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Adio, fratele meu. Povestiri Vol.1
Povestirile lui John Cheever ofera o viziune de ansamblu asupra societatii americane din a doua jumatate a secolului XX. Scrise in acelasi stil ironic, care imblanzeste tonurile sumbre ale unei lumi marcate de razboi, acestea impletesc, in mod deliberat, destinele acelorasi personaje angajate in relatii amoroase sau afaceri esuate, incercand sa faca fata snobismului suburbiilor de lux, crizei individualitatii intr-un spatiu dominat de rutina si conventionalism sau sentimentului dezradacinarii, resimtit, in mod deloc intamplator, in decorul oraselor cu cel mai pronuntat caracter turistic. Umorul pare sa fi ramas singurul aliat in obsesiva cautare a unei ordini firesti a vietii, in ciuda absurdului si saraciei existentei cotidiene.
584 pages, Paperback
First published August 25, 1951
5 people are currently reading
174 people want to read
About the author
John Cheever
297 books1,072 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 - 30 of 33 reviews
December 7, 2025
QUANDO QUASI TUTTI PORTAVANO IL CAPPELLO
A Moment in Memory Lane, 1950.
Avrei preferito che l’ordine in cui sono stati pubblicati questi racconti fosse stato invertito e che io apparissi all’inizio come un uomo di una certa età, e non come quel giovanotto che si scandalizzò tanto quando scoprì che uomini e donne chiaramente perbene non disdegnavano nei loro rapporti amorosi la brutalità e persino la lascivia.
Questi racconti risalgono al periodo del mio onorato congedo dall’esercito alla fine della seconda guerra mondiale. Il loro ordine, per quanto ricordo, è cronologico, e i pezzi più vergognosamente immaturi sono stati eliminati. A volte sembrano racconti di un mondo ormai scomparso, quando la città di New York risplendeva ancora della luce del fiume, quando si sentiva il quartetto di Benny Goodman alla radio della cartoleria dell’angolo, quando quasi tutti portavano il cappello. Ecco qui l’ultimo rappresentante di quella generazione di fumatori accaniti che svegliavano tutti al mattino con la loro tosse, che ai cocktail parties si sbronzavano sempre e si esibivano in antiquati passi di danza, che salpavano per l’Europa, che avevano veramente nostalgia dell’amore e della felicità.
Le costanti che vado cercando in questa raccolta di scritti a volte datati sono l’amore per la luce e l’intenzione di tratteggiare una certa consequenzialità dell’essere.
Molti di questi racconti furono pubblicati per la prima volta sul New Yorker; qui Harold Ross, Gus Lobrano e William Maxwell mi fecero il dono inestimabile di procurarmi una schiera di lettori attenti e sensibili e denaro sufficiente per mantenere la famiglia e potersi comperare un vestito nuovo ogni due anni.
Una rigorosa documentazione della propria immaturità è sempre imbarazzante ed è quanto ritrovo di tanto in tanto in questi racconti, ma questo imbarazzo è compensato dai ricordi che essi suscitano in me di donne e uomini che ho amato e di stanze, corridoi e spiagge, dei posti in cui questi racconti sono stati scritti. I miei preferiti sono quelli che furono scritti in meno di una settimana e che spesso furono composti ad alta voce.
Fino a qui, qui sopra parole dello stesso Cheever prese dalla sua prefazione a questa raccolta di racconti che nell’edizione originale erano 69, in quella italiana scendono a sedici. I mie preferiti sono quello del titolo, Stagione di divorzio e I dolori del gin.
Racconti in tono sommesso, scritti con prosa precisa (lapidaria) e raffinata, ispirano tenerezza per quel mondo che è stato e ora non è più, il secondo dopoguerra, l’inizio degli anni Cinquanta, quando tutto sembrava più rosa e luminoso (guardando a ritroso).
Racconti che trovano una risonanza spirituale negli avvenimenti apparentemente banali della vita quotidiana.
Ma questa è la superficie, levigata, l’apparenza. In realtà c’è tristezza, e delusione, c’è frustrazione, pessimismo, e disperazione. In realtà la serenità e la felicità sono artificiali, modellate dai fumi dell’alcol, del fumo, dell’ambiguità che soggiace. Paradigmatico in questo senso il racconto Una radio straordinaria nel quale la coppia protagonista sogna di lasciare New York per trasferirsi in un quartiere suburbano chic, e passa molto tempo ascoltando musica classica alla radio. Finché un giorno per uno strano corto circuito la radio invece di trasmettere la musica trasmette i discorsi dei coinquilini: rimproveri, rancori, litigate, botte, disperazione, solitudine… alla radio possono ascoltare l’infelicità umana.
