Cheever

by Blake Bailey

  356 “toothless Thurber”: Irving Howe, in Partisan Review 26 (Winter 1959), 131.

  356 “At the [Academy] ceremony”: JC to WM [c. May 1960], Berg.

  356 “I seem neither sane enough nor mad enough”: JJC, 191.

  357 “letting oneself into a labyrinth”: JC to Litvinov, March 15 [1965].

  357 Cheever and Brodkey: JC's quotes about his flirtation with Brodkey are all from the unpublished journal. The New Yorker writer in whom Brodkey confided wishes to remain anonymous; certain others were also privy to such confidences.

  358 “[tying] on a can”: JJC, 198–99.

  358 “I felt defensive for him”: SD int. Richard Stern, April 23, 1985, Swem.

  359 “erudite, bellicose and agile”: LJC, 245.

  359 “Mary flew back on Thursday”: GT, 180.

  359 “May I join you?”: Mrs. Donald H. Farquharson to SD, Jan. 19, 1985, Swem.

  359 “Mother would have been indignant”: JC to WM [c. May 1965], Berg.

  359 “I had lunch with Ralph Ellison”: LJC, 243.

  360 “I am very fond of Ralph”: JC to Warren, Jan. 12 [1963], Yale.

  360 Cheever awoke feeling “crushed”: GT, 181–82.

  360–361 Vietnam War as a “moral outrage”: “Academy Speech Angers Benton,” Washington Post, May 21, 1965, A18.

  361 “chaos that we've made of our promise”: Ellison Papers, LC.

  361 “Thank you very much, Ralph”: JC's acceptance remarks, May 19, 1965, Academy.

  361 reptile “seemed to possess the world”: JJC, 200.

  361 They decided to “get stoned”: GT, 183.

  362 “I did everything short of kicking him”: LJC, 249.

  362 “banging folding chairs together”: JC to Matthew Bruccoli, May 2 [early 1970s?], Morgan.

  362 “[Updike] read extracts from three works”: quoted in OJ, 117.

  362 “I am … rude, I think, to John”: this passage was deleted from the second entry on page 200 in the published Journals.

  362 “chastening, perhaps edifyingly so”: OJ, 117.

  363 prescribed a “massive tranquilizer”: JC to Litvinov [c. Aug. 1965].

  364 “People named John and Mary never divorce”: JJC, 204.

  365 “threw in the sponge”: WM to SC, n.d., CFP.

  365 “I was drinking gin and romping with the dogs”: LJC, 252.

  365 characterizing Cheever as “furious”: Wilborn Hampton, “William Maxwell, 91, Author and Legendary Editor, Dies,” New York Times, Aug. 1, 2000, B9.

  366 “I look forward to having the book”: JC to WM [c. Jan. 1966], Berg.

  367 “the relationship of the novelist”: Richard Stern, “Report from the MLA,” New York Review of Books, Feb. 17, 1966, 26–28.

  367 “pleased and excited” by The Naked and the Dead: JJC, 13.

  367 “great affectation of bellicosity”: JC to WM [c. May 1960], Berg.

  367 “trimmed [his] weight to 138 lbs.”: JC to Stern [c. Dec. 1965], Chicago.

  367 “Well, you've got to find him!”: SD int. Robert F. Lucid, April 2, 1985, Swem.

  368 “when he was busily trying to describe”: draft of Cheever's MLA remarks, Berg.

  368 Mailer was “pissed”: SD int. Norman Mailer, March 29, 1985, Swem.

  368 “There has been a war”: Norman Mailer, Cannibals and Christians (New York: Dial Press, 1966), 95.

  369 “young women wearing nothing”: JC to WM [c. Jan. 1966], Berg.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN {1966}

  371 “electrifying conversationalists”: Betsy Brown, “The Friday Club, A Cheever Salon,” New York Times, June 27, 1982, sec. 11, pp. 1, 8.

  372 “John called early this am”: Spear to Litvinov, July 12, 1968, courtesy of Pamela Spear Goff.

  372 “[John] is in good shape”: Spear to Litvinov, April 23, 1974, ibid.

  372 “I was dozing in a chair”: author int. Raphael Rudnik, Aug. 26, 2004.

  373 “glued to the television”: author int. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt and Natalie Robins, Aug. 15, 2004.

  375 “A man named Exley wrote”: GT, 187.

  375 “Coming in late last night”: LJC, 247.

  375 “tone or volume of my father's farts”: ibid., 20.

  375 “If my note to you seemed cursory”: JC to Exley, Oct. 4 [1965], Rochester.

  376 “Environment plays, I hope”: JC to McLoone, April 11 [1966], Georgetown University Library.

  376 “The old dog; my love”: JJC, 193–94.

  377 “She was a wonderful companion”: LJC, 261.

