The Letters of John Cheever

The Letters of John Cheever

Summary

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JAY MCINERNEY

John Cheever's letters offer a tantalising glimpse into the life of a writer. They include correspondence with his contemporaries, such as Philip Roth, John Updike and Saul Bellow, his days as a young, aspiring writer and his battles with bisexuality and alcoholism. In this collection, edited by his son Benjamin Cheever, we see how his private correspondence was as extraordinary as his published works.

Reviews

  • He lies, in American writing, somewhere between Scott Fitzgerald and John Updike
    Malcolm Bradbury

About the author

John Cheever

John Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912, and he went to school at Thayer Academy in South Braintree. He is the author of seven collections of stories and five novels. His first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, won the 1958 National Book Award. In 1965 he received the Howells Medal for Fiction from the National Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1978 he won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer prize. Shortly before his death in 1982 he was awarded the National Medal for Literature.
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