Picking off these stories over the last few months, it's truly a BIG collection.

I have no doubt that Cheever is not only a better short story writer than a novelist. When it comes to short fiction, he also gives the likes of Carver, Salinger, and Yates a run for their money. There are so many stories here that I really liked, and it's impossible to name just a few favorites. 'The Swimmer' is obviously one of the all-time greats, but quite a few others I thought came close to that level. The continuing theme of middle-class suburban lives, love, and frustration might get tiresome for some. However, when the stories are this good and this easy to get into, I never had a problem. In my opinion, it's one of the best collections ever. Some of these I'd already read online, but now having this mammoth book, I'll surely return to it every now and then. He is simply great at creating the limited scenes for a short story and holding you there as if you were in the same room. Maybe it shows signs of age when looking at today's life through a lens, especially when it comes to the attitudes towards married women. But you could say the same about so many books written in another era. I loved it because it took me back to those times, as I'm not much of a fan of reading about people from these days with their iPhones and all.

Sixty-one stupendously good short stories are presented in a stupefyingly massive volume.

This was my very first encounter with Cheever, and I must say that some of the stories were simply marvelous.

The Geometry of Love and The Swimmer were my absolute favorites.

They had a certain charm and depth that truly captivated me.

I can't wait to explore more of Cheever's works in the future.

For now, I'll just have to savor these wonderful stories.

More later...

My rating of all the Pulitzer Winners: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

Za Džona Čivera, neki kažu da je on „Čehov američkog predgrađa“. Ceo njegov život je bio zapazan pisanjem kratkih priča (i samo pet romana). U tim pričama, on je opisivao uglađeni sjaj američke više srednje klase druge polovine minulog veka. Ispod te porcelanske površine malograđanskog života, oseća se i sav taj trulež. Znate one lepe, tipične američke porodice, savršene naizgled, sa lepim osmesima, plavim kosama, belim zubima, anglosaksonskim visokim čelima, pokošenim travnjacima, baš kao u filmu „Supruge iz Stepforda“. „Spolja kalaj, iznutra belaj“ ili, u gej verziji, „Foris Cato, intus Nero“. E, Čiver se bavio ovim celog svog života (osim kada je bio u pauzama zbog samoubijanja alkoholom). On je pisao te svoje vrste izveštaja kao dopisnik sa lica mesta jer je, kao biseksualac koji je sebe osudio da bude str8 looking suprug iz Stepforda, tačno znao o čemu piše.

Nisam veliki ljubitelj kratke forme (osim kada je u pitanju SF i Bukovski), ali su mi Čiverove kratke, ali odabrane, priče baš dobro legle. Baš su dobre. Što bi mi mladi rekli – moćne su. Snažne, duboke, potresne… Savršene. One nas privlače i dugo nas ostavljaju u tami koje on opisuje, pružajući nam jednu drugačiju perspektivu na život u američkom predgrađu.

Wow, wow, wow. This man writes so well. What a wonder, what a spectacle. 61 stories that flow like water. In each story, the author has the ability to perfectly convey the emotions experienced by the various characters: contempt, anxiety, anguish, discomfort, restlessness, disappointment... The stories are so... human, so real. Cheever has the amazing ability to tell the human being in all its facets. It's impressive.

There are some endings that are a punch in the stomach, and yet I couldn't imagine different endings. They are perfect as they are. And it's crazy. With stories, there is always the risk of writing too little. Sometimes it seems that something is missing, that one could have gone further. Other times, there is the risk of writing too much, as if the author doesn't know when to stop. Here, there is never this danger. Crazy, really.

And when maybe it's not the ending that makes you say "wow", it's a simple sentence, a simple sentence that becomes the focal point of the story. And I swear to you, I swear to you, I have been stopped many times, completely surprised with my mouth open for what Cheever has managed to write and convey with One. Simple. Sentence.

You can't imagine all the scattered sentences, the beginnings, other scattered sentences, the endings, other scattered sentences that I have underlined, parts that I have noted in this book. And no, I didn't give 5 stars to every single story, and yet this book is a book that I will remember as a 5-star book for everything it has managed to convey to me, for all the stories that I still remember although weeks have passed, for all the emotions that it has managed to make me feel, for all the times that I have written and thought and pronounced "wow" while reading something written by this man. Because sometimes the books we read are not perfect, but if those books manage to unleash so many things in us and make us feel enthusiastic about what we are reading and completely captivated by the beauty of what has been written and how it has been written, then those books that are not perfect are kind of perfect.