Lo scarto tra la partenza (dei racconti, della vita dei personaggi, i sogni e progetti di gioventù) e l’approdo, le aspettative poggiate su un’educazione fatta su virtù quali coraggio, lealtà, castità, onore, conduce a scontrarsi con la vera vita che spesso significava alcolismo, adulterio, omosessualità repressa, fallimento.
Ma i finali di questi racconti dovevano rassicurare i lettori della rivista, la rispettabile e conformista borghesia americana dell’epoca: e quindi, se non introducevano sempre un vero e proprio lieto fine, almeno una nota di conforto e consolazione.
Poi cala l’oscurità, è una notte in cui i re in abiti dorati cavalcano elefanti sopra le montagne.
A Moment in Memory Lane, 1950.
Avrei preferito che l’ordine in cui sono stati pubblicati questi racconti fosse stato invertito e che io apparissi all’inizio come un uomo di una certa età, e non come quel giovanotto che si scandalizzò tanto quando scoprì che uomini e donne chiaramente perbene non disdegnavano nei loro rapporti amorosi la brutalità e persino la lascivia.
Questi racconti risalgono al periodo del mio onorato congedo dall’esercito alla fine della seconda guerra mondiale. Il loro ordine, per quanto ricordo, è cronologico, e i pezzi più vergognosamente immaturi sono stati eliminati. A volte sembrano racconti di un mondo ormai scomparso, quando la città di New York risplendeva ancora della luce del fiume, quando si sentiva il quartetto di Benny Goodman alla radio della cartoleria dell’angolo, quando quasi tutti portavano il cappello. Ecco qui l’ultimo rappresentante di quella generazione di fumatori accaniti che svegliavano tutti al mattino con la loro tosse, che ai cocktail parties si sbronzavano sempre e si esibivano in antiquati passi di danza, che salpavano per l’Europa, che avevano veramente nostalgia dell’amore e della felicità.
Le costanti che vado cercando in questa raccolta di scritti a volte datati sono l’amore per la luce e l’intenzione di tratteggiare una certa consequenzialità dell’essere.
Molti di questi racconti furono pubblicati per la prima volta sul New Yorker; qui Harold Ross, Gus Lobrano e William Maxwell mi fecero il dono inestimabile di procurarmi una schiera di lettori attenti e sensibili e denaro sufficiente per mantenere la famiglia e potersi comperare un vestito nuovo ogni due anni.
Una rigorosa documentazione della propria immaturità è sempre imbarazzante ed è quanto ritrovo di tanto in tanto in questi racconti, ma questo imbarazzo è compensato dai ricordi che essi suscitano in me di donne e uomini che ho amato e di stanze, corridoi e spiagge, dei posti in cui questi racconti sono stati scritti. I miei preferiti sono quelli che furono scritti in meno di una settimana e che spesso furono composti ad alta voce.
Fino a qui, qui sopra parole dello stesso Cheever prese dalla sua prefazione a questa raccolta di racconti che nell’edizione originale erano 69, in quella italiana scendono a sedici. I mie preferiti sono quello del titolo, Stagione di divorzio e I dolori del gin.
Racconti in tono sommesso, scritti con prosa precisa (lapidaria) e raffinata, ispirano tenerezza per quel mondo che è stato e ora non è più, il secondo dopoguerra, l’inizio degli anni Cinquanta, quando tutto sembrava più rosa e luminoso (guardando a ritroso).
Racconti che trovano una risonanza spirituale negli avvenimenti apparentemente banali della vita quotidiana.
Ma questa è la superficie, levigata, l’apparenza. In realtà c’è tristezza, e delusione, c’è frustrazione, pessimismo, e disperazione. In realtà la serenità e la felicità sono artificiali, modellate dai fumi dell’alcol, del fumo, dell’ambiguità che soggiace. Paradigmatico in questo senso il racconto Una radio straordinaria nel quale la coppia protagonista sogna di lasciare New York per trasferirsi in un quartiere suburbano chic, e passa molto tempo ascoltando musica classica alla radio. Finché un giorno per uno strano corto circuito la radio invece di trasmettere la musica trasmette i discorsi dei coinquilini: rimproveri, rancori, litigate, botte, disperazione, solitudine… alla radio possono ascoltare l’infelicità umana.
Lo scarto tra la partenza (dei racconti, della vita dei personaggi, i sogni e progetti di gioventù) e l’approdo, le aspettative poggiate su un’educazione fatta su virtù quali coraggio, lealtà, castità, onore, conduce a scontrarsi con la vera vita che spesso significava alcolismo, adulterio, omosessualità repressa, fallimento.
Ma i finali di questi racconti dovevano rassicurare i lettori della rivista, la rispettabile e conformista borghesia americana dell’epoca: e quindi, se non introducevano sempre un vero e proprio lieto fine, almeno una nota di conforto e consolazione.
Poi cala l’oscurità, è una notte in cui i re in abiti dorati cavalcano elefanti sopra le montagne.
