LE MEH, literary division.
I realize that with a new and exhaustive biography of John Cheever -- who passed in 1982 -- just out (Blake Bailey's Cheever: A Life), there's going to be a flurry of book reviews, reconsiderations of Cheever's career, and interviews with Bailey flogging his book.
And the flurry continues unabated: from the feature in the 1 March issue of The New York Times Sunday Magazine (Charles McGrath's "The First Suburbanite") to James Wolcott's column in the April 2009 issue of Vanity Fair ("It's Still Cheever Country") to an interview with Bailey on the second hour of the call-in NPR radio programme The Diane Riehm Show (Tuesday, 10 March; you can listen to it here) to the review essay in the April 2009 issue of Harper's Magazine, newly arrived in my mailbox (Jonathan Dee's "Suburban Ghetto: John Cheever, Misread and Misunderstood"; unfortunately, Harper's doesn't allow the general public access to its articles online), I am well and truly Cheevered-out. Enough!
Yes, "The Swimmer" was very good, possibly even great; yes, I read one of Cheever's novels, Bullet Park, twenty-odd years ago, but demmed if I remember anything about it. (I've since learned, thanks to the aforementioned flurry, that Cheever did not excel in the novel format. Big surprise.)
Since I've thus far avoided reading anything by his putatively friendly rival, John Updike (the "putatively" here is directed at Cheever, who apparently was quite the hissing bitch towards Updike, behind Updike's back -- in the best literary tradition), beyond the short story "A&P," and have no burning desire to remedy this oversight in next several decades, I think its safe to say that my fascination for upper-middle class suburban ennui spun into literary -- well, bronze, if not gold -- is at a level so low as to be nearly wholly evaporated.
(Another strike against Updike, to my mind, is the slap-fest that he and Gore Vidal had. I've read -- and liked -- quite a lot of Vidal. Can't say that the subject matter of Updike's novels -- or, more precisely, his treatment of same -- grabs me. [See: Terrorist, The Witches of Eastwick.] But that's another rant.)
And the flurry continues unabated: from the feature in the 1 March issue of The New York Times Sunday Magazine (Charles McGrath's "The First Suburbanite") to James Wolcott's column in the April 2009 issue of Vanity Fair ("It's Still Cheever Country") to an interview with Bailey on the second hour of the call-in NPR radio programme The Diane Riehm Show (Tuesday, 10 March; you can listen to it here) to the review essay in the April 2009 issue of Harper's Magazine, newly arrived in my mailbox (Jonathan Dee's "Suburban Ghetto: John Cheever, Misread and Misunderstood"; unfortunately, Harper's doesn't allow the general public access to its articles online), I am well and truly Cheevered-out. Enough!
Yes, "The Swimmer" was very good, possibly even great; yes, I read one of Cheever's novels, Bullet Park, twenty-odd years ago, but demmed if I remember anything about it. (I've since learned, thanks to the aforementioned flurry, that Cheever did not excel in the novel format. Big surprise.)
Since I've thus far avoided reading anything by his putatively friendly rival, John Updike (the "putatively" here is directed at Cheever, who apparently was quite the hissing bitch towards Updike, behind Updike's back -- in the best literary tradition), beyond the short story "A&P," and have no burning desire to remedy this oversight in next several decades, I think its safe to say that my fascination for upper-middle class suburban ennui spun into literary -- well, bronze, if not gold -- is at a level so low as to be nearly wholly evaporated.
(Another strike against Updike, to my mind, is the slap-fest that he and Gore Vidal had. I've read -- and liked -- quite a lot of Vidal. Can't say that the subject matter of Updike's novels -- or, more precisely, his treatment of same -- grabs me. [See: Terrorist, The Witches of Eastwick.] But that's another rant.)