This author would undoubtedly be in my top twenty list of all-time masters of the short story.

I have a penchant for many so-called "uncool" authors such as Cheever, Hawthorne, and Carver.

These are the authors I have read religiously, decade in and decade out, always emerging with fresh experiences, novel thoughts, and the entire palimpsestic layering that defines life.

So many books and authors manage to achieve a fleeting moment of fashionability.

However, I firmly believe that it is the combination of timeliness and timelessness that must be attained to truly deserve that overused term "masterpiece."

Or whatever your favorite term of supreme approbation might be, lol.

The stories within this collection are diverse, and the literary aims and ends vary, but the polish is relatively consistent.

I am well aware that many people perhaps view "his ilk" as the culprit behind the plethora of truly abysmal workshop type fiction that dominated the magazine scene in the 70s and 80s.

But he possesses a mastery, a subtlety, and a negative capability – qualities that are almost always lacking in the McRelationship workshop short fiction.

It is indeed true that he is rather obsessed with human vulnerability.

This is probably the major theme that runs through everything he has ever written.

But I have a fondness for that theme.

I appreciate empathy, and he is one of the most empathic authors.

Yet, not in any insincere, condescending way.

He has the ability to turn Chekhovian and cold when the situation demands it.

In that sense, he is like an S&M dom, and we are his clients, lol.

Cheever Dungeon – yes, that's it.

That's the ticket.

I am now a total convert to John Cheever’s amazing short fiction.

There are so many great stories in this collection.

From the very beginning, Cheever appears to have been a perfect writer. His works are filled with vivid descriptions and complex characters that draw the reader in and keep them engaged until the very end.

Each story is like a small masterpiece, with its own unique plot, theme, and style.

Whether it is a story about love, loss, family, or society, Cheever manages to capture the essence of the human experience in a way that is both profound and moving.

His writing is so细腻 and detailed that it feels as if he is painting a picture in the reader’s mind.

I cannot recommend this collection highly enough. If you are a fan of short fiction, or if you are simply looking for a great read, then you must check out John Cheever’s work.

I spent the majority of the rather unfortunate non-event that was the summer of 2020 immersed in John Cheever's collected stories. In the book, they are arranged chronologically, and the vastness of this literary universe completely and wholly captivated me, and I willingly allowed myself to be carried away.

It is challenging to contribute anything novel to the canonized praise that surrounds John Cheever. He has taken a segment of history, a particular era, and made it more vivid than it might have been in reality. Similar to Carver, he gave expression to the subdued suburban anguish of mid-century America, to the false allure of the American Dream. However, his work is not harsh and pitiless; it is not devoid of hope. It is tinged with an otherworldly quality and a sharp irony, like whiskey on the rocks glistening in the silent October sunshine, with occasional detours to Italian small towns. He perceives the unfulfilled dreams and inadequacies of the sad man who always finds someone better to compare himself to. He sees the wife who starts drinking gin long before a proper cocktail hour. He knows the false refrain of the mistress who claims, "I have never done anything like this before." Story after story, the same themes recur, regarding the conflicts of his characters and the times in which they are trapped. Yet, the supposed depressiveness often associated with his work lingers only in the reader's mind. It is not present on the page. His work provides you with the freedom to view it however you wish, through whichever lens you prefer to see yourself. It is you, but in mid-century America, striving to do your best while society施压 from every direction you are running towards.

And then there are the cultural references that are so timeless that you almost feel like crying at their precision and hiding under a cozy duvet with a strong martini, quitting your job, and watching all the seasons of Mad Men all over again. You simply want to live in this perfectly constructed world, for it to never end, and to push aside the knowledge that all of this was created by a man who spent 40 years of his life drinking and still managed to produce something like this.

This is a book to revisit and a book to celebrate. Literature rarely reaches such heights.

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER: 1979
===
1.5 rounded down.

