The Stories of John Cheever

Amazon.com

Think of John Cheever's fiction, and a whole world springs to mind--a world of leafy suburbs, summer houses, commuter trains, boarding schools, and inevitably, his own chosen territory, the cocktail hour among WASPs. But it's a mistake to approach Cheever as if he were merely some sort of anthropologist documenting the customs of an obscure and vanishing tribe. Nostalgia and class issues aside, his true subject is the darkness hidden beneath the surface of postwar American life. A case in point is his famous story "The Swimmer," in which an ebullient Neddy Merrill decides to swim home across the backyard pools of his neighbors. In the course of his journey, however, summer gives way to autumn, his neighbors turn against him, there are troubling intimations of disgrace and financial ruin, and he arrives to find his house both locked and empty.

Though these stories deal with bright, prosperous, ostensibly happy people, a cold wind blows through them. Age, illness, financial embarrassment, sex, alcohol, death--all of these threaten his suburban Eden. (Is it himself Cheever is mocking in his ironic "The Worm in the Apple"? "Everyone in the community with wandering hands had given them both a try but they had been put off. What was the source of this constancy? Were they frightened? Were they prudish? Were they monogamous? What was at the bottom of this appearance of happiness?") Inanimate objects carry the residue of their past owners' unhappiness and cruelty ("Seaside Houses," "The Lowboy"); expatriates long for but cannot quite find their way home ("The Woman Without A Country," "Boy in Rome"); children vanish or turn out badly (too many stories to count).

All of this is conveyed in prose both graceful and tender. No one is better than Cheever at describing a character's appearance: "He was a cheerful, heavy man with a round face that looked exactly like a pudding. Everyone was glad to see him, as one is glad to see, at the end of a meal, the appearance of a bland, fragrant, and nourishing dish made of fresh eggs, nutmeg, and country cream." Given his uncanny eye (and ear) for realistic description, it's easy to forget how experimental Cheever could be. His later stories pioneered authorial intrusions in the best postmodern style, and from the beginning, he wrote what would much later be called magical realism. (Think of the sinister broadcasts in "The Enormous Radio," or the phantom love interest in "The Chimera.") A literary event at its publication and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1979, The Stories of John Cheever remains a stunning and enormously influential book. --Mary Park

Book Description

When The Stories of John Cheever was originally published, it became an immediate national bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize. In the years since, it has become a classic. Vintage Books is proud to reintroduce this magnificent collection.

Here are sixty-one stories that chronicle the lives of what has been called "the greatest generation." From the early wonder and disillusionment of city life in "The Enormous Radio" to the surprising discoveries and common mysteries of suburbia in "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill" and "The Swimmer," Cheever tells us everything we need to know about "the pain and sweetness of life."

Customer Reviews:

Lots and Lots of Cheever.......2007-07-24

Like any large collection of short fiction (and here Cheever's stories weight in at 693 pages in my edition) there is a great deal of material here that is of marginal quality. But for the reader who can hang on through Cheever's innumerable attempts to hammer out the same themes with relentless consistency (the rented summer home, the failed vacation, the desperate office manager, the expatriate in Italy living a dream of surreal desperation) this work is well worth reading for the surprises one encounters along the way. Cheever surmounts himself at some points; some stories reach a sublime level which is only hinted at in the less successful attempts. For writers, the large-collection-of-short-stories- taken-from-a-life-time-of-writing can be instructional texts. How do we retell our Ur story in new and refreshing ways? How do we surmount our own story, to get at something both more primal and more novel?

Cheever, A grand story teller!.......2007-02-20

John Cheever tells his short, thought bending stories with the eye of a pained man. In the swimmer he outlines the deapths of alcoholism with an eye to detail and a symbolism that provkes great loss.

