Yet another book that makes me wonder what the real definition of a classic is.

This book is on the Modern Library's list of top 100 books of the 20th century. Moreover, John Cheever was born in my hometown, so I've had a desire to read it for quite some time.

It's not that it's a bad book. However, it is merely an OK book. I fail to see anything in it that would compel future generations to read it.

The Wapshot family is as old Yankee as one can get. They can't fathom that their town of St. Botolph isn't known by everyone else. In fact, that's one of the few amusing parts of the story.

Other than that, they seem to be a family that attracts misfortune like a magnet. And the worse thing is that they endure the most outrageous situations because no one is willing to stand up for themselves.

I'm not sorry I read it, but I can't claim that my life was significantly enriched by it. It's a book that leaves me with a sense of mediocrity, despite its supposed status on the famous list. Maybe my expectations were too high, or perhaps my perception of a classic is different from others. Nevertheless, it's an experience that makes me reflect on what truly makes a book a timeless classic.

When I was a child, I adored the film Elliot, which was set in a fishing village in Massachusetts (or perhaps Maine) in the past.

There was the cold ocean roaring, there was the tavern with the sea wolves, there were the school and the white-painted wooden church, there was the small port with the shabby fishermen mending the nets, and there was the big lighthouse on the cliff. That atmosphere I loved to death and I thought that was exactly where I would have liked to live.

This novel, also set in a coastal town in Massachusetts, caught me from the beginning because there is the same atmosphere: sailors drinking a mug of beer in the inns, old boats to be fixed and wrecks brought by the waves, flasks of whisky, dusty attics full of treasures, shells and ships in bottles, the smell of tar and seaweed, of pine needles and old bibles bound in leather, and of old chests.

It is not really clear what these times are. It is never written in what years we are, the age of the protagonists, or exactly where they are. It is a disordered, cheerful, strange novel, full of original inventions, with a very particular (vaguely South American) mixture of realism and fantasy, a novel that zigzags and that jolts the reader like the old carriage with which the first chapter begins, among funny, grotesque, melancholy things.

I appreciated, then, this special and a bit magical atmosphere, and I appreciated Cheever's style, which is really unusual and very poetic.

I appreciated a bit less the disorder, the fact that the episodes told seem chosen at random, some narrated at length in the tiniest details (endless days dedicated to fly fishing, or the story of cousin Justina, so long that the author seems to have forgotten all the other characters), others brushed aside in a few pages (how is the Coverly-Betsey marriage fixed?), others still incomprehensible (what role does the Rosalie episode have in the story of the Wasphot family? What work does Moses do and why is it never told to us?). This disorder reminded me of Irving's novels. Like him, Cheever is a free and dancing pen, which follows the inspiration of the moment and doesn't care too much about the balance of the supporting structure of the novel.

The ending is nice. It is not easy to conclude "and they all lived happily ever after" without being sugary or banal, but Cheever managed it.

I have a penchant for family sagas, and I am a big fan of Wodehouse, especially his Blandings series rather than Jeeves. When I saw the blurb on this book claiming it was a melding of the two, I was quite confident that I would thoroughly enjoy it. However, dear reader, I was mistaken.

I found every single member of the family to be insipid and disagreeable. They were written in such a cold and removed manner that they seemed more like puppets than real, living characters. The love affairs in the story felt stilted. We were simply told about the passion felt by the characters rather than being shown any evidence of it. A major character in the first section makes a sudden exit, and not another word is mentioned about her. The eccentric old aunts were not nearly eccentric enough to hold my attention. Even the father's skeleton in the cupboard turned out not to be his own. It all felt a bit too restrained, as if Cheevor held himself back from fully exploring the characters. This is a real shame because there could have been some high comedy and pathos in the story, rather than this monotonal tome.

Of course, the merit or enjoyment of a book does not solely depend on whether you like the characters within its pages. But if you don't warm to them, then they had better do some interesting things. Unfortunately, none of the Wapshots do. At least Cheevor admits this with this little gem of a description that made me chuckle: “Along with the phrenological paper and the portrait were the family journals, for all the Wapshots were copious journalists. There was hardly a man of the family who had doctored a sick horse or bought a sailboat or heard, late at night, the noise of rain on the roof without making a record of these facts.” In conclusion, this was a book that was simply not for me.

