Author: John Cheever
Profile: John William Cheever better known as John Cheever was an American short story writer and novelist. He was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, U.S. and died in Ossining, New York, U.S. He is called ‘the Chekhov of the suburbs, sometimes. Most of his fiction work is set in the Westchester suburbs, in the Upper Side of Manhattan, old villages in New England based on different South Shore towns around Quincy Massachusetts, Italy and Rome, especially.
The duality of human nature is his main theme, at times, dramatized as a conflict between two characters which are often brothers embodying aspects of both spirit and flesh and light and dark. His theme also includes human nature duality many a times dramatized as the incongruity between the character’s inner corruption and decent social persona.
Writing style: John Cheever’s genre was fiction and short story. Nostalgia for a vanishing way of life is also expressed in a number of his works characterized by an intense sense of community and abiding by cultural traditions as opposed to the modern suburbia’s estranging nomadism.
Published Texts:
Works
Novels
1957 – The Wapshot Chronicle
1964 – The Wapshot Scandal
1969 – Bullet Park
1977 – Falconer
1982 – Oh What a Paradise It Seems
Short Story Collections
1953 – The Enormous Radio and Other Stories
1958 – The Housebreaker of Shady Hill and Other Stories
1961 – Some People, Places and Things That Will Not Appear In My Next Novel
1964 – The Brigadier and the Golf Widow
1973 – The World of Apples
1978 – The Stories of John Cheever
1994 – Fall River and Other Uncollected Stories
Collections
1988 – The Letters of John cheever
1991 – The Journals of John Cheever
2009 – Collected Stories & Other Writings
2009 – Complete Novels
Juvenilia
1943 – The Way Some People Live
Awards and Acknowledgements:
1979 – Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
1979 – National Book Critics Circle Award
1981 – National Book Award (paperback edition of The Stories of John Cheever)
1982 – National Medal for Literature awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters
John Cheever’s work has been included in the Library of America