Suburban and Superior, Pointed and Poignant.......2006-12-26

John Cheever was a master storyteller who examined the relationships and prosperity and pitfalls of life in suburbia during the middle of the twentieth century and my writing teachers were forever trying to force this collection on me (and which I am glad they did). Some of the best stories are those with unusual characters and motives, such as the hallucinated girlfriend in "The Chimera," the man swimming home through the river of backyard pools in "The Swimmer," the Italian prince who movies into the neighborhood of "Another Story," and the secretary's revenge on her boss in "The Five-Forty Eight." But there are plenty of rowdy couples for entertainment's sake -- the Beers of "Just One More Time," the Pyms of "Just Tell Me Who It Was," the Warburtons of "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill," and the Bentleys of "O Youth and Beauty." Among my favorite stories are "Reunion," about a father and son reunion in Grand Central station, and "Clancy in the Tower of Babel," about an elevator man and his building's tenants. Other classics include "The Lowboy," about brothers squabbling over an inheritance, "The Bus To St. James," about the extramarital affairs of parents, and "The Sorrows of Gin," about the effects of alcoholism on a family as seen through the eyes of a girl.

He stings as he sings.......2006-08-23

John Cheever is the poet of mid-century suburbia. He stings as he sings, gently criticizing a lifestyle that he at the same time embraces and loves. "The Swimmer" is a tour-de-force; had Cheever been South American, the story would have been labeled magic realism.

Great stories; better edition needed.......2006-07-25

Cheever was a great writer and these stories are tremendous, but it would be nice if dates of publication were included so that we could see the progression of Cheever's work.

Average customer rating:

Collected Stories
John Cheever
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

The Stories of John Cheever

ASIN: 0099748304

Average customer rating:

STORIES OF JOHN CHEEVER
JOHN CHEEVER
Manufacturer: Alfred A. Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000JWPFMM

American Masters: The Short Stories of Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and John Updike

Average customer rating:

Nice Experience
Wonderful

American Masters: The Short Stories of Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and John Updike
John Cheever , and Raymond Carver
Manufacturer: Random House Audio
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette

General | Books on Cassette | Audiobooks | Formats | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Anthologies | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

United States | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Anthologies | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

General | Fiction | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0375404767
Release Date: 1998-11-03

Amazon.com Audiobook Review

What's unique about American Masters is that it's such a complete work of art. Not only are the stories well written and thought provoking, but the narrators are perfectly suited to their tasks. Each voice is like the bass note of a complex symphony--whenever your mind begins to wander, swimming within the tones of the various worlds composed, these voices call you back to the original structure of the story. Of course, the narration is various and unique, suitably matched to the writers: Raymond Carver deports himself with all his usual rawness of character and gritty realism through Peter Riegert's gruff but melodic intonations; John Cheever disguises the same with an air of refinement and quietly piqued nostalgia in the fine New England accent of Maria Tulcci; and John Updike holds them both down (through his own narration) with a funniness that is all too serious, or vice versa (you're never quite sure which). But the differences only highlight the fact that these literary giants all carry a certain bearing toward their work that is distinctly American. They all seem to find it rather like an animal of its own, like human nature itself. Taken like this--as variations on a theme--and mingled with the textures of the ancient art of storytelling, the collection becomes less a set of audiobooks and more a rare tapestry of American vantage points. Listen and discover these masters' works all over again. (Running time: 7.5 hours, 5 cassettes) --Courtenay Kehn

Book Description

The Short Stories of Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and John Updike
5 cassettes / 7 1/2 hours
Unabridged short stories

Three American masters of the short story - Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and John Updike, brought together for the first time in one deluxe audio collection.

Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver, read by Peter Riegert
Few American writers are more admired than the late Raymond Carver. In Where I'm Calling From, his highly acclaimed short story collection, Carver displays an astonishing genius. His stories are populated by characters living in an unforgivable world, suffering the burdens of displacement, divorce, despair. These people snarl and bark and speak in bursts of rough-and-tumble dialogue. They are everybody, anybody, nobody. A final testament to Carver's towering talent, Where I'm Calling From is a mesmerizing masterpiece of fiction drama, and poetry.

The Stories of John Cheever, read by Maria Tucci
"[John Cheever is] a master storyteller." - Time
A selection of the incomparable short fiction that has, together with his novels, secured John Cheever's place among the foremost writers of our time. The stories included on this AudioBook are "The Enormous Radio", "O Youth and Beauty!", "Just One More Time", "A Woman Without a Country", and "The Worm in the Apple".

Selected Stories by John Updike, read by the Author
John Updike reads six stories, including "A&P", recounting a moral crisis at the checkout counter; "Pigeon Feathers"; "The Family Meadow"; " The Witness"; "The Alligators" and "Separating," which recounts the June day when Richard and Joan Maple separate, in front of their children.
Mr. Updike, when asked to describe his method of reading aloud, said "I try to picture the things described, and to speak the words distinctly, and to let the emotion come through on its won."
The method works beautifully.