Dear lord, this was an extremely rough experience. There are more than sixty stories within this collection, and I'm certain that they possess great qualities and are well-written. However, they were astonishingly boring. Reading through them felt like an arduous task, as if pulling teeth. It was a real struggle to get through each and every one of them. The lack of engaging elements made it a rather tiresome endeavor. I had hoped for more excitement and captivation, but unfortunately, that was not the case. It's a pity because I know that winning the Pulitzer Prize indicates a certain level of excellence, yet this particular work failed to hold my interest.

Perhaps it was my personal taste that didn't align with the style or subject matter of these stories. Nevertheless, it was a disappointing read overall. I can only hope that future works by this author or others in the same genre will offer a more enjoyable and fulfilling reading experience.

I haven't actually read this but I've read some of the stories. Cheever is truly an awesome writer, although his works might seem a bit dated nowadays. He is a Pulitzer Prize winner, which speaks volumes about his literary prowess.

Just got this from Amazon and will begin soon, alternating between this and the stories of Katherine Ann Porter and Jean Stafford. When I'm done, I'll have knocked off three more Pulitzer Fiction winners.

1 - Goodbye, My Brother - Second read. This is a Cain & Abel story, a first-line-of-Anna-Karenina-story.

- "full fathom five" (next-to-last paragraph) is from The Tempest - Cheever also invokes the play in "The Wapshot Chronicle."

- The narrator imagines the departing Lawrence intoning "Thalassa, Thalassa" as the ferry takes him away (forever?). Thalassa is a/the goddess of the sea. Cheever's own relationship with his brother was fraught.

2 - The Common Day - a short slice of life involving a bit of class warfare and resentment.

- Shoulder "guards" should be shoulder "pads."

3 - The Enormous Radio - a sort-of sci-fi take on middle class woes and denial of reality/lack of honesty. One of JC's more well-known tales. I MIGHT have read it long ago...

4 - O City of Broken Dreams - or … deluded hicks on the loose in venal Manhattan. A clashing of two crippled/corrupt American subcultures. The theater "business" never looked so bad, but it's hard to feel too sorry for those dopey Indiana folks. JC takes a look at the American Dream (or is it a Nightmare?). And in the end...

5 - The Hartleys - a jagged story with a brutal ending. About how children pay the price of their adult parents' relational dysfunction. My family also fell apart and, like the Hartleys, we used to go up to New Hampshire on ski vacations. We stayed at The New England Inn in Intervale a number of times in the 50's and 60's. I also had an encounter with a primitive rope tow at Black Mountain. I was petrified of it but managed to learn to use it. Got slightly hurt by it once. No such luck for poor Anne.

6 - The Sutton Place Story - Another child-in-peril story. Set in Manhattan among the drinking classes. I have a neighbor whose well-to-do parents drank themselves to death. He and his sister lived with their grandmother in Newport. My father was an Ivy League drinker who drank and smoked himself to death. My mother (also a drinker and smoker, but with better self-control) left him in 1957 and took us to Colorado. It's a long story, and not a happy one.

- Again, traumatic events do not mold character so much as reveal it.

7 - The Summer Farmer - The Manhattan folk in summer at the old family summer place. More drinking, more dysfunction.

8 - Torch Song - I might have read this one before. Back in Manhattan we read the story of a woman who picks one loser after another, with a ghoulish twist at the end. Guess what? Alcohol is a major part of the story. Cheever himself gave up the booze for good before he died.

9 - The Pot of Gold - A depressing story of middle-class striving and frustration. While reading this story I got a strong feeling of "prose-connection" to the writing of Raymond Carver. I've read that Carver and Cheever were literary friends and drinking pals at the Iowa Writers Workshop and I conclude that Carver must have been both influenced and encouraged by Cheever. Not sure how much went in the other direction, however. Both quit drinking eventually, but neither lived into old age.

10 - Clancy in the Tower of Babel - country Irish Catholic meets gay Manhattanites. Bigotry... confusion/conflict.

11 - Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor - an amusing tale of paying it forward and being careful what you wish for. A sort of typically head-scratching Cheever ss.

12 - The Season of Divorce - Back in Manhattan a routine marriage is threatened by craziness from outside, like a walled city beset by invaders.