  377 “teach the Antigone to negroes”: JC to Litvinov, May 23 [1965].

  378 “My father finally concurred”: NFB, 51.

  379 “Ben, who is my favorite”: LJC, 249.

  379 “I damn near swoon”: JC to Herbst [c. June 1965], Yale.

  379 “The attachment seems to resist any analysis”: JJC, 210.

  379 “We'd each have a fork”: LJC, 23.

  380 “Christmas … not as pleasant”: JC to Litvinov, Jan. 7 [1966].

  380 “I am teaching Fred”: JC to Litvinov, Nov. 2 [1965].

  381 “The only one of the children”: TT, 137.

  381 “both young and old, masterful and tearful”: LJC, 253.

  382 “talismanic” cameo: JC to Stern, Aug. 17 [1966], Chicago.

  382 “What I was supposed to do”: GT, 191–92.

  382 “into very deep and stormy water”: JC to McLoone, Feb. 24 [1967], Georgetown University Library.

  383 “Teamster's Union hose-type rainstorm”: CJC, 64.

  383 “It is not a great picture but it is faithful”: JC to Litvinov, April 5 [1968].

  383 “occasionally gross and mawkish”: Vincent Canby, “Cross-County ‘Swimmer,’ “ New York Times, May 16, 1968, 53.

  383 akin to that of “a shampoo commercial”: Joseph Morgenstern, “Puddle Jumper,” Newsweek, May 27, 1968, 94.

  383 “Spiegel really fucked it up”: JC to William Kennedy, Nov. 21 [1968], Albany.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT {1966–1967}

  384 “The mortal boredom of reading”: JC to Biddle [c. Nov. 1963], LC.

  384 “Oh for heaven's sake, Helen”: author int. Helen Barolini, Feb. 27, 2005.

  385 “[I] have written two stories”: JC to Litvinov [c. June 1966].

  386 “written [him] off as an improvident”: JC to Bracher, Sept. 14, 1967, Bancroft.

  386 “[T]he stuntiness of Barthelme disconcerts me”: LJC, 270.

  386 “Shawn's chosen surrealist”: JC memo to grants committee [c. 1980], Academy.

  387 Gaddis's JR (“less than rubbish”): JC to Laurens Schwartz, Sep. 12 [1977], Swem.

  387 “That the complexities of contemporary life”: JC, “An Exchange on Fiction,” New York Review of Books, Feb. 3, 1977, 44.

  387 “Jean said, drawing me aside”: CJC, 169.

  387 “[Mailer] is so wonderfully tough”: JC to Litvinov, Sept. 25 [1968].

  388 “John's new novel (Couples)”: JC to Litvinov, May 22 [1968].

  388 “It will be miserable and dangerous”: JC to WM [c. June 1966], Berg.

  389 “I would not make a potholder in the city”: LJC, 21.

  389 “As for Ben he was reclassified 1-A”: JC to WM [c. Feb. 1968], Berg.

  389 “For no explainable reason”: FLC Jr. to JC, Nov. 23, 1966, PJC.

  389 “I'm enclosing a small check”: JC to FLC Jr., Dec. 1 [1966], PJC.

  390 “After twenty-five years of acute alcoholism”: LJC, 269.

  390 “I keep reading biographies of Fitzgerald”: JC to Kronenberger, Nov. 3 [1966?], Copley.

  390 “Shall I dwell on the crucifixion”: JJC, 213.

  391 “hands seem[ed] to drop off “: JC to Robert Gottlieb, Nov. 8 [1968], Swem.

  391 “Walking on Madison Avenue”: JJC, 224.

  392 “I can't bear to be gentled by an impotent man”: ibid., 223.

  392 his wife's “needless darkness”: Dr. David C. Hays, notes, Swem.

  392 “So I go to the shrink”: JJC, 213. />
  393 “We would embrace”: ibid., 214.

  393 “[I]t was Esquire”: GT, 193.

  393 “Does he know anything about music”: JJC, 216.

  393 “[Hays's] mouth seems a little blubbery”: JC to MC [c. July 1966], Swem.

  394 “Who profits by concluding that Mrs. Zagreb”: JJC, 218.

  394 “Some years ago I went to a psychiatrist”: LJC, 261.

  395 JC and Rorem at Yaddo, 1966: Ned Rorem, The Nantucket Diary (New York: North Point, 1987), 233–35.

  395 “I've never felt this way before”: author int. Rorem, May 9, 2004.

  397 “I am weary of being a boy of fifty”: JJC, 226.

  397 “a little incestuous”: JC to Litvinov, Oct. 21 [1966].

  397 “I seem to know so much”: JC to Cowley [c. Oct. 1966], Newberry.

  397 “I resolved never to do this again”: JC to Rorem, July 7 [1967].

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE {1967–1968}

  399 “its annual journey towards the rocks”: JC to Litvinov, April 3 [1967].

