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Essential Cheever
One Great Author. One Great CD.
Here are two magnificent stories in which John Cheever celebrates—with unequaled grace and tenderness—the deepest feelings we have.
As Cheever wrote, "These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat."
Here are two magnificent stories in which John Cheever celebrates—with unequaled grace and tenderness—the deepest feelings we have.
As Cheever wrote, "These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat."
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
416 pages, Audio CD
First published July 25, 2006
16 people want to read
About the author
John Cheever
297 books1,090 followersJohn Cheever was an American novelist and short story writer, sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs" or "the Ovid of Ossining." His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the suburbs of Westchester, New York, and old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy, Massachusetts, where he was born.
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, characterized by abiding cultural traditions and a profound sense of community, as opposed to the alienating nomadism of modern suburbia.
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, characterized by abiding cultural traditions and a profound sense of community, as opposed to the alienating nomadism of modern suburbia.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
February 20, 2025
This contains two (2) short stories: The Swimmer and The Enormous Radio. I checked this out from the library just to read The Swimmer but found it to be just ok. On the other hand, I found The Enormous Radio to be very intriguing and suspenseful. Think of an audio version of Hitchcock’s Rear Window.
November 27, 2025
Memory Jogger: Essential Cheever
1. Core Concepts
Cheever’s two stories examine suburban America at midcentury, focusing on how comfort, technology, and leisure conceal inner disorder. In The Enormous Radio, a consumer gadget meant for entertainment becomes a portal into neighbors’ private turmoil, revealing how fragile middle-class respectability truly is. In The Swimmer, an affluent man’s imaginative “journey” through backyard pools exposes the emptiness beneath suburban ritual and self-mythology. Both stories interrogate the gap between public composure and private collapse.
2. Quick Reference Takeaways
• Technology and leisure act as catalysts that expose, rather than solve, hidden tensions.
• Suburban respectability depends on collective performance reinforced by alcohol and social rituals.
• Cheever uses everyday objects—the radio, the pool—as symbolic maps of moral and emotional decline.
• Journeys in Cheever are psychological autopsies disguised as ordinary events.
3. Key Quotes
“The new radio stood among her intimate possessions like an aggressive intruder.”
“She was struck at once with the physical ugliness of the large gumwood cabinet.”
“The radio seemed to be talking to her alone, filling her with a strange uneasiness.”
“He was determinedly original, and had a vague and modest idea of himself as a legendary figure.”
“He breathed deeply as if he could gulp into his lungs the heat of the sun and the intensity of his pleasure.”
“The place was locked, dark, and he knew suddenly, pitifully, that something was terribly wrong.”
4. Key Figures / Case Studies
Jim and Irene Westcott exemplify a postwar couple seeking security through consumer goods; the radio disrupts that security by broadcasting the private breakdowns of those around them. Their reactions map the fragility of suburban identity and the moral unease beneath polished domestic life. Neddy Merrill personifies the suburban self-mythologizer, a man constructing a heroic narrative from cocktail-party culture and leisure. His progress along the “Lucinda River” becomes a chronicle of denial, fading social status, and the erosion of identity.
5. Central Metaphors & Symbols
The gumwood radio cabinet functions as an emblem of postwar domestic modernity: its intrusive broadcasts collapse the line between home and outside world, mirroring the way suburban communities depend on secrecy to maintain stability. The chain of swimming pools forms an imaginary river—an unbroken route of privilege and belonging that exists only because Neddy wills it into being. As weather shifts and his strength fades, the route reveals itself as a delusion. Alcohol circulates through both stories as a social lubricant and a quiet agent of decline.
6. Author’s Purpose / Intellectual Context
Cheever is charting the contradictions of postwar affluence: rising consumer culture, tightly regulated social norms, and the persistence of loneliness beneath visible prosperity. Emerging domestic technologies—like the radio—fascinated and unsettled Americans who were still adjusting to new forms of mediated intimacy. Private pools, cocktail hours, and leisure rituals marked status, yet they also masked alienation and inertia. Cheever’s critique is less moralizing than diagnostic: he exposes the gap between how suburbanites saw themselves and the anxieties shaping their actual lives.
7. Challenges / Gaps / Counterarguments
Cheever’s symbolism invites multiple readings; the stories can be approached as social realism, psychological allegory, or mythic parable. Interpretations risk collapsing that intentional ambiguity. The suburban critique reflects a specific cultural moment—white, middle-class, midcentury America—and its generality should not be overextended. Yet the underlying dynamic of outward comfort masking inward disintegration continues to resonate in any society organized around performance, consumption, and curated respectability.
