Nella mezza età, c'è mistero, c'è mistificazione.

It is a time when the maximum one can grasp is a kind of solitude. Even the beauty of the visible world seems to crumble, yes, even love.

I feel that there has been something like an abortion, a wrong turn, but I don't know when it happened and I have hope of finding out.

This stage of life is filled with uncertainties and confusions. The once clear path now seems to be covered in a thick fog.

The things that were once taken for granted, like the beauty of the world and the power of love, now seem to be slipping away.

But perhaps this is also a time of growth and self-discovery. Maybe by facing these mysteries and uncertainties, we can find a new path, a new understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

So, although the journey through this middle age may be difficult, it is also an opportunity to uncover the truth and find meaning in our lives.

This is Cheever in all of his undisguised self-loathing and self-absorptions.

He has the courage to cut right to the heart of his pains, fears, regrets, and transgressions.

It is as if he is laying bare his soul for all to see.

And he does it always with the most gorgeous craft.

His writing is a work of art, with the most discerning eye on the light, the landscape, and the human condition.

He is able to capture the beauty and the ugliness of life with equal precision.

His words have the power to move us, to make us think, and to make us feel.

Cheever is a master of his craft, and his work will continue to be studied and admired for generations to come.

I had postponed reading this book for a considerable period of time. The reason being that I didn't desire to give the impression of being a literary paparazzi.

Who really needs to know about the private life of a beloved author? Well, I guess it's because that's precisely what molds their work.

Here lie the seeds of his magnificent stories. The insights and observations he has about himself and others, along with his critique and admiration of fellow artists, all combine to make it a mostly outstanding read.

Mostly because after page 300, it becomes more of the same, yet it's a really damn good repetition.

The details and the way he presents his thoughts and experiences keep the reader engaged and interested, even in the repetitive parts. It gives a deeper understanding of the author's mind and the creative process that goes into his works.

Overall, despite the slight monotony towards the end, it's still a book that offers valuable insights and is worth the read.

This is incredibly fucked up.

You ever read "Ghost Writer," by Roth?

I thought of this book when I read that one.

We, as writers, are rather strange and perhaps not much different from others in some ways. But what sets us apart is that we record our experiences. It's almost as if we are like rapists with video cameras at the scene and moment of the crime, unable to let go of those precious moments of our lives. What exactly are these moments? Are they our fuel? Our material? Well, whatever they are, we think our lives have reached a certain level of sublimity, just like everyone else's lives have.

It's true.

John Cheever was one complex individual. He was beautiful in some aspects, yet also ugly and fucked-up. His life and works are a testament to the complexity and contradictions that exist within all of us.

**Title: The Significance of John Cheever's Journals**

John Cheever's journals offer a fascinating glimpse into his life and creative process. In 1968, he wrote that having nothing better to do, he read two old journals. What emerged were two astonishing contests, one with alcohol and one with his wife. Until 1975 when he got sober, the entries alternated between marital standoffs in an alcoholic haze and lyrical celebrations of life. The gin-soaked husband and the leaping faun within him were constantly at odds.

Cheever's relationship with his wife Mary was complex. She appears as an enigmatic figure in the journals, a stranger sharing his house. Their evenings often ended with them in separate rooms, yet in the morning, he would feel a rush of consciousness and be primed for creativity or activity until the bottles in the pantry called to him again.

Updike's review of the journals underrates their literary importance. Reading them after decades of admiring Cheever's stories, Updike found only rawness and repetition. However, the journals show a daring confessional voice, candid yet solipsistic. They also reveal the intense contests within Cheever, between spleen and ideal, responsiveness and ennui, and between different aspects of his identity. The journals are worth reading not only for their literary merit but also for the insights they provide into the life of a great writer.

The prose in the journals is chiseled and luminous, a daily exercise of Cheever's devotion to writing. Even in the face of his illness and approaching death from cancer, his entries are poignant. The last entries are among the saddest, as he struggles to keep the journal and yet still affirms the power of good prose. Accepting the National Medal for Literature two months before his death, he declared that "a page of good prose remains invincible," astonishing those assembled with his faith.