13 - The Chaste Clarissa - About two unlikeable people who deserve each other. An empty relationship based on each getting what they want (sex for the guy and false praise (of her non-existent intellect) for the beautiful-but-empty-headed gal). I knew someone like her once. Both are narcissists.

14 - The Cure - A suburban (Westchester?) dude gets cured of his bad attitude about his marriage by nearly losing his mind after the wife and kids take a powder and he begins encountering a late-night "visitor". The last line's a killer.

15 - The Superintendent - another observational/slice-of-life tale set in Manhattan. It has the usual Cheever melancholy tone. Great story...

16 - The Children - another one on the theme of struggle and disappointment along the divide between middle-class and upper-middle class. The struggle for money is the struggle for safety and security... happiness. The greater structure of materialistic society along the east coast is seen to be constructed of and from obstacles to happiness.

17 - The Sorrows of Gin - Indeed, booze is at the heart of the heart of this tale of suburban dysfunction and loneliness. A young girl tries to "solve" the problem and then run away from it. Funny and disturbing...

18 - O Youth and Beauty - Very dark humor set in those alluring but deadening NYC suburbs. Alcohol seems to be the widespread drug of choice. Cheever would know, of course.

19 - The Day the Pig Fell into the Well - I've boosted my rating to 4.75* - rounds up to 5* - after reading this one. I mean, who am I to be picky about rating John Cheever? Farce... tragedy... life... death... eternity. It's all in there. (Almost) just like Ben Casey - Man - Woman - Birth - Death - Infinity...

20 - The Five-Forty-Eight - High-Low drama in commuter-land with a Don Draper-ish protagonist. NOT a hero...

21 - Just One More Time - A brief portrait of a type of couple the author must have run into in Manhattan. Upper-class paupers until their ship comes in.

22 - The Housebreaker of Shady Hill - Stressed out suburbanite turns criminal/crazy but gladly reverts to his old self when he gets his job back.

23 - The Bus to St. James's - Manhattan hanky-panky with bored/restless married-to-others lovers. An example of of the harm caused by Fitzgerald's careless rich people, although the two people in this story are closer to well-foo than outright rich. Sex get's people into trouble in quite a few of these tales.

24 - The Trouble of Marcie Flint - It's been some while since I read this. It's a foggy hole in my memory. I'm sure it was entertaining. Something about NYC suburbia.

25 - The Bella Lingua - A different setting for a change - Americans in Italy.

26 - The Wrysons - Another Shady Hill tale.

27 - The Country Husband - Perhaps the most famous of the Shady Hill stories, and one I've already read at least two times. Still... gotta read it again. Francis Weed becomes undone by his own defects of character and by a socio-economic prison he can't seem to get out of. As ever, that last, lovely line's a killer.

- The skiing dream = A Moveable Feast.

- The shrink's waiting room = another airshaft like the one in Bartleby's office.

28 - The Duchess - another amusing and ironic tale set in Italy.

29 - The Scarlet Moving Van - Technically not a Shady Hill story, but might as well be. The perils of booze...

30 - Just Tell Me Who It Was - Back to Shady Hill with this tale of sexual jealousy and cocktail parties. Cheever's style is SO consistent. A bit breezy and cynical.

31 - Brimmer - A brief tale of the loneliness of the narrator and the compulsive sexual behavior of the title character.

32 - The Golden Age - Atmospheric reportage from the Italian coast. A writer who's ashamed of writing for television.

33 - The Lowboy - The troublesome brother re-appears. Cheever goes all out in advocating for letting go of the past. Makes good sense to me...

34 - The Music Teacher - JC ventures into Twilight Zone territory in this one. As usual I'm not sure what it's about, but it's fun to read John Cheever.

35 - A Woman Without a Country - Through an absurd set of circumstances a woman finds herself self-exiled to Europe. At least she had plenty of dough! Another Shady Hill story.

36 - The Death of Justina - More suburban weirdness. Some pretty amusing ad-libs.

37 - Clementina - A young Italian woman experiences and observes the differences between American (modern) culture and Italian (traditional peasant) culture. Pretty stark contrasts.

