Peter LaSalle Considers John Cheever Across the River

In the 60th in a series of posts on 2014 books entered for The Story Prize, Peter LaSalle, author of What I Found Out About Her (University of Notre Dame Press), recalls the time he almost met a literary idol.

Every short story writer surely has his or her pantheon of masters of the genre.

For me, there's Borges and Hemingway and Maupassant (trained by no less a mentor than Flaubert, and amazing to think how Maupassant could accomplish so much in such a small space—I personally say it's tough to find any writing in the entirety of world literature to match the sheer craft afoot in "The Necklace" or "Boule de Suif").

And there's also been—equally a favorite and the subject of what I have to tell here—John Cheever.

Like many aspiring writers fresh out of college, I was stuck in a job that had little to do with writing. True, I was supposedly working with words as a reporter for the Providence daily newspaper, but those words were far removed from what I really wanted to write. And what I really wanted to write, often my model early on, was fiction like that of John Cheever, his startling short stories. They were seemingly about lost city dwellers or lost suburbanites, while they also approached something much larger and airier than that. Intimate, rendered in a prose effortlessly lyrical, they moved toward valid transcendence in gems like "O Youth and Beauty!" and "Goodbye, My Brother." I read Cheever, I imitated him in stories I wrote when young, and I read him some more.

Which makes what did happen quite painful, I suppose, but important and even revelatory, too, an incident back in 1970 that has always stuck with me.

You see, good friends of mine from college in Boston were marrying in Albany, and a bunch of us in our old undergrad group drove or flew in from various parts of the country to attend the June wedding. Afterwards we planned to keep the impromptu reunion going for a while and spend a few days at the longtime family summer place of my college roommate at Thousand Islands there in upstate New York. It was seldom used now, so we would have the entire house to ourselves, a grand old operation from an elegant era long gone by, sprawling yet ramshackle and located on its very own island on the St. Lawrence River. With cars left on the mainland, our shuttling back and forth for groceries and such was done via a little white-and-blue Boston Whaler powered by a happily buzzing outboard motor. We weren't even a full year past graduation—guys and girls, swimming and enjoying the extended meals we slapped together in the antiquated kitchen, then talking late into the night.

One afternoon, the others set off in the Boston Whaler to bring some supplies from the mainland over to friends of my roommate's parents at a similar big summer house on a nearby island, but I took a pass on the idea. I guess I saw this little vacation from rushing out of the newsroom to cover yet another tangled car crash, let's say, as a time to rest up, free of the drudgery of newspaper work. Plus, I was maybe a bit hung over from too much Utica Club beer that accompanied all the good talk the night before, and I wanted to just relax that sunny, leafily brilliant June day, probably reading, certainly napping as well. When the contingent returned a few hours later, I met them at the dock. I asked how the afternoon had gone; a lovely girl named Sandra in her swimsuit there in the boat looked up from under a Red Sox cap and said they had fun visiting the friends of my roommate's parents, had even met a famous writer:

"John Carter, I think his name was," she said, "a nice man and a house guest there."

"Not Carter." My college roommate, tying up the boat, corrected her. "It's something like that, with a 'C,' and apparently a short story writer, named John . . ."

"Cheever?" I offered hesitatingly, and my roommate confirmed it.

Cheever: So close and yet so far

I seem to remember—or maybe simply picture—me lingering on the dock after the others, sunburned and noisy, headed up the slope of the shaggy lawn to the house, as I stood there alone, looking out over the shimmering blue water to the wooded island across the way and thinking still more, now with self-recrimination: "Man, I could have met John Cheever, and there I was, lazily sleeping away the afternoon."

Anyway, here's the jump I wish to make, to perhaps bring this all full circle. Yes, I felt disappointment then, but sometimes the scene also does come pleasantly back to mind lately whenever I look at a blank page and begin a new short story. There's always that possibility, a fresh chance, and maybe this time the words themselves will produce a rare story indeed, granting I'm never to be even vaguely included in that hallowed group of my short story masters, of course. And with the sentences accumulating, the narrative moving along almost like a buzzing Boston Whaler with its blunt, wave-splashing bow tirelessly cutting through the water, the story will take me to a place where I just might tap into at least a small measure of the magic that any of those heroes of mine so often and very beautifully tapped into.

