john cheever's diary: poetic disillusion.
The writer John Cheever won numerous prizes and well-deserved professional success throughout his life. In the manner of the great North American writers, his best writing is in his short stories. You can't find a better analysis of the middle class in the second half of the 20th century i the States anywhere. Cheever's diary was published in 1991, 10 years after his death. Reading his diary you realise why he knew and understood that society's secrets and contradictions so well.
He was expelled from school for smoking in class. That same day his academic education finished and he began his life as a writer. This was also the origin of his first short story: "Expelled". The editor Malcom Cowley bought it and the newspaper New Republic published it. From then on Cheever published his stories in New Republic, Collier«s Story and Atlantic magazines. The New Yorker spotted the young man's talent and made him a serious offer. The connection between the famous magazine and Cheever lasted until his death.
He married Mary Winternitz in 1937 and his first book of short stories, "The Way Some People Live", was published two years later. In this book, and in all the books he later wrote, Cheever uncovered all the flaws and mediocrity in the middle class around him. His best-known story is probably "The Swimmer". Frank Perry made an evocative, harsh film of it starring Burt Lancaster (the most appropriate alter ego for Cheever's personality, as we found out some years later). In "The Swimmer", Ned Merrill realises that the swimming-pools in his part of town are a hypothetical river and decides to swim his way home. He goes from one swimming-pool to another, their belonging to people he knows and people he doesn't, and we get to see the life people around him live. Probably the unique "swimming-pool movie" in cinema history.
In this story and in "The Enormous Radio", Cheever spins sentences full of details and narrative threads full of symbolism. The tensions which arise in everyday life, problems with relationships, alcoholism and sexual frustrations are sometimes obvious, on other occasions the main characters hide them away.
Diaries
John Cheever died in 1982, just after reaching seventy. 29 notebooks were found after he died. This diary, which he started writing in the 40's, was the main axis of his work and his store room. When you read what he wrote in his last years of life, you realise that Cheever wasn't just a survivor, he was actually a winner. Alcoholism, an addition to pills, sexual doubts, a family separation and the chaotic and controversial classes he gave in Iowa were all in the past. Cheever returned to the family sanctuary in Ossining, New York. He gave up drinking and the pills disappeared from his bedside table. His wife, Mary Winternitz, got over his hidden homosexuality with grace and Cheever had a single lover during the last years of his life, the young Max Zimmer. He also received considerable professional recognition. He has entered the list of the greats of US literature and, along with Saul Bellow, was the great mirror of happiness and suffering in the States during his period. He has become an icon for young people. John Updike, who died recently, was a disciple.
On reading his diaries perhaps it would be an exaggeration to say that he became an optimist in his last years, but he clearly had a much quieter conscience. However, only a couple of the 29 notebooks are from his last years. Amongst other things, the other notebooks tell us about the problems we've mentioned, addiction and sexual frustration. In his diaries Cheever uses no formulas, distances himself from the cultivated writer he was and writes openly. You realise that Cheever's personality was a river which split in two. On the one hand he wanted to have a typically happy, normal American family. He loved his wife Mary and their children, he had the agreeable personality of a successful writer, but his desires weren't always in agreement with that image. He was prey to his desires time and again. And to extinguish these desires, he soaked himself in alcohol, took pills and spent most of his life under their influence.
Cheever always lived between destruction and creation. And in his writing, in an easy-to-read but violent way, this perfect society's hypocrisy and dark side are brought out. Cheever dissected the daily mediocrity and disillusion hidden behind the beautiful garden, shiny car and dentist-guaranteed smile.
He was expelled from school for smoking in class. That same day his academic education finished and he began his life as a writer. This was also the origin of his first short story: "Expelled". The editor Malcom Cowley bought it and the newspaper New Republic published it. From then on Cheever published his stories in New Republic, Collier«s Story and Atlantic magazines. The New Yorker spotted the young man's talent and made him a serious offer. The connection between the famous magazine and Cheever lasted until his death.
He married Mary Winternitz in 1937 and his first book of short stories, "The Way Some People Live", was published two years later. In this book, and in all the books he later wrote, Cheever uncovered all the flaws and mediocrity in the middle class around him. His best-known story is probably "The Swimmer". Frank Perry made an evocative, harsh film of it starring Burt Lancaster (the most appropriate alter ego for Cheever's personality, as we found out some years later). In "The Swimmer", Ned Merrill realises that the swimming-pools in his part of town are a hypothetical river and decides to swim his way home. He goes from one swimming-pool to another, their belonging to people he knows and people he doesn't, and we get to see the life people around him live. Probably the unique "swimming-pool movie" in cinema history.
In this story and in "The Enormous Radio", Cheever spins sentences full of details and narrative threads full of symbolism. The tensions which arise in everyday life, problems with relationships, alcoholism and sexual frustrations are sometimes obvious, on other occasions the main characters hide them away.
Diaries
John Cheever died in 1982, just after reaching seventy. 29 notebooks were found after he died. This diary, which he started writing in the 40's, was the main axis of his work and his store room. When you read what he wrote in his last years of life, you realise that Cheever wasn't just a survivor, he was actually a winner. Alcoholism, an addition to pills, sexual doubts, a family separation and the chaotic and controversial classes he gave in Iowa were all in the past. Cheever returned to the family sanctuary in Ossining, New York. He gave up drinking and the pills disappeared from his bedside table. His wife, Mary Winternitz, got over his hidden homosexuality with grace and Cheever had a single lover during the last years of his life, the young Max Zimmer. He also received considerable professional recognition. He has entered the list of the greats of US literature and, along with Saul Bellow, was the great mirror of happiness and suffering in the States during his period. He has become an icon for young people. John Updike, who died recently, was a disciple.
On reading his diaries perhaps it would be an exaggeration to say that he became an optimist in his last years, but he clearly had a much quieter conscience. However, only a couple of the 29 notebooks are from his last years. Amongst other things, the other notebooks tell us about the problems we've mentioned, addiction and sexual frustration. In his diaries Cheever uses no formulas, distances himself from the cultivated writer he was and writes openly. You realise that Cheever's personality was a river which split in two. On the one hand he wanted to have a typically happy, normal American family. He loved his wife Mary and their children, he had the agreeable personality of a successful writer, but his desires weren't always in agreement with that image. He was prey to his desires time and again. And to extinguish these desires, he soaked himself in alcohol, took pills and spent most of his life under their influence.
Cheever always lived between destruction and creation. And in his writing, in an easy-to-read but violent way, this perfect society's hypocrisy and dark side are brought out. Cheever dissected the daily mediocrity and disillusion hidden behind the beautiful garden, shiny car and dentist-guaranteed smile.
