Product Description

Here are twelve magnificent stories in which John Cheever celebrates -- with unequaled grace and tenderness -- the deepest feelings we have.

As Cheever writes in his preface, 'These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat.'

John Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912. 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 The Stories of John Cheever 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 from the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Benjamin Cheever is the author of The Plagiarist, The Parisian and Famous after Death.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #632292 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06
• Released on: 2003-06-17
• Formats: Audiobook, Unabridged
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Audio CD

From Publishers Weekly
This remarkable treat for lovers of audio books is as tastefully and elegantly packaged as it is performed by a first-class lineup of narrators. The tone is set by Benjamin Cheever, who reads his father's preface to The Stories of John Cheever. The 12 selections here are culled from that landmark volume, and, while there is bound to be disappointment that one story or another was not selected, there is nothing disappointing about any of the readings offered here. In fact, they are exceptional, from Streep's perfect portrayal of marital tension and denial in "The Enormous Radio" to Peter Gallagher's zestful take on "O Youth and Beauty!" and Blythe Danner's spot-on tone for the pathetically sad ending of "The Chaste Clarissa." And while it may seem that no one's voice is better suited to read these tales of upper-class strivings and failings than that of Plimpton, it is really Cheever's archived readings that steal the show. His performance of "The Swimmer," in particular, boldly displays his contempt for the country-club set, while still evoking readers' sympathy for the hapless main character. The inclusion of Cheever's readings makes for a deeply personal, resonant finale to a truly superb production.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
John Cheever, best known for his short stories dealing with upper-middle-class suburban life, was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912. Cheever published his first short story at the age of seventeen. He was the recipient of a 1951 Guggenheim Fellowship and winner of a National Book Award for The Wapshot Chronicle in 1958, the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Stories of John Cheever, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and an American Book Award. He died in 1982, at the age of seventy.

From AudioFile
If you've ever wished the characters in an Edward Hopper painting would come alive and tell their stories, then don't miss this luminous recording. In his celebrated stories, John Cheever' captures a burgeoning New York City in the '40s and '50s and makes mythic the suburban world of Westchester County in the '60s and '70s with such characters as "The Swimmer," a man whose answer to a hangover is to swim across the county--swimming pool by swimming pool. An incomparable set of narrators delivers the stories with perfection. The production is elegantly bracketed by Cheevers: son Ben narrates the introduction, and John Cheever himself delivers the final two stories--at a breakneck clip but with the intelligence and vitality that shine throughout his work. E.K.D. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

Tough Material in First Class Performance
Let nobody fool you with adjectives about Cheever's fictional voice -- elegant, supple, crisp, resonant. Yeah it's all that, but if you have not encountered him before, you will be thinking in other terms -- unsparing, discomforting, perhaps even unforgiving. But listen to all these discs through, arranged from early stories to later -- through a variety of fine professional voices ending with Cheever's own refined rasp, for the last two stories -- before you make any judgments. It ought to take you several sittings; one story at a time may be all you can take. But by the end, you will likely want to eventually hear them all through, again.

Cheever, along with the somewhat younger John Updike, was thought of as the basic social chronicler in the short story form of his generation in post World War 2 years. That is somewhat misleading; the background for both is Protestant, or post-Protestant, east coast, upper middle class and aspiring higher. The two of them became known for what was called "the New Yorker story," which in itself will tell you a lot.

In Dante's Hell upon entry, a demon named Minos winds his tail the precise number of times to figure exactly how deep to drop you down to your earned level of damnation. A similar process happens very early in a Cheever story. A character, or the narrative voice itself, pitilessly fixes all others, in their sphere of vision, based upon the smallest nuance of voice inflection, diction, style of car or dwelling, choice of school, favorite drink, clothes or shoes. They are thus immediately damned in this world, and in a Hell particularly Calvinist (according to Cheever himself), without appeal except, perhaps, eventually to the reader's sympathy. Which some will gain, some not. In any event, they will still be wearing the same shoes at the end, of which fact Cheever will be certain to remind you.

In the early pieces, Cheever is a little uncertain on paper, a little jokey or cute but always entertaining and fascinating. Then he cools out real fast, and delivers stuff as good as the best of his predecessors in this genre, John O'Hara and F. Scott Fitzgerald. From then on his batting average is about as consistent as Lou Gehrig, too; the human toll of his endeavor is discreetly kept from the reader but apparently sounded in his personal life. State of the art performances by a catlike Merle Streep, the great Ed Hermann, serious Peter Gallagher, jovial George Plimpton, witty Blythe Danner move you soundly and at an even pace through all this material. But for all the pain in his voice, it is tremendously beatutiful when Cheever's own voice finally breaks surface on the last disc, in a clearly angry yet unbelievably controlled fit of passion, reading The Death of Justina -- a full frontal assault on modern corporate nonsense and social pretense. I certainly had never heard anything like it. Finally, a shade or two cooled off, Cheever closes the set with a reading of his mythic standard, The Swimmer.

Not for the feint-hearted, this mature set is as good as audio books get.

Great stories beautifully read
This audio-set collects 12 of Cheever's finest stories and recruits wonderful readers, including Meryl Streep, who is fantastic. Cheever has a gift for ripping the cover off of everyday life and getting at the emotional core. Many of the stories pack an emotional punch at the end as the reader gains a sudden and almost blinding insight into the emotional core of the lead character. The first and last stories of the collection ("The Enormous Radio" and "The Swimmer") are especially good at this. Some stories are funny -- like the "Chaste Clarissa" -- but most would have to be classified as "downers." Perhaps it is this dark edge that keeps Cheever from achieving some of the heights that Chekhov scaled.

Still, Cheever is at the top of the hierarchy of great American short story writers, along with writers like Sherwood Anderson and Hemingway. He's a little bit better at the short-story craft that any of his contemporaries.

George Plimpton is probably the only reader in this collection who will grate on you. Everyone else is absolutely great. My hats off to the publisher.