with understatement. A few words, a few concepts sketch out the beginnings of a pregnant circumstance. Then, he moves on . . . leaving you as the reader with plenty of room to imagine the actual circumstances. No two readers will describe what happens in this book the same way, because each will perceive the action to be quite different from everyone else. It is sort of like having The Lady or The Tiger continue on to a further story, but without resolving clearly which one lay behind the chosen door. Ambiguities pile atop ambiguities.

The book's third greatest strength is an ability to use imagery to turn the same object into expressing its opposite meaning. This Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde quality imbues the book with a very deep irony seldom found in modern novels. Mr. Cheever uses names to good effect to reinforce this nuance. Clear Haven becomes anything but. The Wapshot name is traced to its Norman French roots as Vaincre-Chaud (loosely, defeating others in hot blood). The latest generation of Wapshot males is anything but that, so the name has had to change to reflect their humbler role.

While the writing shines with rare beauty, the themes will often feel too trivial to be worthy of the attention lavished on them. What does it mean to be a man in a society in which women are strong, capable, and independent? Cheever seems to suggest a drone-like role like that in the beehive. Are we nothing more than our genes, our parents' child-rearing methods, and our environments? The characters seem to suggest that we are precisely and merely the sum of these influences. Can we accept help? The very generosity of the sharing seems to create shackles, rather than bonds of love and caring. In short, Mr. Cheever has a very jaundiced eye concerning modern humanity, and that leaves the book with a very downbeat feel. Unlike the existentialists who left us with nobility of spirit in facing meaningless events, Mr. Cheever sees nothing at all uplifting going on. You could think of this book as describing the emergence of the bland, disconnected, dependent modern city dweller. I wasn't persuaded by this view, and if you are like me, neither will you. I graded the book down accordingly, despite its stylistic genius.

Be open to the potential of what supportive cooperation can accomplish!

In this comic novel, John Cheever revels in the power of the written word. Leander Wapshot, hero of the book, is endlessly browbeaten by his sister Honora and his wife Sarah, but through the journal he keeps, despite his writing in choppy, incomplete sentences, he's able to rise above his humiliations and is even able to give some good advice to his son Coverly at the very end of the novel in a scrap of paper Coverly finds in a volume of Shakespeare belonging to Leander. The novel is also concerned with Leander's two sons, Coverly and Moses, as they leave home to seek their fortunes. Moses' story is fairly complicated, with many different adventures and twists and turns, and both he and Coverly end up in not very promising marriages. Cheever is at his strongest in character development and at his weakest in plot construction; in fact, there's hardly a plot at all. The dialogue is superb, however, and therein lies much of the humor of the book. I regard Cheever a better short story writer than a novelist, but there's still much to admire in this National Book Award-winning novel, his first.

I believe that every one should read this book twice: the first to get touched by the beautiful story, the characters that pop up all the book, the almost tangible Cheever's New England, etc. - the second to understand and learn how a masterpiece is created and how some books became gifts to the mankind. This is the kind of book that you get upset when it is over and you start advising your friends to read it as slow and quiet as possible. John Cheever is - no doubt - one of the great writers of the XX century, and this book shows why.

New England novels are a main category among the great American literature shelves of libraries and homes. Among the leading providers of the supply is John Cheever, led in main part by this novel which reviews fictional St. Boltophs, Massachusetts.

Born in Quincy, Massachusetts on the southern shores of Boston, Cheever knows the region. The once prosperous boating village described herein, is now a lackluster society in which two sons, Moses and Coverly, foresee no future and thereby leap into the modern 20th century for travails and accomplishments not provided by the lonely dank of St. Boltophs,

We follow the family from the teenage years of the boys through their early parenthood. Good and bad happens, making the pages deliver laughter and tears for the reader. The boys are young and we truly do not seem to witness the nadir of their respective lives, but for the short period of their respective lives, we are sure that each encounters a low not previously seen - especially when contrasted to the ups and downs experienced in the less turbulent society of small town St. Boltophs.

Some of the greater deliveries include the descriptions of matriarchal Honora and Justina and their heavy handed manipulation of the people around them. The most affected is Moses who must endure their puritanical concepts of marriage and fidelity - concepts which he truly does not closely share.

When reading Cheever, I think he has been sandwiched between two other writers of modern America - each of which is female. I believe he is influenced by Edith Wharton and has influenced great story teller Alice Hoffman.

But, he shows more of a man's perspective in this tale that Wharton or Hoffman may share. His great quotation of "advice to my sons" must be repeated here as the stilted and short meter of the boys' father (Leander) mixed with the great topic's delivery are unique and ever worthwhile: "Advice to my sons. Never put whisky into hot water bottle crossing borders of dry states or countries. Rubber will spoil taste. Never make love with pants on. Beer on whisky, very risky. Whisky on beer, never fear. Never eat apples, peaches, pears, etc. while drinking whisky except long French-style dinners, terminating with fruit. Other viands have mollifying effect. Never sleep in moonlight. Known by scientists to induce madness. Should bed stand beside window on clear night, draw shades before retiring. Never hold cigar at right-angles to fingers. Hayseed. Hold cigar at diagonal. Remove band or not as you prefer. Never wear red necktie. Provide light snorts for ladies if entertaining. Effects of harder stuff on frail sex sometimes disastrous. Bathe in cold water every morning. Painful but exhilarating. Also reduces horniness. Have haircut once a week. Wear dark clothes after 6 p.m. Eat fresh fish for breakfast when available. Avoid kneeling in unheated stone churches. Ecclesiastical dampness causes prematurely gray hair. Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house. Courage tastes of blood. Stand up straight. Admire the world. Relish the love of a gentle woman. Trust in the Lord."

Cheever gets five stars for his prose but barely squeaks out three stars for plot, character development, and structure. He's a short-story writer, plain and simple. Yes, he put a lot of effort into this novel, and yes, he won the National Book Award. But it's not a great novel, and the flaws in it are the ones that are typical of someone who is great at telling a story in 15 pages but not in 300 pages.

First off, most of the characters don't fully develop. They stagnate, leaving us with the awkward feeling that we've invested a whole lot of time in them without really knowing them. And second, there's a whole lot of plot here that is simply unnecessary. Why exactly did Coverly unexpectedly get assigned to an island in the Pacific? It didn't have any relevance to the progress of the novel or add anything to our understanding of the character. And there are several similar examples. Lastly, the book just doesn't ring true. Everything that happens seems to take place in these odd little microcosms ever-so-slightly separated from the real world. Cheever does his best to create a memorable setting in St. Botolph's, MA, but throughout the book there seems to be little sense of time and place.

For a far more satisfying book, pick up Cheever's collected short stories.