* American Masters also includes a 30-minute audio sampler of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, performed by Jeremy Irons

Customer Reviews:

Nice Experience.......2005-09-04

I appreciate the timely manner in which I received the item. I haven't been able to listen to all the tapes yet, but so far the ones I've listened to work well. There was one tape missing (The Special Preview of Vladimir Nabakov's LOLITA). However, it was not mentioned as part of the sale anyway.

Thanks

Wonderful.......1998-11-23

This audio collection of short stories - by three American Masters, Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and John Updike - is perfect for that next long drive, morning commute, or anytime you need something really good to listen to. I highly recommend.

Average customer rating:

Tough Material in First Class Performance
Great stories beautifully read

The John Cheever Audio Collection
John Cheever
Manufacturer: Caedmon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Books on CD | Audiobooks | Formats | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0060554835
Release Date: 2003-06-17

Book Description

Here are twelve magnificent stories in which John Cheever celebrates -- with unequaled grace and tenderness -- the deepest feelings we have.

As Cheever writes in his preface, 'These stories seem at times 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 quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat.'

John Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912. He is the author of seven collections of stories and five novels. His first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, won the 1958 National Book Award. In 1965 he received the Howells Medal for Fiction from the National Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1978 The Stories of John Cheever won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Shortly before his death, in 1982, he was awarded the National Medal for Literature from the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Benjamin Cheever is the author of The Plagiarist, The Parisian and Famous after Death.

The Enormous Radio read by Meryl Streep
The Five-Forty-Eight read by Edward Herrmann
O City of Broken Dreams read by Blythe Danner
Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor read by George Plimpton
The Season of Divorce read by Edward Herrmann
The Brigadier and the Golf Widow read by Peter Gallagher
The Sorrows of Gin read by Meryl Streep
O Youth and Beauty! read by Peter Gallagher
The Chaste Clarissa read by Blythe Danner
The Jewels of the Cabots read by George Plimpton
The Death of Justina read by John Cheever
The Swimmer read by John Cheever

Customer Reviews:

Tough Material in First Class Performance.......2007-09-07

Let nobody fool you with adjectives about Cheever's fictional voice -- elegant, supple, crisp, resonant. Yeah it's all that, but if you have not encountered him before, you will be thinking in other terms -- unsparing, discomforting, perhaps even unforgiving. But listen to all these discs through, arranged from early stories to later -- through a variety of fine professional voices ending with Cheever's own refined rasp, for the last two stories -- before you make any judgments. It ought to take you several sittings; one story at a time may be all you can take. But by the end, you will likely want to eventually hear them all through, again.

Cheever, along with the somewhat younger John Updike, was thought of as the basic social chronicler in the short story form of his generation in post World War 2 years. That is somewhat misleading; the background for both is Protestant, or post-Protestant, east coast, upper middle class and aspiring higher. The two of them became known for what was called "the New Yorker story," which in itself will tell you a lot.

In Dante's Hell upon entry, a demon named Minos winds his tail the precise number of times to figure exactly how deep to drop you down to your earned level of damnation. A similar process happens very early in a Cheever story. A character, or the narrative voice itself, pitilessly fixes all others, in their sphere of vision, based upon the smallest nuance of voice inflection, diction, style of car or dwelling, choice of school, favorite drink, clothes or shoes. They are thus immediately damned in this world, and in a Hell particularly Calvinist (according to Cheever himself), without appeal except, perhaps, eventually to the reader's sympathy. Which some will gain, some not. In any event, they will still be wearing the same shoes at the end, of which fact Cheever will be certain to remind you.

In the early pieces, Cheever is a little uncertain on paper, a little jokey or cute but always entertaining and fascinating. Then he cools out real fast, and delivers stuff as good as the best of his predecessors in this genre, John O'Hara and F. Scott Fitzgerald. From then on his batting average is about as consistent as Lou Gehrig, too; the human toll of his endeavor is discreetly kept from the reader but apparently sounded in his personal life. State of the art performances by a catlike Merle Streep, the great Ed Hermann, serious Peter Gallagher, jovial George Plimpton, witty Blythe Danner move you soundly and at an even pace through all this material. But for all the pain in his voice, it is tremendously beatutiful when Cheever's own voice finally breaks surface on the last disc, in a clearly angry yet unbelievably controlled fit of passion, reading The Death of Justina -- a full frontal assault on modern corporate nonsense and social pretense. I certainly had never heard anything like it. Finally, a shade or two cooled off, Cheever closes the set with a reading of his mythic standard, The Swimmer.