  401 “that if he didn't have a squad of policemen”: GT, 197.

  401 letter to the bishop of New York: author int. Rob Cowley, June 2, 2004.

  401 “[made] an exclamation of distaste”: JJC, 233.

  401 Mrs. Zagreb “raked the male guests”: LJC, 258.

  402 taking his first “hack job”: JC to McLoone, Oct. 18 [1967], Georgetown University Library.

  402 Mary … “[did] not seem cheered”: JJC, 238.

  402 seemed to “miss the plane”: LJC, 260.

  402 “gabbling like a turkey”: ibid., 255.

  402 “She has the tact and discretion”: JC, “Sophia, Sophia, Sophia,” Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 21, 1967, 33–35.

  402 “She wrote, she wrote, she loves me”: JC to WM [c. Oct. 1967], Berg.

  403 “suffered from an unstable prostate”: JC to Ray Mutter, Nov. 10 [1967].

  404 “The admissions committee at the club”: JJC, 244.

  404 “the narrator isn't a man”: WM to JC, April 18, 1967, NYPL-MSS.

  404 “They pay well and they are hospitable”: JC to McLoone, March 11 [1968], Georgetown University Library.

  405 “for reasons that I can't recall”: LJC, 265.

  406 “Of course I cannot judge the book”: JJC, 249–50.

  406 “So off one goes”: LJC, 250.

  407 “Wipe that artificial smile off your face”: ibid., 358–59.

  407 “lest [his] smile fall to the bottom of the sea”: GT, 210.

  CHAPTER THIRTY {1968–1969}

  408 “I'm afraid I was a nuisance about money”: JC to Gottlieb [c. July 1968], Swem.

  408 “I've changed everything—my doctor”: JC to Lindley, Sept. 17, 1968, Swem.

  408–409 “I believe we have voted for the swimming pool”: JC to Cowley [1962?], Newberry.

  409 “No!” she shouted into the telephone: author int. Anne Palamountain, June 28, 2004.

  409 “This, of course, has nothing to do”: JC to Ames, July 28, 1968, NYPL-MSS.

  409 “imperturbable, humorous and fair”: JC, “Elizabeth Ames,” Sept. 7, 1968, Berg.

  410 “I've written nothing”: GT, 209.

  410 “Clichés of suburban life!”: CJC, 36.

  410 “After a few more questions have been detonated”: ibid., 28.

  411 “Guess what the bill is?”: ibid., 32.

  411 “Perhaps you remember”: Gottlieb to JC, Sept. 5, 1968, Swem.

  411 Bullet Park … “better than the Scandal”: JC to Bracher, Dec. 11, 1968, Bancroft.

  411 “a cast of three characters”: CJC, 97.

  412 the modern world's “living hell”: Benjamin DeMott, “The Way We Feel Now,” Harper's, Feb. 1964, 111–12.

  412 “I would rather have an informative [review]”: CJC, 33.

  412 “My father seemed suddenly very frail”: HBD, 180.

  412 Reviews of Bullet Park: Benjamin DeMott, in New York Times Book Review, April 27, 1969, 1, 40–41; Charles Nicol, in Atlantic Monthly, May 1969, 96–98; Guy Davenport, in National Review, June 3, 1969, 549–50; Joyce Carol Oates, in Washington Post Book World, April 20, 1969, 1, 3; JU, reprinted in Picked-Up Pieces (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), 427–28; John Leonard, in New York Times, April 29, 1969, 43; Anatole Broyard, in New Republic, April 26, 1969, 36–37.

  413 “I count on my experience with Fred”: JC, notes on BP, Berg.

  414 “Neither Hammer nor Nailles”: CJC, 111.

  414 “Nailles's blessing is that he is married”: John Gardner, “Witchcraft in Bullet Park,” New York Times Book Review, Oct. 24, 1971, 2, 24.

  416 “I go on about the vulnerability of Nailles”: JC, notes on BP, Brandeis.

  417 “I don't work with plots”: CJC, 102.

  418 “What I wanted was verisimilitude”: JC to Litvinov, Feb. 27 [1969].

  420 “dumped on [the book] in the Times“: CJC, 97.

  420 “and one couldn't ask for more”: JC to Bracher, July 21, 1969, Bancroft.

  421 “I think something misfired”: LJC, 278.

  421 “plugging for tenure at Amherst”: Samuel Coale, “Portrait of John Cheever,” unpublished manuscript, Swem.

  421 “I aimed for the head”: JC to Litvinov, Sept. 1 [1970?].

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE {1969–1970}

  422 “We rip off our clothes”: JJC, 254.

  423 “I'll be taking the train”: author int. Lehmann-Haupt and Robins, Aug. 15, 2004.

  423 “the most beautiful woman”: HBD, 126.

