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John Cheever spent much of his career impersonating a perfect suburban gentleman, the better to become one of the foremost chroniclers of postwar America. Written with unprecedented access to essential sources—including Cheever’s massive journal, only a fraction of which has ever been published—Bailey’s Cheever is a stunning example of the biographer’s art and a brilliant tribute to an essential author.
The New York Times Book Review - Geoffrey Wolff
…stunningly detailed…I would not want to have missed any of Bailey's storytelling…or his sound moral judgment or his critical sensibility. His sketches of dozens of characters who were touched by Cheever are short stories in themselves
The New York Times - Bret Anthony Johnston
With Cheever: A Life,…Mr. Bailey stands to reintroduce the author and his luminous work into the larger cultural conversation. The book is a definitive, Dickensian rendering of a complete and complicated life, addictively readable and long overdue.
Publishers Weekly
Rebellious Yankee son of a father who fell victim to the Depression and a doo-gooder-turned-businesswoman mother, father to three competitive children he rode mercilessly but adored, chronicler par excellence of the 1950s American suburban scene while deploring all forms of conformity: John Cheever (1912-1982) was a mass of contradictions. In this overlong but always entertaining biography, composed with a novelist's eye, Bailey, biographer of Richard Yates and editor of two volumes of Cheever's work for Library of America (also due in March), was given access to unpublished portions of Cheever's famous journals and to family members and friends. Bailey's book is fine in descriptions of Cheever's reactions to other writers, such as his adored Bellow and detested Salinger. Bailey is also sensitive in describing the prickly dynamic of Cheever's domestic life, lived through a haze of alcoholism and under the shadow of extramarital heterosexual and homosexual relationships. This "Ovid in Ossining," who published 121 stories in the New Yorker as well as several bestselling novels, has probably yet to find a definitive position in American letters among academicians. This thoroughly researched and heartfelt biography may help redress that situation. 24 pages of photos. (Mar. 12)
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Morris Hounion - Library Journal
Bailey, author of a biography of Richard Yates (A Tragic Honesty) and editor of the Library of America's John Cheever: Complete Novels and John Cheever: Collected Stories and Other Writings, presents a massively detailed biography of the man. Bailey had access to letters, journals, and other writings by the author as well as cooperation from Cheever's wife, children, and close friends and colleagues, which makes this biography more complete than Scott Donaldson's 1988 John Cheever. Bailey's portrait of Cheever as author, family man, lover, and public figure contains everything readers would want to know about this important figure in American literature. The biographer is sympathetic toward his subject but presents all sides of Cheever's complex character, including his alcoholism, bisexuality, fears, struggles, and often turbulent relationships with fellow writers and family. Bailey also provides close readings of all of Cheever's novels and many of his short stories. Highly recommended for all public and academic library collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ11/1/08.]
Kirkus Reviews
A comprehensive treatment of the tormented but artful life of one of fiction's modern masters. Bailey (A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates, 2004, etc.) plunges deeply into the murky, sometimes fetid stew of John Cheever's life (1912-82). Beginning with his 1982 appearance at Carnegie Hall to receive the National Medal for Literature (more details appear some 650 pages later), the author proceeds in chronological fashion to tell the story of a deeply needy, difficult man. Born into money that soon vanished, Cheever never graduated from high school. Yet he earned some of the country's most prestigious literary awards, in recognition of his brilliant short stories (more than 100 published in the New Yorker alone) and critically esteemed novels (especially Falconer, 1977). Despite all this acclaim, as Bailey shows in agonizing detail, Cheever's demons were destructive, even deadly. He smoked heavily and drank steadily, though he finally gave up both a few years before cancer killed him. He had unhappy, even bitter, relations with his wife and three children, and maintained uneasy, tense literary friendships with, among others, Bellow and Updike. Most seriously, argues Bailey, he could never accept his bisexuality. Always attracted to men-an attraction he indulged more frequently, albeit always covertly, as he aged-he nonetheless pursued a variety of women, from Hollywood's Hope Lange to students in his classes. (He taught creative writing at several places, including the Iowa Writers' Workshop.) Cheever could be rude, snide, petty, selfish, jealous, vindictive, depressed, savage, pretentious and embarrassing. He made sexual advances to startled friends and dropped hispants at alarming moments. He was often, pathetically, a dipsomaniacal mess. But, oh, those sentences and stories! Bailey pauses continually to examine a tale or a novel, never in an obtrusive or esoteric way, and notes how his works today sell little-though two Library of America volumes are forthcoming (both edited by Bailey). Superb work that shows Cheever wrestling with dark angels, but wresting from those encounters some celestial prose. First printing of 50,000. Author tour to Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., Westchester, N.Y. Agent: David McCormick/McCormick & Williams Literary Agency
About the Author
Blake Bailey is the editor of a two-volume edition of Cheever’s work, published in 2009 by The Library of America. His last book, A Tragic Honesty, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2005, and his articles and reviews have appeared in Slate, The New York Times, the New York Observer, and elsewhere. He lives in Virginia with his wife and daughter.
