He published a novel, “The Wapshot Chronicle,” in 1957 to stellar reviews it went on to win the National Book Award. Cheever remained anchored in a particularly hermetic version of suburbia. Other writers of Cheever’s era - Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth - wrestled with the political and social issues of the time. There were blackouts and days of the week he totally forgot. He thought they were revolting.”Ĭheever could gulp hard liquor until the late evening and beyond. “The paranoia he lived with daily was titanic,” says Bailey. They contacted Bailey, who struck them as uniquely qualified: He had written a biography of Richard Yates, another American writer who came out of the 1950s swimming in a sea of gin and brilliance. In time, Cheever’s three children came to desire another biographical look at their father. The acclaimed writer’s work stood to be overwhelmed by the publicized demons. In the decade after Cheever’s death in 1982, an avalanche of words came tumbling out: a memoir by his daughter, Susan (“Home Before Dark”) a biography by Scott Donaldson that upset his children and the publication of a portion of Cheever’s own journals and letters that opened anew the writer’s bisexuality, dark moods and battles with the bottle. And it was assuaged only by the next drink.” He lived with the terror that he thought his children would discover his sexual life. “Cheever’s comfort zone was his imagination, this alternative universe where his fiction came from,” says Blake Bailey, author of the new biography “Cheever: A Life.” “When the morning was over, when he had finished his writing, he had to enter the real world. There was infidelity, heartbreak, alcoholism, a roiling and constant sexual identity crisis, and a profound feeling of insecurity. But Cheever’s personal life - like his stories - had peculiar traps and hidden pain. They swat at tennis balls.Ĭheever’s literary reputation was based on his short stories - “The Enormous Radio,” “The Summer Farmer,” “The Swimmer” - set in the suburban enclaves of the Eastern Seaboard in the 1950s.

They swim outdoors in the sweet summertime. The men in their Brooks Brothers suits catch commuter trains and make appearances at cocktail parties with their perfumed women.

It’s a world of well-scrubbed children skipping on manicured lawns. WASHINGTON - The land of John Cheever lies in the suburbs of another time.

Cheever by blake bailey