LETTERS OF JOHN CHEEVER

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671628739 ISBN 13: 9780671628734

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1988

Offers insight into the life of the Pulitzer prize-winning author through his correspondence with other writers, his wife, children, and lovers, covering personal and professional aspects of his life from his days as a young writer until his death

About the Author:

Benjamin Cheever, the author of four novels and two works of nonfiction, has also been a newspaper reporter and an editor at Reader's Digest. He lives in Pleasantville, New York, with his wife and sons.

From Publishers Weekly:

John Cheever's letters aren't great literaturethey weren't meant to bebut his unmistakable voice comes through on every page. Bristling with his sardonic wit and "rock-bottom irritability," they reveal a man of dark contradictions: an ardent heterosexual in public, Cheever despised his own secret bisexuality; he scorned the upper-middle class but desperately needed its approval. Letters track a romantic affair with actress Hope Lange, a competitive friendship with John Updike and dialogues with Saul Bellow, Josephine Herbst, Malcolm Cowley, Frederick Exley and Philip Roth. In the late 1960s, Cheever's merry, heavy-drinking attitude swiftly turned into family tragedy. Benjamin Cheever, the novelist's son, interweaves affectionate commentaries with the letters, telling what it was like to be reared by a famous writer who was an alcoholic. In the most affecting letters, every word is in place as Cheever paints a real-life character, comments on contemporary fiction or lays bare his frustrations. We follow the writer from a $3-a-week Greenwich Village room to the wilds of Westchester, N.Y.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.