(Written with input from ChatGPT)
1. Core Concepts
Cheever’s two stories examine suburban America at midcentury, focusing on how comfort, technology, and leisure conceal inner disorder. In The Enormous Radio, a consumer gadget meant for entertainment becomes a portal into neighbors’ private turmoil, revealing how fragile middle-class respectability truly is. In The Swimmer, an affluent man’s imaginative “journey” through backyard pools exposes the emptiness beneath suburban ritual and self-mythology. Both stories interrogate the gap between public composure and private collapse.
2. Quick Reference Takeaways
• Technology and leisure act as catalysts that expose, rather than solve, hidden tensions.
• Suburban respectability depends on collective performance reinforced by alcohol and social rituals.
• Cheever uses everyday objects—the radio, the pool—as symbolic maps of moral and emotional decline.
• Journeys in Cheever are psychological autopsies disguised as ordinary events.
3. Key Quotes
“The new radio stood among her intimate possessions like an aggressive intruder.”
“She was struck at once with the physical ugliness of the large gumwood cabinet.”
“The radio seemed to be talking to her alone, filling her with a strange uneasiness.”
“He was determinedly original, and had a vague and modest idea of himself as a legendary figure.”
“He breathed deeply as if he could gulp into his lungs the heat of the sun and the intensity of his pleasure.”
“The place was locked, dark, and he knew suddenly, pitifully, that something was terribly wrong.”
4. Key Figures / Case Studies
Jim and Irene Westcott exemplify a postwar couple seeking security through consumer goods; the radio disrupts that security by broadcasting the private breakdowns of those around them. Their reactions map the fragility of suburban identity and the moral unease beneath polished domestic life. Neddy Merrill personifies the suburban self-mythologizer, a man constructing a heroic narrative from cocktail-party culture and leisure. His progress along the “Lucinda River” becomes a chronicle of denial, fading social status, and the erosion of identity.
5. Central Metaphors & Symbols
The gumwood radio cabinet functions as an emblem of postwar domestic modernity: its intrusive broadcasts collapse the line between home and outside world, mirroring the way suburban communities depend on secrecy to maintain stability. The chain of swimming pools forms an imaginary river—an unbroken route of privilege and belonging that exists only because Neddy wills it into being. As weather shifts and his strength fades, the route reveals itself as a delusion. Alcohol circulates through both stories as a social lubricant and a quiet agent of decline.
6. Author’s Purpose / Intellectual Context
Cheever is charting the contradictions of postwar affluence: rising consumer culture, tightly regulated social norms, and the persistence of loneliness beneath visible prosperity. Emerging domestic technologies—like the radio—fascinated and unsettled Americans who were still adjusting to new forms of mediated intimacy. Private pools, cocktail hours, and leisure rituals marked status, yet they also masked alienation and inertia. Cheever’s critique is less moralizing than diagnostic: he exposes the gap between how suburbanites saw themselves and the anxieties shaping their actual lives.
7. Challenges / Gaps / Counterarguments
Cheever’s symbolism invites multiple readings; the stories can be approached as social realism, psychological allegory, or mythic parable. Interpretations risk collapsing that intentional ambiguity. The suburban critique reflects a specific cultural moment—white, middle-class, midcentury America—and its generality should not be overextended. Yet the underlying dynamic of outward comfort masking inward disintegration continues to resonate in any society organized around performance, consumption, and curated respectability.
(Written with input from ChatGPT)
February 4, 2022
Fantastic stories, but very poorly read on the audio.
December 24, 2022
Worth it to listen to the stories.
August 1, 2023
I cannot recall ever reading a short story that I really liked. True to form, I did not really like either of these two short stories.
November 19, 2024
Short stories
March 7, 2025
This is a 3.5, idk why there isn’t an individual entry for the enormous radio for me to log but whateva
June 9, 2022
I'm glad I finally read Cheever. This book was enough to pique my curiosity for more.
May 31, 2016
3.5 stars. Listened to this in a single drive.
I really enjoyed the first story "The Enormous Radio" read by Meryl Streep (would rate it 4). The attitude of the husband towards his wife was an interesting reflection of the period, he treated her almost like a child. The things he said to her at the end made my jaw drop. There was also just a hit of sci fi here that reminded me of a Ray Bradbury short story, but it was overall firmly set in the realm of general fiction.