38 - Boy in Rome - A slightly sordid adventure as a youngster gets involved in art smuggling - or so he thinks.

39 - A Miscellany of Characters That Will Not Appear - What it says. A semi-serious statement of literary principles.

40 - The Chimera - read too long ago to recall.

41 - The Seaside Houses - ditto

42 - The Angel of the Bridge - ditto

43 - The Brigadier and the Golf Widow - ditto

44 - A Vision of the World - ditto

45 - Reunion - ditto

46 - An Educated American Woman - ditto

47 - Metamorphoses - ditto

48 - Mene, Mene, Tekel, Uparsin - Read last night, but this book is becoming a bit of a blur... so many stories... SHORT stories... This one reminds of "Hard Times" with an airplane scare like that in "The Country Husband." The title phrase is from The Bible (Daniel) and has come down to us as "The Handwriting on the Wall"...

49 - Montraldo - More Italian weirdness...

50 - The Ocean - More suburban surreality. Husband to wife: "It looks as if you were putting pesticide in the cutlets." !!!!!!!

51 - Marito in Citta - NOT set in Italy, but more strange suburban doins.

52 - The Geometry of Love: the perils of existence... waking up in the hospital - "He had lost ten inches of his intestinal tract and there were tubes attached to both his arms." American middle-class emotional phantasmagoria. Bitter-absurd comedy. There's even a "you see" in there.

52 - The Swimmer - One of Cheever's best known stories - mainly because of the film made from it, which was actually pretty good. No comedy in this one unless it's the blackest of the black. An emotionally direct and intense tale. Seeing the movie (many years ago) was my first exposure to Cheever. My ONLY exposure to Cheever (not counting "Seinfeld") until I read "The Wapshot Chronicles about ten years ago. A man is defeated by life (and, one assumes, by his own character) and lives (for a while) in fantasy.

53 - The World of Apples - Getting near the end now. It'd be interesting to know which if any of these stories were written after the author sobered up. Most of the stories are swimming in booze.

- Robert Frost (Sandburg?) seems to be the obvious inspiration for the poet.

54 - Another Story - More Italian flavor...

55 - Percy - Wacky family history. Eccentricity abounds in these family stories.

56 - The Fourth Alarm - Are these stories in chronological order? If so I'd say that the later stories were closer to JC's real life than the earlier ones.

- Uxbridge is a town in SE Massachusetts.

57 - Artemis, The Honest Well Digger - Russia!

- another "you see" pops up in this one

58 - Three Stories

59 - The Jewels of the Cabots

And thus to the end of it. PHEW! Even though I spaced out the reading of this book it seemed like a slog at times. Cheever's writing is very much of it's/his time. I enjoyed all of these, but despite the 5* rating I can't say that JC's a favorite writer or anything. Kind of one-note. Still, the best of these (The Country Husband, Goodbye, My Brother) are excellent.

This masterpiece recommends itself. I have nothing to write about it to "promote" it. Probably, in the meantime, the book has become unfindable. And then, I would only frustrate you. Thank you for this, Polirom, which consumes, pointlessly, paper and printing with obscure writers and locals - some of them acerbically reprinted, despite their dubious value. So, you just have to storm the antiquarian bookshops!

I don't think I have read a short story volume better than this collection. And it is all the greater pleasure as - recently - I have read other very good short story volumes (Nabokov, Munro etc).

To Cheever, Polirom didn't even make the effort to translate his distinguished novel with the National Book Award - the best and the most "genuine" literary award in the world: The Wapshot Chronicle (awarded in 1958).

Just as Polirom didn't translate J.C. Oates with her Tetralogy - Wonderland Quartet, but chose only "The Garden of Earthly Delights" out of all 4... a brilliant lack of editorial logic. Amateurism! And - as in the case of Cheever - they haven't reprinted anything of his.

I do not usually write a review of a book that I have not finished reading, so this is an exception.

The Stories of John Cheever is a remarkable vintage collection consisting of 61 stories. It achieved great acclaim, winning the Putlizer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1979. The paperback edition further added to its laurels by garnering a National Book Award in 1981.