Thunderstorms, polished air; the light seems honed, buffed, and, late in the day, strikes from a low angle. I swim at around four, but the poignance of a swimming pool in September seems to have lost its legitimacy for me. The pool is real enough and the crux, the truth of a humid afternoon. There are leaves in the water these days. I am the last swimmer. The wind in the leaves is highly vocal. The light is pure and very elegiac. I enjoy swimming at this time of year. The water is in the sixties. The stones are warm and I lie naked on them. Happy, happy. (1970)

Incredible! How much Cheever drank and still remained functioning.

There is a possible August, Paradise epigraph: "The span between living and dying is brief and anguished, and the soul of man is reflected not in snug farmhouses and great monuments but in fourth-string hotel rooms, malodorous and obscure." (169)

"After drinking two bottles of beer in the diner, I decided that man is not physical, man is bestial. I am troubled, however, by the sexual interpretation I put on everything--that the mountains should look to me like knees and clavicles--but this seems to be one of the burdens of men without grace." (19)

"Thomas Paine drank too much. General Grant. Winston Churchill. He is in the company of the truly great. He stops twice on the way home and, having put away nearly a pint, comes into his house with that air of blustering good cheer, that heartiness that deceives no one." (167)

"To describe human misery in all its vastness and intensity without creating an air of disqualification. To trim misery of petulance and morbidity, to give pain some nobility. But can one do this--can one handle tragedy--without some moral authority, some sense of good and evil?" (135)

"cafarde" (135)

His reflection on how rereading "Goodbye, My Brother" changed (79)

"We are as poor as we have ever been. The rent is not paid, we have very little to eat, relatively little to eat: canned tongue and eggs. We have many bills. I can write a story a week, perhaps more. I've tried this before and never succeeded, and I will try again." (14)

This is the cafarde of midlife: "Why has the sweetness gone? It would all come back with a new car or a bonus or a little of the recognition that he deserves for his hard work. A convertible; a trip to Spain." (6)

"I sit on the terrace reading about the torments of Scott Fitzgerald. I am, he was, one of those men who read the grievous accounts of hard-drinking, self-destructive authors, holding a glass of whiskey in our hands, the tears pouring down our cheeks." (212)

"At 7 A.M. Mary wakes me and points to a turtle on the lawn. This is a snapping turtle, three and a half feet long, the largest I have ever seen. He moves like a sea turtle, well off the ground. His head is immense; his tail is scaled and spiked. It would be pointless to dwell on this prehistoric anomaly, this vengefulness of time. I get the shotgun and put two Super-X shells into his head. I see the head thrown back and up by the shell, he rises to his feet and falls, and I go upstairs to shave. Mary calls to me that he is moving, and I look out of the window and see him walking towards the mint patch and the pond. I take the gun again, and this time put four shells into his head. I then resume shaving, but he continues to move, and in the end I put ten shells in his head before he is dead. We start down the road to Providence. I have a drink before we leave, and nip along the road, and I think that to catalogue, idly, the vulgarities of our time--the trailer with stained-glass windows, the man who writes jingles for the highway commission--is useless unless we can describe clearly the world that we desire. The turtle seemed to possess the world much better than I--I with a shotgun my hands shaking from a cocktail party." (200)

"unsober" (197)

Cheever's life was filled with drinking and a complex exploration of human nature and emotions. His writing often delved into the darker aspects of life, as seen in his descriptions of poverty, misery, and the search for meaning. The references to famous drinkers like Thomas Paine, General Grant, and Winston Churchill suggest that Cheever saw himself in their company, perhaps finding a sense of comfort or validation in their excesses.

The concept of "cafarde" and the midlife crisis add another layer to his musings, as he questions the loss of sweetness and the pursuit of material possessions and recognition. The incident with the turtle is a vivid and somewhat disturbing example of his relationship with the natural world and his own sense of powerlessness.

Overall, Cheever's work offers a unique and often poignant perspective on the human condition, one that is colored by his own experiences with alcohol and his search for truth and beauty in a sometimes harsh and vulgar world.