If you’ve ever met a person who seems to meet all your basic criteria for a long-term romantic relationship, only to discover that there’s simply no chemistry, then you can understand how I feel about John Cheever’s first novel, The Wapshot Chronciles. It ticks all the necessary boxes to win the National Book Award in 1958.

First, it’s by John Cheever, who has already achieved eminence as a short story writer. Second, it attempts to be innovative, truthful, and illuminating, and thus literary. Third, the writing is distinct and, in some cases, exceptional. And fourth, parts of the story are emotionally compelling.

However, if you’ve followed these reviews chronologically, you’ll know that some winners of the National Book Award are no longer in print. No one publishes these novels because no one buys them, because no one reads them, because they fail as stories. An award-winning novel, no matter how erudite or accessible, innovative or traditional, is not the same as a compelling, timeless story. And the story always comes first.

I’ve heard some people call this book humorous, but its message, in my opinion (and heart), is very sad. There’s a fine line between humor and melancholy. Sometimes we laugh in self-defense, as we do here. Cheever portrays marriage as the ultimate hoodwinking of the American male, a cruel irony, a prison with bars made of the irrational demands of selfish women or their families. One particular mother-in-law is the quintessential character we love to hate. After reading about Cheever’s real-life marital problems and suicidal episodes, I can only say that this story, at its best, made me very, very sad.

But it’s unlikely that you’ll find the good parts because you won’t make it past the first sixty pages. From the very beginning, Cheever fails as a novelist. He introduces no main character, no immediate problem, no dramatic tension, and therefore nothing to make us care about anyone. Instead, he spends time describing an Independence-day parade in the town of St. Botolphs. With all this ink used for scenery, the dramatic arc of the novel, like a plane with too much cargo, never gets off the ground except for a few bounces near the end of the runway. Then it simply disappears over a cliff and sinks into the sea. We shrug our shoulders and go back to our gardening.

To make matters worse, Cheever’s stylistic innovation fails just as precipitously as his drama, or lack thereof. I refer to one character’s journal entries that are “formed in the tradition of Lord Timothy Dexter, who put all punctuation marks, prepositions, adverbs, articles, etc., at the end of communication and urged the reader to distribute same as he saw it fit.” The result is a montage of phrases similar to the magnetized words on your friend’s refrigerator. I appreciate Mr. Cheever allowing the reader to play such an active role in forming the meaning of his story, but I’ve got a better idea: How about you, the author, doing your damn job?

Yes, I mean composing complete sentences and everything. I know it’s a little old-fashioned, but otherwise we, the reader, have to digest pages and pages of imported seasoning that accentuates, sure, but provides very little sustenance and ultimately makes us want to vomit.

Imagine, if you will, that you’ve just arrived in hell and it’s one big, interminable poetry slam. Even when you ask the receptionist for the time of day or the location of the bathroom, she says, “All the writer knows. Fall River, Bangor, Portland, Cape May, Baltimore, Lake Erie, Lake Huron, Saint Louis, Memphis, New Orleans. Floating Palaces. Corn-husk mattresses. Music over water. One night card games, one night friendships, one night girls. All gone with dawn’s early light. First passage calm. Ocean light glass. Many light glittering on the water. Sparse lights on the shore line. People watching palace drift by from porches, lawns, bridges, cupolas. Set their clocks by her.” Well isn’t that nice, sweetie. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go piss on myself.

I have often discovered that the quintessential American novel often faces difficulties in firmly establishing its roots within the social fabric. In a society that is so dynamic and constantly evolving, fiction scarcely has the time to fully assimilate the true nature of events. It often leans towards creating unrealistic characters who embark on a journey through a kind of fantastical existence. John Cheever's debut, The Wapshot Chronicle, both validates my suspicions and challenges them.

The family at the center of this story receives comprehensive treatment, resulting in a captivating read. Among first novels, there are far inferior ones. Based on his own experiences, Cheever situates his family narrative in St Botolph’s, a charming small town on the New England coast. It is a place filled with boats, fishing, and the tang of salty air. He swiftly establishes a well-defined time and place within just a few pages, and my initial reaction was one of astonishment. I thought, "Wow! This is going to be special." St Botolph is deeply steeped in heritage and seems almost impervious to change, and the same holds true for its inhabitants.

