The Letters of John Cheever

Description

'A writer of grace and wit, quietly dealing with people, like himself, who sense that their seemly, well-respected lives are being lived upon a precipice' Sunday Times WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JAY MCINERNEY John Cheever's letters offer a tantalising glimpse into the life of a writer. They include correspondence with his contemporaries, such as Philip Roth, John Updike and Saul Bellow, his days as a young, aspiring writer and his battles with bisexuality and alcoholism. In this collection, edited by his son Benjamin Cheever, we see how his private correspondence was as extraordinary as his published works.

John Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912, and he went to school at Thayer Academy in South Braintree. 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 he 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.

He lies, in American writing, somewhere between Scott Fitzgerald and John Updike -- Malcolm Bradbury The master of the short story was also the master of the short letter * Sunday Times * I enjoyed The Letters of John Cheever enormously... Cheever shone in his three-paragraph masterpieces about temperamental plumbing, pets, and the loneliness of the short story-writer -- Zoe Heller Cheever's work - a succession of brilliant short stories for the New Yorker and four novels - depends on an edgy eye for detail and a compulsive narrative personality * Independent * John's letters and Benjamin's commentary makes a special kind of dialogue that touches and haunts, both in what is said and what is kept silent * Los Angeles Times *