The stories vividly depict life in suburbia, often set in the fictional Shady Hill. Throughout this luminous collection, Cheever skillfully distills the commonalities shared by diverse and desperate lives. The flaws and troubles of the characters beneath the veneer of security strike a chord of familiarity. Each story is unique, yet they are all interconnected by a common thread of humanity.

This is most明显 in “Enormous Radio”. A radio that was meant to bring pleasure instead becomes an incidental gadget that gives a couple surreptitious access to their neighbors' conversations, revealing the sordid family struggles. By the end of the story, we realize that the couple who owns the radio is no different from their neighbors, with their own share of pain and disdain. Similarly, in “Christmas is a Sad Season”, an elevator man discovers that the rich residents of the building he serves are just as lonely as he is on Christmas Day. In “The Country Husband”, the protagonist, Frank Weed, who survives a near-plane crash, has an epiphany about the vapid restlessness and suffocation imposed by the cloistered morality of suburbia. In “Summer Farmer”, Cheever captures the subtle undercurrents in familial interactions. It is truly amazing how Cheever manages to make his character portrayals so sharp. In stories like “Goodbye, My Brother”, the tensions can be traced to the unique qualities of each family member in their response to the dysfunctional brother’s misanthropic mindset. Even the sea is imbued with a purgative force. There is no sugarcoating in these stories, which also tell of couples pursuing a dream (“O city of broken dreams”) or unsuccessfully trying to retrieve lost happiness (“The Hartleys”). One of my personal favorites is “Torch Song”, a creepy story about a Black Widow, a single lady with an uncanny sixth sense to detect and attach herself to dying men.

What also strikes me is the way his stories typically end. Life continues as it normally does, despite the elements of disturbance that disrupt equanimity or the temptations that pull at the fringes. As Cheever stated in his Preface, "These stories seem to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quarters from a radio in a stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat." But it is more than that. The stories also seem to harken back to an age of restraint and respect for what is decorous. The constants, as Cheever put it, are “a love of light and a determination to trace some moral chain of being.” There is no sensationalism or high drama. People carry on with their ordinary lives. They pick up where they left off when their dreams shatter; they hold on to their lackluster marriages (e.g., “Chaste Clarissa”, “A Season of Divorce, and “The Trouble of Marcie Flint”). There is something joyous and liberating in realizing that one has choices. In “The Housebreaker of Shady Hill”, Johnny Hake, who pathologically breaks into his neighbors’ houses and steals from them, reveals in a moment of insight, "I was not trapped. I was here on earth because I chose to be. And it was no skin off my elbow how I had been given the gifts of life so long as I possessed them, and I possessed them then... It is not… the smell of corn bread that calls us back from death; it is the lights and signs of love and friendship."

I am approximately halfway through this collection of short stories. I read them one or two at a time, like sweet treats, and I have enjoyed each one so far. I can understand why. Beyond the grime and imperfection, there is the promise of “the lights and signs of love and friendship.”

Here's a truly engaging game that you can enjoy while delving into these 50+ short stories. Create a two-column table beside the list of stories. In the first column, place a checkmark each time a main character indulges in a martini or some other sophisticated cocktail. In the second column, do the same for each instance when a main character has an affair. You'll be pleasantly surprised by the entertaining results.

You could also maintain a checklist of characters that Cheever crafts with complete sincerity and no hint of irony. For example, a character with a monacle? ✅ A small Nantucket child learning to sail? ✅ A character who complains that her furs get wet in the rain? ✅ The "caller at the beach house" described as "formidably decorous"? ✅ A character who keeps his sailing trophies by the divan? ✅ The chairman of the board? ✅ (Cheever might have taken it a step further and given this person a monacle, just like in Monopoly.) A paid servant to polish the brass and silver in the kitchen? ✅

If I had known initially that Cheever was like catnip for New Yorker magazine readers from the fifties to the seventies, I might not have committed to reading this. However, as it stands now, once I start, I have to finish. Reader, beware!

I now comprehend why I've encountered so few people who have read Cheever, who is often compared to John Updike among writers like Joan Didion and Joyce Carol Oates.

Don't take my word for it? Here's another enjoyable game for you: Ask Chat GPT why so few people read John Cheever anymore. Once again, you'll find the results quite entertaining.

Zero stars for you, John.