John Cheever

American novelist and short story writer (1912-1982)

Person · Open Library

Born: May 27 1912
Died: June 18 1982
Works: 172

Top works

The Best American Short Stories 1973
Short Stories from the New Yorker
The brigadier and the golf widow
The Britannica Library of Great American Writing - Volume II
Selected American Short Stories (II)

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Group
Origin: Nantes

Discography

Ensimismado2022

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 107
Total plays: 1,409

John William Cheever (May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982) was an American novelist and short story writer. 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. <a href="https://www.last.fm/musi

via Last.fm · John Cheever

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

Generalized Gradient Approximation Made Simple
· 1996 · cited 200,574x
Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold
· 2021 · cited 41,691x
Gene Ontology: tool for the unification of biology
· 2000 · cited 36,351x
Matplotlib: A 2D Graphics Environment
· 2007 · cited 34,324x
The MOS 36-ltem Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36)
· 1992 · cited 28,849x

via Crossref · CC0

Quotes

“The novel remains for me one of the few forms where we can record man’s complexity and the strength and decency of his longings. Where we can describe, step by step, minute by minute, our not altogether unpleasant struggle to put ourselves into a viable and devout relationship to our beloved and mistaken world.”
“He was a tall man with an astonishing and somehow elegant curvature of the spine, formed by an enlarged lower abdomen, which he carried in a stately and contented way, as if it contained money and securities.”
“Homesickness is nothing … Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time.”
“Art is the triumph over chaos.”
“I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.”
“The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one’s life and discover one’s usefulness.”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Key facts

Born: John William Cheever , ( 1912-05-27 ) May 27, 1912, Quincy, Massachusetts , U.S.
Died: June 18, 1982 (1982-06-18) (aged 70), Ossining, New York , U.S.
Occupation: Writer novelist
Period: 20th century
Genre: Short story , fiction
Literary movement: Symbolism
Years active: 1935–1982
Notable works: " The Enormous Radio " " The Five-Forty-Eight " The Wapshot Chronicle " The Swimmer " The Wapshot Scandal Bullet Park Falconer Oh What a Paradise It Seems
Notable awards: Pulitzer Prize (1979), National Book Critics Circle Award (1981)
Spouse: Mary Winternitz ( married</span>"}]]}'>m. 1941 )
Children: Susan Benjamin Federico

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Image: Johncheever.jpg

Show 5 more facts

date of birth: 1912-05-27
date of death: 1982-06-18
birth name: John William Cheever
name in native language: John Cheever
Commons category: John Cheever

Sources (3)

via Wikidata · CC0

~18 min read

Article

John William Cheever (May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982) was an American short story writer and novelist. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs". His fiction is mostly set on 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. His short stories included "The Enormous Radio", "Goodbye, My Brother", "The Five-Forty-Eight", "The Country Husband", and "The Swimmer", and he also wrote five novels: 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.