Not for the feint-hearted, this mature set is as good as audio books get.

Great stories beautifully read.......2007-05-21

This audio-set collects 12 of Cheever's finest stories and recruits wonderful readers, including Meryl Streep, who is fantastic. Cheever has a gift for ripping the cover off of everyday life and getting at the emotional core. Many of the stories pack an emotional punch at the end as the reader gains a sudden and almost blinding insight into the emotional core of the lead character. The first and last stories of the collection ("The Enormous Radio" and "The Swimmer") are especially good at this. Some stories are funny -- like the "Chaste Clarissa" -- but most would have to be classified as "downers." Perhaps it is this dark edge that keeps Cheever from achieving some of the heights that Chekhov scaled.

Still, Cheever is at the top of the hierarchy of great American short story writers, along with writers like Sherwood Anderson and Hemingway. He's a little bit better at the short-story craft that any of his contemporaries.

George Plimpton is probably the only reader in this collection who will grate on you. Everyone else is absolutely great. My hats off to the publisher.

Average customer rating:

The World Of Apples - Stories
John Cheever
Manufacturer: Alfred A. Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IX82XG

Thirteen Uncollected Stories by John Cheever

Average customer rating:

Fascinating early Cheever

Thirteen Uncollected Stories by John Cheever
John Cheever
Manufacturer: Academy Chicago Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

United States | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

British | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

English (All) | Dictionaries & Thesauruses | Reference | Subjects | Books

English (British) | Dictionaries & Thesauruses | Reference | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0897334051

Customer Reviews:

Fascinating early Cheever.......2000-02-02

Except for the first two, all of the stories in this collection are excellent! I had a great time reading them. My favorite is the sad "Bayonne", and the riotously funny "The Opportunity". There are hints of Cheever's celebrated prose style, but all of these stories are marvelously constructed narratives. The book itself is okay. Except for the hideous yellow of the jacket and more than a few typesetting and editorial factual errors, it is a very handsomely bound book with good paper and large, readable type. However, it's hard to justify twenty dollars for a 200 page book that's physically the size of a paperback novel.

Average customer rating:

Cuentos de mujeres solas
Marcela Serrano , Sherwood Anderson , Flannery O'Connor , John Cheever , Nuria Barrios , Manuel Mujica Lainez , Pedro Mairal , Clarice Lispector , Anton Pavlovich Chekhov , Eca De Queiroz , Oscar Wilde , Guy de Maupassant , and Katherine Mansfield
Manufacturer: Punto de Lectura
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

Latin American | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Anthologies | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Anthologies | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Spanish | Foreign Language Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

All 4-for-3 Deals | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books

ASIN: 8466312781

Book Description

The solitude of women is one of the great subjects of universal Literature. All women either with impossible or tragically lost loves face solitude at some time in their lives. This anthology presents unforgettable stories that portray a psychological state and a peculiar way of life to which women end up getting used to. This anthology contains stories by Flaubert, O'Connor, Chejov, Cheever, Maupassant, Clarice Lispector, Oscar Wilde and Carlos Fuentes among others.

Book Description

Series Editors: Gary Scharnhorst, University of New Mexico and Eric Haralson, State University of New York, Stony Brook

This is the only series to provide in-depth critical introductions to major modern and contemporary short story writers worldwide. Each volume offers:

A comprehensive overview of the artist's short fiction-including detailed analyses of every significant story
Interviews, essays, memoirs and other biographical materials -- often previously unpublished
A representative selection of critical responses
Acomprehensive primary bibliography, a selected bibliography of important criticism, a chronology of the artist's life and works and an index

Angel of the Bridge (Perfect Presents Story-Gifts)

Average customer rating:

Angel of the Bridge (Perfect Presents Story-Gifts)

Manufacturer: Redpath Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Suspense | Thrillers | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books

General | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 9998511097

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books