Industry Reviews
"A triumph of thorough research and unblinkered appraisal." --John Updike, The New Yorker "A definitive, Dickensian rendering of a complete and complicated life, addictively readable and long overdue." --Bret Anthony Johnston, The New York Times
"Beautifully woven, deeply researched, and delightfully free of isms. . . . Here's Cheever at the center of the storm." --Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times
"Fascinating. . . . Bailey counter[s] both his subject's soaring enthusiasms and paranoid forebodings with clear-eyed judgment." --David Propson, The Wall Street Journal
"Mesmerizing. . . . Every inch the record that Cheever deserves. . . . [Bailey] gives us remarkable access to one of the greatest writers of his time." --Vince Passaro, O, the Oprah Magazine
"So wise and serious, so human an account. . . . Even more eloquent and resourceful than Bailey's celebrated biography of Richard Yates." --Geoffrey Wolff, The New York Times Book Review
"Sympathetic and deeply engaging. . . . This book is also a portrait of the twentieth century." --Jacob Molyneux, San Francisco Chronicle
"[Bailey's] life of Cheever is an impressive, even a beautiful, achievement." --Algis Valiunas, Commentary
"[An] expansive, wonderfully written biography. . . . Unstinting. . . . Bracing. . . . To read Bailey on Cheever is to arrive at a much fuller appreciation of a deeply gifted chronicler of American life." --Matt Shaer, Christian Science Monitor
"A portrait of the man drawn judiciously but compellingly and in harrowing detail . . . . [A] fine biography." --Richard Lacayo, Time
"Elegant. . . An insightful, clear-eyed life of the man." --The Economist
"Surely definitive. . . . [Bailey] gets down his subject's humorous staying power, even in the midst of spiritual turmoil." --William H. Pritchard, Boston Globe
"Masterful." --Nathan Heller, Slate
"Exceptional. . . . Along with sensitivity and dispassionate thoroughness, it's his smooth blending of sources into a readable narrative that sets Bailey apart as a biographer." --Jeffrey Burke, Bloomberg News
"Exemplary. . . . Bailey has brought [Cheever's] life into such eloquent relief that it's easy to imagine Cheever, if only for a moment, finally feeling like someone understood him." --Gregg LaGambina, A. V. Club
"Definitive. . . . Judicious and nuanced. . . . Mr. Bailey's research is impeccable and exhaustive--a mighty feat." --Adam Begley, The New York Observer
"A biography of monumental heft . . . that certifies Cheever's enduring relevance." --James Wolcott, Vanity Fair
"Bailey's thorough new biography completes the total revolution of our image of the man has undergone in the quarter century since his death." --Jonathan Dee, Harper's
"Tremendous. . . . Magisterial. . . . Bailey [is] a great biographer, utterly dogged and indefatigable about telling details." --Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News
"Impressive. . . . Finely written. . . . Bailey has done a near-perfect job of making the connections between the man and his masterpieces." --Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times
"Fascinating . . . . Powerfully moving . . . . A brilliant example of literary biography at its best." --Doug Childers, Richmond Times-Dispatch
"Quite successfully sorts out the facts, masks and contradictions of this unique American life." --John Barron, Chicago Sun-Times
"The appearance of Bailey's poised, thorough biography is both timely and corrective . . . Bailey presents his subject in all his contradictory fullness . . . Cheever: A Life succeeds by balancing insight, judgment, empathy, and clarity." --Floyd Skloot, Philadelphia Inquirer
"Bailey has achieved what I (along with many others) thought well-nigh impossible: an outstanding, exhaustive (but never exhausting), clear-eyed and evenhanded biography of Cheever and a literary triumph in its own right." --George W. Hunt, America
"Magnificent." --Maud Newton, Barnes and Noble Review
ISBN: 9781400079681
ISBN-10: 1400079683
Series: Vintage
Published: 1st March 2010
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number of Pages: 816
Audience: General Adult
Publisher: KNOPF DOUBLEDAY PUB GROUP
Country of Publication: US
Dimensions (cm): 20.19 x 13.41 x 4.17
Weight (kg): 0.77
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