I came across a reference to this book in a "source material" list that Rick Moody included at the conclusion of his short story collection "Ring of the Brightest...". It truly makes sense, especially if you have read Moody. It makes sense because Cheever was a deeply tormented soul. He engaged in a losing battle with alcohol, among other issues. These included his inability to come to terms with his own sexuality, and all of this is meticulously documented within these journal entries.

The writing is quintessentially Cheever. It is lucid, gorgeous, and can be described by about five zillion other wonderful adjectives. This is indeed dark material and is best consumed in small amounts. However, it is undeniably damn good.

One can't help but be drawn into the complex and often tortured world that Cheever presents in these journal entries. It offers a unique and fascinating glimpse into the mind and life of a remarkable writer.

Despite the darkness, there is also a certain beauty and power in Cheever's words that keeps the reader engaged and coming back for more. It is a literary gem that is well worth exploring.

The only encounter I had with John Cheever’s writing before reading his journals was with his short story, “The Swimmer”. I had to read it several times in different fiction writing classes. It's no surprise that the mood of his journals corresponds directly with that story. In both, there's an overall melancholy. The main characters, Cheever in the journals and Neddy Merrill in “The Swimmer”, grope for an understanding of their lives through imagistic and dream-like encounters that are impressionistic and fleeting. Both are more outside their lives than in them and try to recover a sense of self through memory or, in Cheever’s case, language. Interestingly, my favorite passages of his journals aren't always the most linear or comprehensible. Often, they seem to make no sense.

For example, one of my favorite passages is from 1952. It was the first one that really struck me. Cheever wakes before dawn, tired and full of resolutions. He hears the birdsong swelling, then thinks he hears a parrot. He takes the 7:44 train, sees the river blanketed with mist, overhears voices, reads a sign, and sees a window full of plastic crucifixes. He feels like a prisoner trying to escape by the wrong route. He thinks of Mary in the morning, asleep and looking like the girl he fell in love with.

I love the movement of this passage. There's a sense of urgency, as if I'm in Cheever’s head. The circular shape intrigues me. It starts in bed and ends in bed with the thought of Mary. The ending is strange and unexpected after the fast pace of the city. It's a beautiful image and tells us something about Cheever.

Overall, reading Lynda Barry and John Cheever’s work in my Writer's Journal class has given me a sense of permission. Barry makes us look back on our childhood and think about our dreams. Cheever reminds us to just record, record, record. All of these questions have inspired me to keep writing and learning from the writers I admire.

When a writer gets serious about diaries, it is usually a revealing experience for the reader. Not only to get to know the writer himself, but also to understand his view of the world, how he describes his reality and even connect experiences with the reader himself. This is the case. Cheever paints his reality and the one that surrounds him in a complex and interesting way, just like his fictional work.

The first thing that caught my attention is the number of times Cheever describes road trips and the experiences he feels according to what he sees. There is something in that ownerless and timeless space that reflects him, that makes him feel free and sad at the same time. He talks about the darkness of the road, of some light he sees, of some people he crosses paths with in their total fleetingness, without getting involved. This last thing is something that Cheever has very present: he is constantly fighting against his essence, no one really knows him and that leads him to sadness and alcohol.

That sadness is often underlined by how he describes his relationship with his family, whom he loves, but at the same time would like to leave aside to go far away. I clarify that it is a mental state rather than a physical one, because even when he travels (Rome for example), he has trouble enjoying. Occasional sex and the consumption of drinks also reflect that sadness, so the whole book is clouded by that feeling.

There is a fragment in which he talks about his wife's difficult childhood and how that generates a wearing relationship in them; Cheever would seem to take advantage of it as an excuse for his alcoholism, but in reality he uses it to justify his marriage: he prefers that mostly boring and routine life of a stable family to the adventures of a bachelor. Alcohol and fights, then, are for him mere secondary anecdotes, appendages of a type of life that he does not want to lose. In this fragment, the rain is also in the background.

Rodrigo Fresán's edition provides necessary context to many parts although I feel that sometimes he goes off on a tangent with the annotations. However, it does not fill the book, but rather appears punctually, which is appreciated.

I Wanted to Marry a Writer.

