I haven't bothered you with Cheever for a while.
Can you believe I am still plowing my way through his words? 700 pages of collected short stories that have enhanced my life so beautifully.
I haven't bothered you with John Cheever for a while so here goes:
From "Percy":
"Oh, I'm so happy," she said. "Oh, how wonderful and rich and strange life can be when you stop playing out the roles that your parents and their friends wrote out for you. I feel like an explorer."
These words were spoken by a bored housewife who suddenly decided to audition for a role in a nude play and was chosen. The play went on to become a smashing success.
This is the kind of radical change we all need in our lives.
Cheever throws in so many amusing lines. In "Artemis, The Honest Well Digger" he's describing the noisy drill rig: "It made a terrible racket and there had been two complaints. One was from a very nervous housewife and the other from a homosexual poet who said that the concussion was ruining his meter."
His observations on human nature are dead on. From the same story he is talking about neighborhoods that display a lot of American flags: "This patriotic zeal cannot be traced back to the fact that these people have received an abundance of their country's riches. They haven't. These are hard working people who lead frugal lives and worry about money. People who have profited splendidly from our economy seem to have no such passion for the Stars and Stripes."
Cheever is awesome in so many ways and on so many levels that he blows the mind.
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