All of which is to say, there's John Cheever beckoning across water, also Borges and Maupassant, even the mustached, dimpled, darkly handsome young Hemingway there.

The whole gang, writers who with others have made the genre the special entity it is, which, for better or worse, has led me to neglect trying to write the Great American Novel (though I've published a couple of hopefully reasonably decent ones) and devote what has passed for a pretty long literary career to what ultimately interests me—ah, the short story!

Impaneled

(L to R) Story Prize Director Larry Dark (yours truly) with authors
Susan Minot, Rick Moody, and Elizabeth Strout (via Dusty Spines)

The three authors who participated in last night's tribute to The Stories of John Cheever at the Center for Fiction, turned out to have strong, sincere connections to Cheever's work. Elizabeth Strout read "The Worm in the Apple" and told how important the stories were to her development as writer. Rick Moody read from "The Jewels of the Cabots" and discussed how the late stories in the book convinced him that indirection could be an effective narrative technique for him. And Susan Minot brandished a faded, hardcover copy of the book with her ratings of various stories in the table of contents, ranging as high as seven stars. She noted that the story she was going to read from, "The Sorrows of Gin," only rated three stars back then, but her estimation of it had grown. I, too, brought my first copy of the book—a 1978 mass market paperback with off kilter pages. And Rick Moody had his original copy, as well. He read the very Cheeverian inscription his father had written to him, suggesting that Rick, a mere teen at the time, might never be as good a writer as Cheever—kind of like saying he might not measure up to Chekhov.

The Center for Fiction did a great job with the event, which ended with a panel discussion and questions from the audience. I say we do it again in 25 years.

Happy 100th Birthday, Mr. Cheever

Yesterday—May 27—would have been John Cheever's 100th birthday, and I like to think that I have the day off form work for that reason. In fact, maybe Memorial Day should be an annual occasion to remember writers whose work is, well, memorable. After all, May is Short Story Month.

I would be remiss if I didn't also reiterate that this Thursday night, May 31, at the Center for Fiction, The Story Prize will be co-presenting a tribute to The Stories of John Cheever. Susan Minot will read from and discuss JC's "The Sorrows of Gin." Rick Moody will focus on "The Jewels of the Cabots." And Elizabeth Strout will read from "The Worm in the Apple." If you're going to be there (and I hope you are), I would highly recommend reading/re-reading these three stories.

The 92nd Street Y offered it's centennial tribute to John Cheever, with a focus on the man himself. With the exception of Michael Chabon's spirited reading of "The Enormous Radio," the program was almost entirely dedicated to the writer and not his work. Biographer Blake Bailey read excerpts that focused on Cheever grappling with his fame. Susan Cheever read from her father's diaries, admiring the gorgeous prose that permeated even work that wasn't written for publication. And Allan Gurganus, Cheever's former student and more, read the last few sentences of "Goodbye, My Brother," and spoke at length about personal encounters with his mentor.

I'm glad the 92nd Street Y did this. Now we can focus on the reason we even remember this man 100 years after his birth—his fiction and, in particular, his stories. Call me romantic, but I would be taking note of this occasion even if I'd never seen the photos of John Cheever's handsome, craggy face or heard recordings of his exaggerated patrician accent, or learned about his troubled family relationships and his personal demons. For most of us, the stories transcend the life.

Short Story Month: Minot, Moody, and Strout Read Cheever at The Center for Fiction on May 31

May is National Short Story Month, and this year (for once) The Story Prize has something planned. Thanks to New York's Center for Fiction, we're going to be co-presenting a reading to celebrate The Stories of John Cheever, a collection you'll find on the shelves of many passionate readers and writers of short fiction.

Why a Cheever reading now? Because he will have been 100 on May 27. John Cheever, the man, has gotten a lot of attention in recent years, with the release of his diaries and a highly-regarded biography by Blake Bailey. In fact, the 92nd Street Y is having an event on May 17 with Bailey, Michael Chabon, and writers and offspring Ben and Susan Cheever. So when The Center for Fiction's Executive Director, Noreen Tomassi, and I discussed having an event there, we decided to put the focus on what is probably Cheever's greatest legacy—his short stories.