Years ago, I was truly in love with the usual guy. We didn't see each other much and it was a mess - as always - but one of the things I adored was spending afternoons watching him write, and he was good, or listening to him talk to me about literature.

I dreamed of a house in Langa, with him writing and me closing the jars of peach jam, and then, in the evening, in front of the fire with two glasses of red wine and him reading me the chapter he had written.

Naturally, we were supposed to live on love and peaches. Obviously. Naturally, he left me for another. Naturally, I suffered like a dog. Naturally, I swore to myself that I would never again have anything to do with writers, that they were crazy, disassociated, bad, egocentric.

Then I grow older and I come across Cheever. I start reading this book and I start to fidget. First because I was completely right, but who knows. Second because it is here, in his diaries, that he has written his best pages. There are entire paragraphs that are pure poetry, there are words and pain and there is the portrait of a deeply sensitive and alcoholic man. There is a woman he loves but wants to leave every three days.

Nothing happens for 500 pages, if we want to consider nothing a life. There are summer days and winter snowfalls. Days of joy, children who grow until one realizes that there isn't much life left and that only 'literature has been the salvation of the damned'.

I fell in love with this book at forty. It takes a bit of life behind you and realizing that I would never have been able to make peach jam.

I think John Cheever was an extremely interesting man.

In keeping his journals, he delved deep into an understanding of himself that he didn't necessarily have to disclose fully on the page, given his remarkable and complete insight.

It is precisely this imperfect portrayal of the man that makes him so captivating. He writes at great length, yet one doesn't quite manage to reach the core of the real John Cheever.

The private Cheever revealed in these journals doesn't strike me as being overly literary. Of course, he was a literary giant, but in the journals, he doesn't discuss his work with himself.

You won't glean much about his fiction here. Nevertheless, he must have adhered to some worldview or been influenced by certain philosophical ideas. It's difficult to precisely define.

He regarded himself with intellectual introspection, yet without exhibiting a blatant degree of intellectualism. He was simply meditative, and in ways that I find both fascinating and engaging.

The introduction by his son to these printed journals mentions that the family had to come to terms with some of Cheever's perspectives.

The family anguished over the image he painted of himself and the revelations that came to light, which were openly written about during his lifetime.

These include his battle with alcoholism, his bisexuality, and his affairs. Perhaps the hardest challenge was confronting how he perceived his married life.

What he wrote about his marriage and his wife, Mary, isn't a flattering or happy picture. In his marriage, Cheever saw himself as the abused and neglected one.

In many of these entries regarding the ups and downs of his relationship with his wife, one can sense his pain and unhappiness. I also detect an aloofness.

No doubt he wasn't perfect, but from his perspective, he was more the victim than the perpetrator.

And I sense that towards the end, he gave up and gave in. He overcame alcoholism but yielded to his attraction to men.

Maybe the latter was because in the final years, he seems to express a growing estrangement from the family. In all the journals, however, what's always true is that only one side is being presented.

We think of Cheever as a writer. The story he tells here is of a fairly successful man in postwar America, living in an unhappy family environment while grappling with sexual needs and alcohol, yet always defiantly asserting his right to be who he is.

The most wonderful thing in life seems to be that in the end we only use an infinitesimal part of our self-destructive potential. Maybe we desire it, maybe it is what we dream of, but just a ray of light, a change of wind is enough to dissuade us.

Eight and a half. Many stars. No moon. The sword and belt of Orion shine, as do all the other constellations whose names I have forgotten or never known. I think back to my youth and the ponds on which I skated, to that charge of strength, courage, and determination that the starlight then aroused in me. Not much has changed. Perhaps my feelings are less intense, the stars seem to shine more sweetly in this period, but that pleasure that makes me remain with my mouth open when I find them hanging there above the ice has not diminished.

Writing about the stupid agonies of anxiety, and when they end, about how our strength is renewed; writing about our painful search for ourselves, put at risk by a stranger at the post office, by a face glimpsed behind the window of a train; writing about the continents and peoples of our dreams, about love and death, about good and evil, about the end of the world.

A kind of solitude. The diaries

John Cheever

Publisher: Feltrinelli

Pages: 502

Rating: 4/5