John William Cheever (May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982) was an American novelist and short story writer. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs". His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the Westchester suburbs, old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy, Massachusetts, where he was born, and Italy, especially Rome. He is "now recognized as one of the most important short fiction writers of the 20th century." While Cheever is perhaps best remembered for his short stories (including "The Enormous Radio", "Goodbye, My Brother", "The Five-Forty-Eight", "The Country Husband", and "The Swimmer"), he also wrote four novels, comprising The Wapshot Chronicle (National Book Award, 1958),The Wapshot Scandal (William Dean Howells Medal, 1965), Bullet Park (1969), Falconer (1977) and a novella Oh What a Paradise It Seems (1982).His main themes include the duality of human nature: sometimes dramatized as the disparity between a character's decorous social persona and inner corruption, and sometimes as a conflict between two characters (often brothers) who embody the salient aspects of both – light and dark, flesh and spirit. Many of his works also express a nostalgia for a vanishing way of life (as evoked by the mythical St. Botolphs in the Wapshot novels), characterized by abiding cultural traditions and a profound sense of community, as opposed to the alienating nomadism of modern suburbia.A compilation of his short stories, The Stories of John Cheever, won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and a National Book Critics Circle Award, and its first paperback edition won a 1981 National Book Award.On April 27, 1982, six weeks before his death, Cheever was awarded the National Medal for Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been included in the Library of America.
May 27, 1912, Quincy, Massachusetts, United States
Died
June 18, 1982, Ossining, New York, United States
Place Of Birth
Quincy, Massachusetts, USA
Profession
Writer, Actor
Children
Susan Cheever, Benjamin Cheever
Movies
The Swimmer, The Sorrows of Gin, O Youth and Beauty!, The Five Forty-Eight
Star Sign
Gemini
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Quote
1
One has an impulse to bring glad tidings to someone. My sense of literature is a sense of giving, not a diminishment. I know of almost no pleasure greater than having a piece of fiction draw together disparate incidents so that they relate to one another and confirms that feeling that life itself is is a creative process.
2
Some years ago I said that I felt like a runner, concerned with my wind, my strength and the surrounding scenery, but concerned not at all with where I had been . . . it is still what I feel.
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Fact
1
His wife Mary Winternitz, born May 4 1918, died April 7 2014. She was also an author "The Need for Chocolate and Other Poems," and editor. Their daughter Susan Cheever wrote her own memoirs "Treetops".
2
Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume One, 1981-1985, pages 149-152. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998.
3
Won a Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for "The Stories of John Cheever."
4
Won a National Book Award in 1958 for his novel "The Wapshot Chronicle."
5
Suffered from "gephyrophobia" (fear of crossing bridges)
Writer
Title
Year
Status
Character
Parc
2008
novel "Les lumières de Bullet Park"
The Enormous Radio
2006
Short original story
Merry Christmas
1999
Short story
Tales from the Darkside
1987
TV Series story - 1 episode
American Playhouse
1982
TV Series by - 1 episode
Kinder
1981
TV Movie story
3 by Cheever
TV Mini-Series based on the story by - 2 episodes, 1979 based on a story by - 1 episode, 1979
$1.5 Million
