Cheever: A Life

For the first time: the full and unforgettable life of John Cheever (1912-1982), written with unprecedented access to essential sources--including Cheever's massive journal, only a fraction of which has ever been published. Blake Bailey shows us a soul in conflict: a proud Yankee who flaunted his lineage while deploring the provincialism of his Quincy, Massachusetts, family circle; a high school dropout who published his first story at eighteen; a pioneer of suburban realist fiction who continually pushed the boundaries of realism; a dire alcoholic who recovered to write the great novel Falconer; a secret bisexual who struggled with his longings and his fierce homophobia in a revolving door of self-loathing and hedonism. We see a man who concealed his anxieties behind the mask of the genial Westchester squire; the paterfamilias in Brooks Brothers clothes whose world was peopled by legendary writers and beautiful women (Malcolm Cowley, Saul Bellow, William Maxwell, Hope Lange, and John Updike, among them); whose groundbreaking work landed him on the covers of Time and Newsweek; who believed in the power of family love and sexual pleasure; a man whose desperate loneliness was never wholly offset by his faith in the joy of creation. Blake Bailey has written a luminous biography, a revelation of a writer of timeless fiction and of the man behind the work.