Captain Leander Wapshot, along with his wife Sarah and their two sons, Moses and Cloverly, reside in a large farmhouse near the river. He instills in his sons the traditional values that have been passed down through generations, such as camping trips, boat clubs, and respectability within the town. Leander is an aging seaman who gives the impression of being an antique lost in time. He is reluctant to adapt to the ever-changing America and struggles to cope after both boys leave home.

The events that befall the family are a combination of the ordinary and the impractical. However, it is the little details that I found most enchanting throughout. These small nuances capture the precious family moments, filled with shared time, happiness, and love. When circumstances change for the Wapshots later in the novel, along with the occasional odd episodes, including Leander's rather cryptic diary entries, I'm not entirely certain that Cheever knew precisely how to handle them. But this is generally just a minor quibble, as his strength lies in the precise time frame of his writing. He masters it to perfection, not only in terms of syntax but also in the way he structures the story, which is truly a visual delight. I appreciate the fact that he allows the reader the opportunity to become acquainted with the characters and their surroundings within the story without being overly forceful, gradually painting a vivid picture of small-town life.

Gently humorous, tragic, joyous, and messy, Cheever writes with great passion and a style that is truly engaging. This is the kind of novel that Philip Roth might have written if he weren't so fixated on certain themes, or perhaps even Richard Ford had he been more awake. The Wapshot Chronicle is not without its flaws, but it delivers the goods, reeling you in with a strong fishing line. 4/5

I was fully prepared to be bored to death by this novel. I had set my expectations really low. However, to my great surprise, my expectations were not met at all. This novel turned out to be much funnier than any novel with such a stuffy title could ever hope to be. It was not only clever but also zanier than I had ever imagined a popular or literary novel from the 1950's could be. At times, it was even more experimental in its style and subject matter than I would have thought possible for a novel with such a staid countenance. Moreover, it was brighter, livelier, and more modern than many novels that came after it. It truly defied all my initial expectations and proved to be a delightful and unexpected read.

Ah New England...

This is the kind of book that Jonathan Richman might have penned had he been born at the turn of the twentieth century. Imagine if he wasn't just a musician but also a writer, and perhaps a bit of a drunk too. The combination of these elements would likely result in a truly unique and captivating piece of literature. The book would probably be filled with his idiosyncratic views, his love for the simple things in life, and his ability to find beauty and meaning in the most unexpected places. It would be a strange and wonderful read, one that would appeal to those who appreciate the unconventional and the offbeat. Weirdly recommended, this book would offer a glimpse into a world that is both familiar and yet completely different from our own.

You can read my full essay on this masterpiece here:

https://www.edrants.com/the-wapshot-c...

I recently reread this for my Modern Library project. It was a notes-taking read, which allowed me to delve deeper into the text and analyze its various aspects. The process of taking notes helped me to better understand the themes, characters, and plot of the story. As I was reading, I found myself constantly making connections and drawing parallels to other works of literature and real-life experiences. Once I have completed my essay, I will post the link here for you to read. I am excited to share my thoughts and insights on this remarkable piece of literature with you all. Stay tuned!

The original article is not provided. Please share the article so that I can rewrite and expand it for you.

A completely familiar drama, a series of characters who are connecting with each other and little by little let us know more about them.

Characters constructed in an amazing way, characters who seem as real as the reader himself, so real that it is hard not to identify with one or more characters in this wonderful novel.

Without a doubt, Cheever is one of the great North American narrators. His works are filled with vivid descriptions and deep insights into human nature. The stories he tells are not only entertaining but also thought-provoking.

Cheever's ability to create complex and believable characters is truly remarkable. Each character has their own unique personality, motives, and flaws, which makes them feel like real people. Through their actions and interactions, we are able to understand their inner worlds and the struggles they face.

In conclusion, Cheever's novels are a must-read for anyone who loves great literature. His works will transport you to another world and leave you with a deeper understanding of the human condition.

It's going to occur at some point, folks, regardless of how much you might dread it. Indeed, I am speaking about my long-planned, highly-unexpected, yet-unwritten, annoyingly irrelevant monograph on John Cheever. In this work, I will single-handedly restore him to his rightful place among the first rank of American novelists. In equal measure due to Seinfeld and postmodernism, Cheever has devolved into little more than a punch line. He has become a sad symbol of outdated postwar suburban cocktail-party angst. However, think again, people! The Wapshot Chronicle is a breathtakingly beautiful novel. It is filled with moral clarity, the inevitability of sin, sex, booze, ambition, jazz, city life, country life, all presented in chiseled, pristine prose. I promise there will be more from me along these lines. Oh yes, I do promise.