  423 “Swooping (or so I thought) among the trees”: LJC, 271.

  423 “substitute physical pain and infirmity”: JJC, 254.

  423 “I can't write you a story”: LJC, 270.

  424 “the minutiae of upper-middle-class life”: JJC, 249.

  424 “First scoop at half past nine”: ibid., 255–56.

  424 “[M]any thanks for … page numbers”: JC to Roth, June 16 [1969], LC.

  426 “a little like Zelda”: JC to Kronenberger, June 16 [1969], Copley.

  427 “he is a kind of prince, scourge, God”: JC to Litvinov, Aug. 25 [1969].

  427 “I spend a lot of time kissing her”: JJC, 238.

  427 “the two most self-centered animals”: ibid., 240.

  428 “roughed up by the Man!”: CJC, 76.

  428 “barefoot [with] a fan-shaped beard”: JJC, 247.

  428–429 He found this “wide of the mark”: e-mail from Doug Brayfield to author, June 2, 2005.

  429 “When did you start wearing a red necktie?”: Dick Polman, “John Cheever: The Other Story,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 18, 1988, sec. I, pp. 1, 5.

  429 “the way suits fit bears and chimpanzees”: LJC, 279.

  430 “My older son seems seriously to have switched”: JJC, 258.

  432 “the peacemaker”: Marian Christy, “Ben Cheever—a Son in the Shadow,” Boston Globe, Dec. 25, 1988, A14.

  432 “My dearly beloved son comes in the middle of dinner”: JJC, 296.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO {1969–1970}

  434 “a little nut-brown guy”: SD int. Shana Alexander, Sept. 21, 1984, Swem.

  434 “I am a man, a free man”: JJC, 262–63.

  434 his wife's “contemptuous and weary voice”: ibid., 263–64.

  435 “Hope and Alan are getting a divorce”: GT, 219.

  435 “I don't want to return on these terms”: JC to WM [c. Oct. 1969?], Berg.

  436 “meant to demolish Barthelme”: JC to Stern, Oct. 1 [1970], Chicago.

  436 “I am disappointed in Artemis”: JJC, 270.

  437 “Fred is on a diet”: LJC, 285.

  438 “I haven't been as thrilled by anything”: author int. Sandra Hochman, Oct. 11, 2004.

  439 described the boyfriend as a “gymnast”: LJC, 283.

  440 “implie[d] rapprochement”: J. William Silverberg, notes.

  440 “What a waste of time to ridicule them”: LJC, 282.

  441 drinking “was beginning to drag on him visibly”: JU to SD, June 25, 1984,
Swem.

  441 “I mount my beloved”: JJC, 265.

  441 “something about a sale at Lord & Taylor's”: unpublished chapter of TT, CFP.

  441 “Water lilies grow at the edge of the pond”: JJC, 269.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE {1971–1972}

  444 “Is what I have to say urgent”: JC, “Fiction Is Our Most Intimate Means of Communication,” U.S. News & World Report, May 21, 1979, 92.

  444 “Esquire wants to buy it”: LJC, 285.

  445 “1. I drink too much”: JC to Cowley [c. May 1971], Newberry.

  446 “I want a new cadence”: JC to Candida Donadio, Jan. 26, 1970, Swem.

  446 “I'm happy to have been born in the same century”: JC to Donadio [c. June 1971], Swem.

  448 “a very wide net”: Anatole Broyard, in New York Times, Sept. 12, 1973, 45.

  448 “My friendship with The New Yorker”: JC to Litvinov [c. Nov. 1971].

  449 “I didn't go to Sing Sing to gather material”: CJC, 127.

  449 “He was bare-assed and had the shotgun”: LJC, 369.

  449 “exactly twenty-seven details”: JC to Cowley [c. May 1971], Newberry.

  449 “stamina and courage”: JC, “The Melancholy of Distance,” in Chekhov and Our Age, ed. James McConkey (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Center for International Studies, 1984), 132.

  449 “Tomorrow I go to Sing-Sing”: LJC, 284.

  450 an exercise “in making sense of one's life”: CJC, 242.

  450 “Oh what a cool motherfucker”: JC to WM [c. June 1971], Berg.

  450 “I had hoped to do something like Camus”: quoted in GT, 217.

  451 (“I thought, ‘One what … ?’ “): SD int. Donald Lang, Sept. 20, 1984, Swem.

  451 “You'd make a great hostage”: CJC, 125.

  451 “[I]f the cons and I were lined up”: ibid., 242.

  452 “He explained that his acceptance”: Stinnett to SD, Nov. 26, 1985, Swem.

  452 “everything but shout ‘fire’ “: GT, 221.

  453 “I trust he hasn't heard”: JC to McLoone [c. Aug. 1971], Georgetown University Library.

  453 “[He] knew I was a fan of … Koren”: TT, 175.