John cheever the country husband

John Cheever’s Biography

John William Cheever is one of the famous American short story writers. He was born on 27th May 1912 in Quincy, Massachusetts, United States. He was a novelist and a short story writer. Some of his famous short stories include: “The Swimmer,” “Goodbye My Brother,” “The Five Forty-Eight,” and “The Country Husband.” The novels he wrote include: “The Wapshot Chronicle,” “The Wapshot Scandal,” and “Bullet Park.” He was awarded for the three novels. His attributes included duality for human nature exercised in his socialization with other people in society (Brown 62). In his early life, he started his lower education at Thayer Academy, and although he went through many challenges, he survived and joined Quincy High in 1926. Most of John Cheever’s stories depict real-life situations. The stories cover emotional and physical world aspects.

John William Cheever was the second child of his family. His father was a shoe salesman, and therefore he was able to give a stable life to his children. Conditions of family business suffered during the Great Depression. These financial conditions caused a separation of his parents, which affected the personality of Cheever. Those events disturbed him mentally and emotionally and shaped an intense personality. William Cheever survived a period of warring that affected his family, personal, and professional life. After struggles he indulged in alcohol, became an alcoholic, and his status in society was impacted due to this (Donaldson 33).

The real-life stories in the writer’s content cover emotional and real-world aspects. His father lost his job, and that forced them to survive under the financial crisis. His hard situation inspired him to write his book The Way Some People Live when the situation was most painful and critical. His father, Fredrick Cheever, had invested in the crash of Kreuger and Toll company, but unfortunately, the company closed down. His parents separated while he was not stable. Because of that, he got forced to sell an apartment and later wrote an application letter to Elizabeth Ames, short story writer, at the Yaddo, artists’ community. He had an idea to leave the city to head for acting at Yaddo. The hard life situation influenced John Cheever to begin writing the short stories, having passion for writing, and narrating the short essays (Doosti 24). After getting his job, he stayed away from his parents but kept visiting them. John Cheever sold his story, “Buffalo,” for $45 to Katherine White of the New Yorker. Perseverance in these hard times inspired him to write the short stories; even he sold some of his stories to other people just in need of getting some extra cash to sustain his needs. From his early writings, it noticed that he did not write so many books in his early life for people to read all over the globe. During his mid-career, John Cheever wrote his first commercial novel “Bullet Park.” His second book was The Enormous Radio. It is said that John was a real genius, and those who have gone through his books can testify.

Real-life situations experienced by John Cheever inspired him to develop stories. In his short story “Goodbye My Brother,” it adjourns the life situations where brothers kill themselves. The writer hits his brother’s head and tells him goodbye as the brother dies. In another book, The Country Husband, the writer mentions a norm that he was on the journey back home and was involved in a plane crash, and when he goes home, the family was not mindful of him. In real life, the writer had issues with his wife and kids and it seems they had no feelings in one another. The writer experienced family problems more from his wife and his parents, who stayed far from his home. In another book titled The Swimmer, the writer was having fun in the afternoon at the swimming pool and ties the string at the end of the lake, but all of a sudden, the chain stretches out the valleys and reaches the home of the person swimming (Doosti 22). Quite impressively, this shows that whatever a person does outside his/her home will be known to his wife or her husband. Most of his work has a hidden meaning, where the significance lies in real-life situations.

He added many novels during that middle period. It ended in 1966, where he wrote his last book, Needless Darkness. In his later life, he had gained fame and asked to review the front page of The New York Times Book Review. John Cheever had a very complicated marriage as he was never at peace with his wife. Some people describe it that John was gay, homosexual, or bisexual, which made it hard for an understanding between him and his wife (Somerville and Speer 119). He had two kids Susan and Benjamin, who described their parents’ relationship as having no feelings for the other partner. After so much contribution to the narration industry, in 1981, John Cheever was hospitalized for having complications in the right lung. He died of lung cancer in 1982 and flags were lowered for ten days to mourn the fallen hero. Even after John Cheever’s death, his wife entered into a contract in 1987 with Chicago Academy to publish all the short stories that had not been collected. The children of John Cheever, Susan and Benjamin, are also writers who have followed their long-gone dad’s footsteps.

The writer lived in America during the world war periods. There was World War 1 that began in 1914 to 1918, and the writer faced a lot of challenges when his father lost his job during that same period. The Second World War started in 1938 to 1945 caused chaos in the whole world. John Cheever was creative because he created stories using the incidences and happenings in the war. An original short story writer uses the incidents in the surrounding. For example, John Cheever mostly utilized the events and activities with which he interacted (Salo 10). During the time the writer lived, the USA was at the forefront leading the world wars having the most potent machinery and could fight anybody either on the ground, air, or in the seas. Some of the writers who lived from 1910 to 1982 produced novels and short stories in the USA for its fighting spirit, competency, and hard work.