Another National Book Award winner has emerged, presenting yet another rural family saga that serves to vividly highlight the ever-changing fabric of American society. Having only read one other piece by Cheever, namely “The Swimmer,” which I thoroughly relished, I truly had no clear idea of what to anticipate from this novel.

In one sense, with its decaying spinsters imprisoned within dilapidated homes, which are twin symbols of fading families, it can be regarded as a classic New England gothic novel. Its dark humor and eccentric characters draw upon a lineage that traces back at least to Faulkner in the South and, in some ways, to Melville. Indeed, Leander, the fading and henpecked patriarch of the Wapshot family, evokes a bizarro-world Ahab, in which the white whale failed to materialize as a material symbol.

All of the novel’s women are, in some manner, haunted by an ineffable vision that is both the source of their glamorous and stubborn persistence and the root of their inability to reconcile the present world with the world that was or the world they had imagined would be. Honora, the family matriarch, is the prototype. Her eccentric whims dictate the family’s fortunes as she is the one controlling the ancestral purse upon which the rest of the family depends. Later, we encounter Justina, the oppressive and vindictive matriarch of the decaying castle where Moses resides when he first marries the troubled and beautiful Melissa, who is essentially a wealthier and more absurd version of Honora—resembling a Mrs. Compson but with greater wealth and power. Even Sarah, Moses and Coverly’s mother and Leander’s wife, who manages to adapt more effectively to the changes in her life, “[i]s beautiful but when she taste[s] the water from the glass on her lectern she smile[s] sadly as if it were bitter for, in spite of her civil zeal, she ha[s] a taste for melancholy—for the smell of orange rinds and wood smoke—that [i]s extraordinary” (7).

One of the novel’s major conflicts lies between these women and the men in the novel, whose masculinity has been subordinated, if not destroyed, by the strong-willed yet equally ludicrous women in the family. For instance, Leander discovers that his lifestyle—indeed, his entire life philosophy, that “life [i]s a gesture or sacrament toward the excellence and the continuousness of things”—is threatened by Honora’s wilfulness when, after witnessing her nephew, Moses, having sex with a young woman, Honora decides to sell the family boat that gives Leander his sense of purpose. Similarly, the narrator remarks on how Rosalie, one of the novel’s many tragic and forgotten women, seems fated to be destroyed by the men in her life: “Without a loving family, without many friends, dependent mostly upon men for her knowledge and guidance, she had found them all set on some mysterious pilgrimage that often put her life into danger” (93).

While it is true that Cheever’s women are strange, stubborn, and overbearing, it is also true that the men in their lives—many of whom blame the women for their own emasculation—are largely responsible for making them so, driven by selfish desires and visions of a life in which wives play only a supporting role. Yet the men, too, seem caught up in a world over which they have little control. Thus, it is that Leander is extorted into marrying a young woman that his boss has raped and impregnated (yes, indeed). It is to Cheever’s credit that even in the novel’s darkest moments, he still manages to be funny, such as when Leander writes, regarding this situation, “Thought often of future. Dispose of troll-child and raise own family. Live in rose-covered cottage after demise of sainted old mother” (188), while also doing justice to the pathos: “Have no wish to dwell on sordid matters, sorrows, etc. Bestiality of grief. Times in life when we can count only on brute will to live. Forget. Forget. (By this Leander meant that Clarissa was drowned in the Charles River that night.)” (192).

