John Cheever by Scott Donaldson

Author:Scott Donaldson [Donaldson Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504029957
Publisher: Open Road Distribution
Published: 2016-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

RUSSIA

1964

1964 was in almost every respect an extremely important year in Cheever’s life. He published not one but two books: The Wapshot Scandal in January and The Brigadier and the Golf Widow in October. In March he appeared on the cover of Time magazine, for the first time emerging as a public figure. The surge of accomplishment carried him on trips to Italy and Hollywood and Russia. In Hollywood he met and fell half in love with actress Hope Lange. In Russia he got to know John Updike and conceived an admiration for a people who—it seemed to him—valued their artists far more than most Americans.

The Time cover story acquainted Cheever with some of the costs of fame. To begin with, he resisted the idea. “I don’t want the story,” he said. “We didn’t ask,” the Time people said. Still the project might have foundered except for the involvement of Time-Life editor Alwyn Lee, a gregarious and witty Australian who was one of Cheever’s closest friends and drinking companions. Cheever felt he could trust Lee, but he was not prepared for the persistence of the magazine’s editors, researchers, and photographers. With characteristic Yankee diffidence, he refused to unburden himself on intimate matters. His technique with interviewers, during those years, was to try to get them drunk, or failing that, to involve them in some form of exercise that made question-asking and note-taking virtually impossible. “Cheever doesn’t really like to talk about himself but about other people,” Time correspondent Andrew Kopkind reported. “When I would say, ‘Now we really must talk about you,’ he would leap up and say something like ‘Let’s go tobogganing.’” In fact, Lee and another Time staffer did accompany Cheever and his son Ben on a ski trip to Stowe, where they followed him around the trails. Meanwhile, another editor had been at work “asking indecent questions” in Ossining. Altogether it was far from a pleasant experience.

Faced with Cheever’s uncommunicativeness, the magazine’s reporters widened their contacts with family, friends, neighbors—anyone who could claim acquaintance with the author. They promised to leave his brother, Fred, alone, something Cheever insisted upon, and then broke the promise. Clearly, everyone was fair game. One reporter came to see the Robert Penn Warrens in Connecticut. “I remember that son of a bitch,” Warren said. “He was after smut.” Another tracked down Fax Ogden in Delaware. “What have you done wrong?” Ogden inquired of Cheever by telephone. “Someone from Time magazine is coming to ask questions about you in half an hour.”

The legman in Westchester concentrated on Cheever’s drinking and sex life. One neighbor was fairly bursting with gossip when—as she thought—this Time man finally came to call. She started in immediately with tales of martinis at noon, nude swimming, and other morally reprehensible behavior. When she paused for breath, the man said, “Lady, I’m your Fuller Brush representative.” Or so, at least, Cheever claimed in reconstructing the story.

It was not only shyness that made him distrust public recognition. He felt strongly that

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