The writer lived between 1912 and 1982, and this period had so many challenges that motivated the writer to be creative. Some events limited the writer in his work. During that period, there was low technology and the writer faced challenges in typing his work and distributing his work all over the globe. The same period was when the first and second world wars took place. The writer had challenges during the World Wars, but on the other hand, that made the writer look for events in such a crisis to develop stories. For example, most of John Cheever’s short stories were written during main events in the world or the environment around him. In the current century, writers are experiencing events in the world. For example, during this period of COVID19, writers are experiencing a lot both positively and negatively. On the positive side of the story, writers have become creative and built up stories around this pandemic (Haas 11). Stories developed include the coronavirus’s nature, the impact of COVID19 on human lives, the way coronavirus has terrorized the global economy, and daily news updates on the pandemic. The negative side of this pandemic to writers is that writers have been limited to movements in search of information to write. The exploration and navigation of writers have been minimized.

Most of John Cheever’s stories have been reviewed and noticed that they rely on the writer’s personal life. Most of these books are linked with John’s bisexuality and alcoholism. It is noted that it was unethical to read the writer’s biography alongside his work written. For example, during the time of John Cheever, he used to engage in violence with his wife but never wrote something to cover it up. People should not look at John Cheever’s family scam who violated his family, but readers and researchers should concentrate on the main points in the work done by John Cheever (Solan 310). The stories written by John Cheever reflect an impact on what the writer intended to say. For example, on the issue of alcoholism, the writer talks much about how his father behaves after being drunk. Behind it, people should be responsible and meet their family needs despite their drunkenness. It noticed that the writer’s content has an impact on what he was doing.

Current short story writers have also emulated and are putting real-life matters into writing, and this is educative. The readers have to interpret to themselves the inner meaning of a story themselves. For example, in his book The Enormous radio, the writer tries to explain the reality in domestic violence. It insinuates that unethical behaviors of somebody create local problems internal fights (Gale 21). The writer involved stigmatized behaviors such as bisexuality, homosexuality, and gay, which brought rankles in the family between him and his wife. The writer had relationships with both men and women. The hidden meaning in his book The Enormous Radio is the writer’s wife’s noises since there was no understanding and no feelings between them. The wife used to frustrate the writer by making noise whenever they argued. This noise is the one referred to as The Enormous Radio.

Many people have researched to know more about the short story writer and narrator, John Cheever. Some articles and scholars who have studied the ways and meaning of stories narrated include the following: an article “On Damned In a Fair Life of Cheever” in “The Swimmer” by Stanley Kozikowski. It studies the real life of John Cheever, including his immoral behaviors that led to domestic violence in his family. Stanley explores the story narrated by Cheever on “The swimmer.” He also complements the writer’s work as being creative and insults those who criticize the work of John Cheever. Another article is “John Cheever’s Shady Hill, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Suburbs” by Wilhite Keith. Keith studies the possibility that there should be no criticism on anybody’s work more so on “The Swimmer’s” short story. Keith was suggesting that people should complement the work of Cheever in the story of “The swimmer.” He also claims in his study that people should appreciate the work of all writers. On an article called “Toward the End; Closure and Structure in The American Short Story” by John Gerlach, the writer suggests that the evil-doing in the society, for example, the story on “Goodbye my Brother” shows the end of somebody’s life. In the story written by John Cheever, the writer hits his brother’s head and tells him goodbye as his brother dies. Another article is “Gay Histories, and Cultures,” by George E. Haggerty, John Beynon, and Douglas Eisner. It explains the origin of gay and why John Cheever liked having relationships with fellow men. The article also mentions some of the gays’ cultures and points the example of Cheever as well.

To summarize, John William Cheever is famous because of his writings, mainly short stories. Themes and writing topics of Cheever are motivating and based on real-life experiences. He was born in Massachusetts, the United States, in 1912. Numerous famous short stories add to his fame. His father was a shoe salesman who successfully gave a stable life to his children, but the Great Depression’s effects were worse on his life. Separation of his parents and financial crisis also serves as some extreme events of his life. All these problems collectively motivate Cheever to write down his life experiences. Along with the Great Depression, the writer also survived World War periods in time (Donaldson 29). Cheever wrote down his war experiences in his words and by using emotional aspects in his stories and novels, he gained much importance and appreciation. Different writing works that have analyzed show the creativity and deepness of Cheever’s thoughts. Various writers and scholars criticize works of Cheever and events of his real-life. His writings genres were important for old times as well as for the contemporary world too.

Works Cited Brown, Adrienne. “We Wear the White Mask: John Cheever Writes Race.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 64.1 (2018): 52-78. Donaldson, Scott. John Cheever: A Biography. Open Road Media, 2016. Doosti, Farzaneh. “Topoanalysis as Narrative Technique in John Cheever’s Architecture of Short Fiction.” Studies in Literature and Language 15.5 (2017): 21-26. Gale, Cengage Learning. A Study Guide for John Cheever’s “The Country Husband.” Gale, Cengage Learning, 2016. Haas, Robert. “John Cheever’s Story” The Geometry of Love.” Journal of Humanistic Mathematics 10.1 (2020): 4-21. Salo, Aino-Liina. “ORDINARY MASCULINITIES IN JOHN CHEEVER’S “THE ENORMOUS RADIO” AND “THE FOURTH ALARM.” (2019). Solan, Yair. “Housebreakers and Peeping Toms: Voyeurism in John Cheever’s Early Suburban Stories.” Journal of the Short Story in English. Les Cahiers de la nouvelle 66 (2016): 303-321. Somerville, Kristine, and Speer Morgan. “Troop Train: The Lost army Story of John Cheever.” The Missouri Review 39.3 (2016): 115-123.