(L to R) Susan Minot, Rick Moody, and Elizabeth Strout

On May 31, at 7 p.m., at The Center for Fiction, authors Susan Minot, Rick Moody, and Elizabeth Strout will each read from and discuss a Cheever story. Minot's choice is "The Sorrows of Gin," Moody will read from "The Jewels of the Cabots," and Strout will focus on "The Worm in the Apple"—all interesting selections from among an oeuvre that includes "Goodbye, My Brother," "The Enormous Radio," "The Five-Forty-Eight," "Reunion," and "The Swimmer."

Susan Minot, Rick Moody, and Elizabeth Strout each have New England roots—as did Cheever. And the work of all three has affinities with his. I'm expecting a memorable and fitting tribute to a great writer with a continuing and widespread influence on other writers—a nice way, we hope, to close out a month celebrating the story form.

Genius Authors, Enduring Works, Book Club Choices, Best-Sellers, Award Winners

I can't keep up with all of the great things that are happening for short stories and short story writers, so for now, I'm just going to list the latest and hope to circle back later to discuss some of these at greater length. Here's what has been happening so far this month:

Two Short Story Writers Win MacArthur Foundation Fellowships.
Among this years "genius grant" recipients are short story writer Deborah Eisenberg (a pure play) and the first ever winner of The Story Prize, Edwidge Danticat, whose second short story collection, The Dew Breaker, is often classified as a novel.

Four of the Six Finalists for the Best of the National Book Awards Fiction Are Short Story Collections.
In 60 years, and out of 77 books, only 11 have been short story collections. But a panel of 140 writers chose four of those books among the six finalists. Those collections are: The Stories of John Cheever, The Collected Stories of William Faulkner, The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor, and The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty. Short story collections are, without a doubt, among the most enduring works of American literature.

The Latest Oprah's Book Club Selection Is a Short Story Collection.
On September 18, Oprah Winfrey announced that Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan is the next book club selection--the first time she's chosen a short story collection.

Soon There Will Be Three Short Story Collections on The New York Times Best-Seller List.
When Akpan's book hits The New York Times Best-Seller List for trade paperbacks, it's very likely that it will join two other short story collections: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. Who says short story collections don't sell?

The Inaugural $50,000 St. Francis College Literary Prize Goes to a Short Story Collection.
On September 12, as part of the Brooklyn Book Festival, Aleksander Hemon's short story collection Love and Obstacles was announced as the winner of this new book award for mid-career authors.

In addition, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award just announced it's surprising winner, Simon Van Booy's Love Begins in Winter.

More on much of this later. For now, I rest my case.

Under a Cheever

I love John Cheever's stories and Flannery O'Connor's, too. But I have absolutely no interest in their biographies, which are racking up reviews in newspapers and magazines. I don't happen to care if J.C. was an alcoholic, abusive husband and father, abused child, closeted homosexual, etc., etc., etc. All I need to know is his work:

"Oh, what can you do with a man like that? What can you do? How can you dissuade his eye in a crowd from seeking out the cheek with acne, the infirm hand; how can you teach him to respond to the inestimable greatness of the race, the harsh surface beauty of life; how can you put his finger for him on the obdurate truths before which fear and horror are powerless? The sea that morning was iridescent and dark. My wife and my sister were swimming--Diana and Helen--and I saw their covered heads, black and gold in the dark water. I saw them come out and I saw that they were naked, unshy, beautiful, and full of grace, and I watched them walk out of the sea."

That's the concluding paragraph of Cheever's story "Goodbye, My Brother." Perhaps he did have a troubled relationship with his brother, as does the narrator, but that makes no difference to the reader; the story would be great even if the author had been an only child.

Of, course, I'm not saying no one should read or write biographies, just that they're not for me. The best thing about the books on Cheever and O'Connor is that they're likely to get more people to read their stories and novels. Let's give Cheever the final words, a passage from his novel, Oh What a Paradise It Seems:

"He felt so lonely that when the car ahead of him signaled for an exit he felt as if he had been touched tenderly on the shoulder by some stranger in some strange place like an airport, and he wanted to put on his parking lights or signal back in some way as strangers who are traveling sometimes touch one another although they will never, ever meet again. In a lonely fantasy of nomadism he imagined a world where men and women communicated with each other mostly by signal lights and where he proposed marriage to some stranger because she put on her parking lights an hour before dusk, disclosing a supple and romantic nature."