The second story, "The Swimmer" was a bit more subtle (or perhaps I was distracted from listening). I had to listen to it a second time to pick up on what I missed (hint: listen to what people say to him.) But it was interesting to here it read by Cheever himself. I didn't enjoy it as much, perhaps because apart from those little hints and the ending, it felt as though not a lot happened. It is a short story, of course, but I had difficulty picturing everything in my head as I listened, so for me it was a 3.
I've listened to several of the Essential series, and all are interesting and give a good taste of an author's work that usually leaves me wanting to read more by them. Based on this introduction to Cheever, I'd like to read more of his work.
I really enjoyed the first story "The Enormous Radio" read by Meryl Streep (would rate it 4). The attitude of the husband towards his wife was an interesting reflection of the period, he treated her almost like a child. The things he said to her at the end made my jaw drop. There was also just a hit of sci fi here that reminded me of a Ray Bradbury short story, but it was overall firmly set in the realm of general fiction.
The second story, "The Swimmer" was a bit more subtle (or perhaps I was distracted from listening). I had to listen to it a second time to pick up on what I missed (hint: listen to what people say to him.) But it was interesting to here it read by Cheever himself. I didn't enjoy it as much, perhaps because apart from those little hints and the ending, it felt as though not a lot happened. It is a short story, of course, but I had difficulty picturing everything in my head as I listened, so for me it was a 3.
I've listened to several of the Essential series, and all are interesting and give a good taste of an author's work that usually leaves me wanting to read more by them. Based on this introduction to Cheever, I'd like to read more of his work.
Read
August 8, 2009Listened to the audiobook while cleaning the house. These two short stories are both gripping and lovely at the same time, and your attention won't wander (the risk one often runs when listening to a book in audio format.) If it does wander for a minute, you will definitely cue back to the beginning to catch every single word once you realize how good they are. And Meryl Streep's reading of "The Enormous Radio" is so fantastic I actually felt sorry for people who read this story in print instead of listening to her tell it.
February 23, 2013
This was my first exposure to Cheever. The two stories on this CD were very good. They both have an intensity to them. I was drawn to this audiobook because the stories were read by Streep and Cheever. However, Streep's narration was a little shrill at times in articulating some of the characters, and Cheever does not have a particularly clear voice, so he's not really suited to narration. The next time I turn to Cheever, it will be the print version.
May 30, 2008
I had to read "The Swimmer" by Cheever in my American Lit. class, and I really liked it. It starts simply as a man that is going to swim in every one of his neighbors' swimming pools, but unfolds into a brilliantly crafted story full of metaphors and hidden meanings at every turn. I really liked this short story.
September 4, 2009
John Cheever didn't write the famous line about lives of quiet desperation but he could have. I used to think that Cheever's stories were all the same - just another tale of upper middle class angst, martinis and lawn parties. Oddly, these stories seem a lot more varied and pertinent to me these days. Pass the martinis, please.
July 26, 2012
THE ABSOLUTE MASTER OF THE SHORT STORY FORM!
OFF HAND, THE CLOSEST COMPETITORS, I CAN THINK OF WOULD/COULD BE:
...SARAH VAUGHN{ABLE BAKER CHARLEY DOG] {DOG HEAVEN]
...TOBIAS WOLFF
...DENIS JOHNSON
...O'HENRY
...JULIE HAYDEN
... SERGI DOVLATOV
... ANTON CHECKHOV
...LEONARD MICHAELS
...IAN FRAZIER
...MAUVE BRENNAN
OFF HAND, THE CLOSEST COMPETITORS, I CAN THINK OF WOULD/COULD BE:
...SARAH VAUGHN{ABLE BAKER CHARLEY DOG] {DOG HEAVEN]
...TOBIAS WOLFF
...DENIS JOHNSON
...O'HENRY
...JULIE HAYDEN
... SERGI DOVLATOV
... ANTON CHECKHOV
...LEONARD MICHAELS
...IAN FRAZIER
...MAUVE BRENNAN
June 22, 2021
So, nothing to see here. Not awful, but not good. You may have heard that Streep's reading of the first story is wonderful. It is not. You may have read that The Swimmer is a masterpiece, and better than all the seasons of Mad Men combined. It is not. It's crap. And Cheever's reading is painful and rushed. Give this a big miss.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews