The Stories of John Cheever: Complexity, Comparison and an Exercise on the Readable

So many years ago, I used to pound into my students little minds the purely rude act of beginning a composition with a quote.  I will make an exception here because John Cheever is, well, John Cheever.  The fact that the man was a genius is another reason.

"For lovers, touch is a metamorphoses.  All the parts of their bodies seem to change, and they seem to become something different and better.  That part of their experience that is distinct and separate, the totality of the years before they met, is changed, is redirected toward this moment.  They feel they have reached an identical point of intensity, an ecstasy of rightness that they command in every part, and any recollection that occurs to them takes on this final clarity, whether it be a sweep hand on an airport clock, a snow owl, a Chicago railroad station on Christmas Eve, or anchoring a yawl in a strange harbor while all the stormy coast strangers are blowing their horns for the yacht-club tender, or running a ski trail at that hour when, although the sun is still in the sky, the north face of every mountain lies in the dark."


A few things before we go over this amazing passage from the story "The Bus to St. James."  I had not read Cheever outside of one story in some anthology probably during my undergrad years.  Reading this collection of stories has been one of those rare literary gifts that remains with the reader forever.  Cheever achieves that particularly difficult medium of style that is, or has been, the death valley to so many other readers.  The readability of Cheever's short stories rests in his ability to make a epiphany passage as the one above, and still get description and action of more concrete passages right.  For example, a fairly common passage can take the form of action and description with the simplicity of holiness: "He turned and walked toward the glass doors at the end of the lobby, feeling that faint guilt and bewilderment we experience when we bypass some old friend or classmate who seems threadbare, or sick, or miserable in some other way."  This is from "The Five-Forty-Eight," and it shows both description and action in such a basic way that anyone reading not knowing it is the work of John Cheever might think it is the work of some novice or amateur.  But it is, as I said, in this very simplicity that Cheever's style shines.  The passage from "The Bus to St. James" has been, I believe, unfairly compared to a couple of F. Scott Fitzgerald's passages from "The Great Gatsby" and "Tender is the Night."  It just so happens that the two passages that some critics have gone as far as claiming them to be plagiarized are some of my two most favorite passages by Fitzgerald.  Here is the one from "The Great Gatsby" and I'll let you be the judge: "One of my most vivid memories is of coming back west from prep school and later from college at Christmas time.  Those who went further than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o'clock of a December evening with a few Chicago friends already caught up in the gayeties to bid them a hasty good-bye.  I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This or That's and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances and the matching invitations.... When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly in the air.  We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour before we melted indistinguishably into it again."


I can see the connection with the Christmas theme and mentioning of trains, etc., but a claim of plagiarism seems to me wildly overboard.  The style and craft of John Cheever came about because of his insightful and keen eye to real human emotions.  The ability to write an epiphany as good as Fitzgerald's only proves Cheever's genius.  He is one of those forgotten writers of the late 20th Century, the one a reader discovers, albeit too late, and one is glad to have found this generous mark in the sea of Post-Modern American literature.

Setting and description (isolated from action) is another one of Cheever's major achievements.  In "O City of Broken Dreams," again Cheever achieves the distinct descriptions that puts a reader inside of the story: "When they had finished their supper, they went out into the street.  Mildred-Rose walked between her parents, holding their callused hands.  It was getting dark, and the lights of Broadway answered all their simple prayers.  High in the air were large, brightly lighted pictures of bloody heroes, criminal lovers, monsters, and armed desperadoes.  The names of movies and soft drinks, restaurants and cigarettes were written in a jumble of light, and in the distance they could see the pitiless winter afterglow of the Hudson River."  The reason I am including this passage when writing about description is clear; this is one of those great passages of description that remains with the attentive reader for a long, long time.  The only way I could recommend John Cheever's writing more is if he ran for president and I endorsed him wholeheartedly.

Back to the epiphany passages.  Here's the other passage from Fitzgerald that was mentioned by critics as having "influenced" Cheever a bit too much.  This is from "Tender is the Night."  "They were still in the happiest stage of love.  They were full of brave illusions about each other, tremendous illusions, so that the communion of self with self seemed to be on a plane where no other human relations mattered.  They both seemed to have arrived there with an extraordinary innocence as though a series of pure accidents, so many accidents that at last they were forced to conclude that they were for each other. They had arrived with clean hands, or so it seemed, after no traffic with the merely curious and clandestine."  After teaching "The Great Gatsby" for over 10 years and memorizing most of the book, I found this little gem in "Tender is the Night" so amazing I also decided to memorize it word by word.  If Cheever was influenced, then he was influenced by the very master of the lyrical and poetic.  It is my opinion that no other writer was able to capture the essence of fiction with such facility as F. Scott Fitzgerald.  I've held this view since I first read "The Great Gatsby" and after going on a Fitzgerald rampage and reading everything in he wrote, I had to declare him the undisputed champion of American letters.  Many people consider this choice a sort of too common place one... you know, the people who smirk at you when you say you love Bach, Mozart or Beethoven because they listen to Mahler and Stockhausen.  Back in graduate school, one of my professors asked us at the end of the semester what our favorite book was, when I said "This Side of Paradise," he looked at me like I had just fallen through the ceiling.  But I digress... I really feel that Fitzgerald has a companion up there at the top... John Cheever is a true writer.  If you cannot drop everything and read the entire collection of John Cheever's stories, here's a list of what I consider the best of the bunch.
1--The Season of Divorce
2--Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor
3--The Five-Forty-Eight
4--The Housebreaker of Shady Hill
5--The Sorrows of Gin
6--The Duchess
7--The Scarlet Moving Van
8--The Lowboy

I am afraid that if I keep including more and more I might as well just list them all.  They are all excellent.

Claire Messud's "The Hunters" - A Lyrical Journey

There's something special about Claire Messud's writing and one has to take time and enjoy, as if for the first time, our lips were allowed to touch the rim of a wine glass containing--none other than--a couple of ounces of 1977 Chateauneuf-du-Pape wine. I am not saying it is an acquired taste, not at all, but tackling "The Last Life" in 2001 left me a little confused. I wonder how it was possible for me (a lyrical and romantic language lover) not to like the stylistic prowess of this excellent writer. Messud made me a convert because no matter how much I struggled with "The Last Life," I was more than rewarded in the end. It wasn't until I read "The Emperor's Children" that I realized here was a real literary genius; a contemporary author with the facility of lyrical and descriptive language few others can match today. I read "The Emperor's Children" during my trip to China in 2008. I began reading the book a few days before my trip, and, although I knew I was going to have a busy schedule during my visit, I took the book with me nonetheless. I am glad I did, as I am glad at the fact that the volume got a much deserved recognition in the award circles (although aside from NYT Best Book of the Year, I don't think it was awarded more). I decided that once I got home from my trip, I would hunt down all of her books and read them immediately.

I found a copy of "The Hunters" (a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist) at a used book store and didn't think twice before paying the hefty $16. for it. I didn't get to read it as soon as I wanted to, but now that I've picked it up, I find it a narrative as close to perfection as they come. This is more than lyricism; the descriptive language (a make or break element in what some critics regard as 'wordy' literature) is Messud's main strength in this collection of novellas. The first, "A Simple Tale" is the story of two women, or actually just one. As the narrative begins, we meet Maria Poniatowski, caretaker for one Mrs. Ellington. The plot revolves around Maria's inability to reconcile her past with her present life in Canada. She suffered greatly during the unrest of World War II in Europe, escaping from labor camps, moved from one Displaced Persons camp to another, until she reached Canada by special arrangement. By this time she is married and has a small child. Adapting by working as a cleaning lady for distinguished families, she beings to feel as Canadian as any Canadian around. But the price of this assimilation has an immense cost. Messud's descriptions are a literary tour d'force, allowing the reader to see it all painted inside their mental vision. Here's an example of how an expert writer describes with such small details so as to bring the reader inside the written picture: "She [Maria] went to the McDonalds on Mondays and Wednesdays all day (they had three children--Jack among them, then a boy of nine--who made quite a mess), and to the Ellingtons on Tuesdays until just after lunch. The Pollocks were on Thursdays, once again through till six o'clock (instead of children, Mrs. Pollock kept a pair of small, long-haired white dogs, with smashed noses and Oriental eyes, who shed indiscriminately and whose chronic, vindictive ill temper created a great need for cleaning: when crossed, they vomited and peed and pooped in tantrum (and occasionally in tandem), and when left alone scratched irritably at door frames, piano legs and upholstery, almost as if they were cats). Fridays, Maria saved for Mrs. Mallow, a genuine half-day--home by 2 PM--spent largely, it seemed, in keeping the old woman company, as she kept her house pristine of her own accord." There it seems to be two ways of writing this passage. For example, if this was a simple schedule that Maria kept week after week, why not detail it and move on? A master describer (such as Messud) is not so easily satisfied. Here we see the addition of information in parenthesis appear like a private detective log. I can't get over the little dogs and the parenthesis within the parenthesis. Visually, descriptive information in parenthesis reinforces the detail of the information being offered. This is the type of small detail that tells a story all of its own; imagine, a story within a story but without having to include a separate story. Let the details do the storytelling. As diminutive as this passage appears, I wanted to quote this one in particular because it really shows talent beyond comprehension.

In the second novella, "The Hunters," Messud tells the story of a sort of academic character whose main attraction was spying on his neighbors. It isn't so much that the story displays a sense of macabre or weirdness; on the contrary, the flow of this little masterpiece depends on much of what I wrote about "A Simple Tale," but in addition to masterful description, Messud also displays she is a force to reckon with when writing dialogue.

This little volume is not a new one (first published in 2001), but I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning how to write description, or simply to a reader who wants to get lost in thought provoking environments of the descriptive mind.