In fact, though the novel is often depressing, one of its joys is that Cheever remains sardonically and wryly funny throughout, a quality that manifests in various ways. Sometimes, we encounter delightful non-sequiturs, such as in Lorenzo’s journal entries. While narrating daily events in the village, he offers random gems like the following: “Walked this evening to Cody’s store and weighed myself. I weigh 165 lbs.” (14), a description that recurs several times over the course of matter-of-fact accounting. There is also a great deal of poking fun at the pretensions of young men, whose higher moral and philosophical development is complicated by the intrusions of their ostensibly baser desires. For example, when Lorenzo notes, “I have spent considerable of my leisure time in this past year in the improvement of my mind but I find that much of it has been spent extremely foolish and that walking in the pasture at dusk with virtuous, amiable and genteel young ladies I experience none but swineish passions” (14-15). One of the running gags in the novel is the boys’ horniness, an inheritance from their also overly-sexed father, Leander, whom I envision as a satyr with the head of a wizened, Whistler-from-Blade-era Kris Kristofferson. The women, too, are delightfully weird. Cousin Honora, for instance, “d[oes] not feel that she should use a medical vocabulary and so... ha[s] worked out a compromise” where she “pronounce[s] the first syllables of the word in question and mumble[s] the rest. Accordingly, a word like 'hysterectomy' becomes 'hystermumblemumble,' while 'testicles' becomes 'testimumblemumble' (46). There are many more such instances, but I’ll leave you to discover them on your own.

Another aspect of the novel that I find fascinating is the eccentricity of the style. In general, Cheever is a brilliant stylist in the vein of Updike, capable of infusing the most mundane of details with pathos and elegance and possessing a deep reverence for the regional particularities that赋予 his setting its beauty. For example, the dust: “The dust that lies on everything is the world’s dust, but the smell of salt marshes, straw floor matting and wood smoke is the breath of St. Botolphs” (47). Or, this instance of pathetic fallacy as Leander takes Moses on a desperate father-son fishing trip to prove some vague point about his son’s—and, by extension, his own—worthiness: “Everything was dead; dead leaves, dead branches, dead ferns, dead grass, all the obscenity of the woods’ death, stinking and moldy, was laid thickly on the trail” (73). At the same time, there are all kinds of challenging stylistic quirks. There is, for instance, the randomly intrusive first-person narrator who emerges unpredictably to offer meta-fictional commentary on the novel’s events, characters, and pretensions. Some samples include: “The house is easy enough to describe but how to write a summer’s day in an old garden”; “Honora will not come—she is hooking a rug—but they do not know and so rather than dwell with the Chekhovian delays of this family watching the night come in we might climb the stairs and pry into things of more pertinence” (65); and “We are all inured, by now, to those poetic catalogues where the orchid and the overshoe appear cheek by jowl; where the filthy smell of old plumage mingles with the filthy smell of the sea” (115)—a passage that claims critical exhaustion in relation to what is, nonetheless, one of the novel’s most dominant stylistic techniques: the aesthetic yoking of the poetic and prosaic. There is also the random, second-person narration through which we are given Moses and Coverly’s first nights in their respective cities (“YOU COME, as Moses d[oes], at nine in the evening to Washington, a strange city. You wait your turn to leave the coach…” (130)) and which also seems to be a pre-emptive riff on the conventionality of his coming-of-age tale. Finally, once the novel settles into a back-and-forth between Leander’s and his sons’ stories, Leander’s chapters are narrated nearly entirely in choppy, fragmented journal entries, a fun echo of Lorenzo’s earlier journals, the stylistic playfulness of which is used for both comedic and tragic effect. First, the comedy: “WRITER ENTERPRISING although perhaps immodest to say so (Leander wrote). Bought sick calf in spring for two dollars. Nursed. Fatted. Sold in autumn for ten. Sent money to Boston for two-volume encyclopedia. Walked to post office to get same. Barefoot through autumn night. Heart beating. Remember every step of way on bare feet. Sand, thistles. Coarse and silky grass. Oyster shells and soft dirt. Unwrapped books outside of town on river path. Read in fading light. Dusk. Aalborg. Seat of a bishopric. Aardwolf. Aaron. Never forget. Never will forget. Joy of learning. Resolved to read whole encyclopedia. Memorize same. Memorable” (138-9). For tragedy, refer to my earlier quote from Leander’s journal, where he recounts his brief marriage to the doomed Clarissa.

Finally, there is the novel’s volta, where, after Betsey leaves Coverly, the narrator suddenly interrupts the flow at the beginning of Chapter 34 to note: “AND NOW WE COME to the unsavory or homosexual part of our tale and any disinterested reader is encouraged to skip” (319). When I read that, I was like, “WTF??” Granted, from the perspective of a man writing in America in the 50s, such a disclaimer may not have seemed as odd and problematic as it does today, but it is still a strange thing to include in a novel. What follows is a deeply conflicted exploration of Coverley’s sexual attraction to a male coworker, which begins in earnest with this gorgeous moment: “Coverly turned to his companion and they exchanged a look of such sorrow that he thought he might never recover. It was a look that he had recoiled from here and there—the doctor in Travertine, a bartender in Washington, a priest on a night boat, a clerk in a shop—that exacerbating look of sexual sorrow between men; sorrow and the perverse wish to flee—to piss in the Lowestoft soup tureen, write a vile word on the back of the barn and run away to sea with a dirty, dirty sailor—to flee, not from the laws and customs of the world but from its force and vitality” (321-2). Almost immediately, though, Coverly falls into a shame spiral, where he notes that he “had thought with desire of going to sea with a pederast and Venus turned her naked back on him and walked out of his life forever” (322), believing that his sexual desire for another man means that he will now and forevermore be bereft of the love of women. At the same time, whatever Cheever’s—and his reader’s—hangups about homosexuality (and, by all accounts, he did have an ambivalent relationship to his own bisexuality), one of the most subtly touching moments in the novel is when Coverly, having written a desperate letter home confessing his homosexual longings, receives the following response from Leander: “Cheer up.... Writer not innocent, and never claimed to be so. Played the man to many a schoolboy bride. Woodshed lusts. Rainy Sundays” (331), followed by this, after recounting a particularly fraught relationship between himself and another man: “Was writer pederast? Sex problems tough nut to crack in 19th-century gloom. Asked self: Was pederast? In shower after ball games. Swimming in buff with chums at Stone Hills. In locker room asked self: Was pederast?” (332). The section, a microcosm of the rest of the novel, is funny in tone but still manages to generate deep feeling for a man who is forced to put a label on something by a society that does not allow for ambiguity in sexual orientation. In the end, while homosexuality is treated superficially as aberrant, Cheever does more to demystify it—to show that it is only aberrant from the perspective of a society that insists on defining sexuality in heterosexual terms and which condones men’s sexual excesses in their most destructive forms so long as they are not directed at other men (Leander’s boss, of course, never suffers the consequences of raping a young woman, and Leander himself is able to mostly shrug off the incident when his first wife’s long-estranged daughter re-emerges into his life).

That is all to the good. The novel’s flaws are minor and few, but they do accumulate over the course of the narrative. The book takes some time to gain momentum, with Cheever sometimes seeming mired in the impulse to outline the entire family history before he can undertake the task at hand, which is to get Moses and Coverly to the city (actually, cities) in which they will come of age and attempt to cultivate the independence upon which their inheritance is contingent. This is an established convention of the family saga, and Cheever executes it just fine, but it feels superfluous, to the extent that the novel I began reading seems like a different book from the one I finished just a couple of hours ago. There are also some moments where Cheever’s self-aware relationship to conventions becomes, well, a bit conventional. The symbolically decaying castle in which Moses lives out the early stages of his marriage with a group of increasingly ludicrous personalities is a fairly well-worn trope (though he may not be a direct antecedent, I can’t help but think of J. G. Farrell’s Troubles), and although it is a trope I adore, it still feels a bit convenient. Similarly, Moses and Coverly’s coming-of-age tales are not, in themselves, especially remarkable, and it is only through Cheever’s style and playfulness that they are memorable at all. The men themselves are actually quite dull, interesting only in their clueless interactions with the women in their lives. Finally, though the intrusive narrator generally works, it sometimes feels clumsy, sitting uneasily against the third-person narration, such as in the following, where Cheever’s lovely reflection upon one’s relationship to place is undermined by the clash between first- and third-person narration:

“But her plans to go, whenever she made them, seemed to render the old square house and the valley in such as fine, golden light and to arouse such tenderness in her for everything she saw that she stayed on. Sometimes, walking on a beach and when there is no house near, we smell late in the day, on the east wind, lemons, wood smoke, roses and dust; the fragrance of some large house that we must have visited as children, our memories are so dim and pleasant—some place where we wanted to remain and couldn’t—and the farm had come to seem like this to Rosalie” (84-5).

Overall, though, this is an excellent novel that anyone who enjoys American literature or a good, dark laugh will love. It is, without question, one of the best National Book Award winners yet.