November 11, 2025
Imagine a spin-off of The Great Gatsby following a single nuclear family who perhaps attended one of those parties, but a generation later, where privilege is taken for granted and therefore not well cared-for. The narrator fits in with his siblings except for the black sheep, who finally makes an entrance after a prolonged absence. Cheever writes in refined prose to match a refined family, as we encounter what lurks beneath.
December 16, 2025
Reseña del cuento "Adiós, hermano mío"
Segunda tanda de relectura de mejores cuentos. 1/10
-------‐------------------
Que maravilla la vida relajada de vacaciones, sin prisas, la pérdida de velocidad del ritmo diario, la ausencia de rutinas; una isla en la hermosa costa Este de Massachusetts al borde del Atlántico, ohhh:
“Esa mañana el mar apareció iridiscente y oscuro. Mi hermana y mi esposa –Helen y Diana- nadaban, y vi sus cabezas, negro y oro en el agua oscura. Las vi salir y vi que estaban desnudas, desvergonzadas, bellas y plenas de gracia, y contemplé a las mujeres desnudas saliendo del mar.”
Y sin embargo hay un elemento que entra en escena para enturbiar esa sensación de placidez:
“Lawrence era capaz de ofenderse por todo, y a veces parecía que, cuando se sentaba a la mesa con su rostro sombrío, todas las palabras ofensivas herían inexorablemente a su dignidad, y para el caso poco importaba a quién estuvieran dirigidas en realidad.”
¿Quién no ha conocido a una persona así? es más, quien no ha conocido a un hermano, o a un tío, o aun familiar así: siempre en pie de guerra y dispuesto a formar una gran contienda dentro de una reunión familiar de lo más tranquilo y acogedor. Hablando claro, siempre dispuestos a montar un buen pollo allá donde vayan.
Que bien capta Cheever ese punto psicológico, ese clima que se va cargando hasta formar la tempestad que se avecina en medio de la calma, ese clima tenso y propiciatorio de una revuelta por venir.
La sensación continua del relato es la de un whisky de malta con un hielo, con un paladar suave, con un olor y sabor estupendos, que se va tomando a pequeñas dosis, saboreándolo y sacando todos sus matices, y a mitad del proceso, cuando el licor ha tomado el frescor y el cuerpo adecuado y está en su mejor punto… ahí le cae una mosca en el vaso… Que contratiempo ¿qué haces? ¿quitas la mosca? ¿tiras el whisky? ¿te pones otro vaso?, ya da igual ese momento no vuelve.
En nuestro cuento todo es agradable, que bien escribe Cheever, que familia tan estupenda, esos norteamericanos de familias antiguas irlandesas de Nueva Inglaterra, y sin embargo hay un elemento disruptivo que quiere cargarse toda esa armonía, diría que quiere dinamitar el cuento entero.
Por cierto, para mí uno de esos grandísimos finales de la narrativa.
(Tiempo de lectura: 30-40 minutos)
Segunda tanda de relectura de mejores cuentos. 1/10
-------‐------------------
Que maravilla la vida relajada de vacaciones, sin prisas, la pérdida de velocidad del ritmo diario, la ausencia de rutinas; una isla en la hermosa costa Este de Massachusetts al borde del Atlántico, ohhh:
“Esa mañana el mar apareció iridiscente y oscuro. Mi hermana y mi esposa –Helen y Diana- nadaban, y vi sus cabezas, negro y oro en el agua oscura. Las vi salir y vi que estaban desnudas, desvergonzadas, bellas y plenas de gracia, y contemplé a las mujeres desnudas saliendo del mar.”
Y sin embargo hay un elemento que entra en escena para enturbiar esa sensación de placidez:
“Lawrence era capaz de ofenderse por todo, y a veces parecía que, cuando se sentaba a la mesa con su rostro sombrío, todas las palabras ofensivas herían inexorablemente a su dignidad, y para el caso poco importaba a quién estuvieran dirigidas en realidad.”
¿Quién no ha conocido a una persona así? es más, quien no ha conocido a un hermano, o a un tío, o aun familiar así: siempre en pie de guerra y dispuesto a formar una gran contienda dentro de una reunión familiar de lo más tranquilo y acogedor. Hablando claro, siempre dispuestos a montar un buen pollo allá donde vayan.
Que bien capta Cheever ese punto psicológico, ese clima que se va cargando hasta formar la tempestad que se avecina en medio de la calma, ese clima tenso y propiciatorio de una revuelta por venir.
La sensación continua del relato es la de un whisky de malta con un hielo, con un paladar suave, con un olor y sabor estupendos, que se va tomando a pequeñas dosis, saboreándolo y sacando todos sus matices, y a mitad del proceso, cuando el licor ha tomado el frescor y el cuerpo adecuado y está en su mejor punto… ahí le cae una mosca en el vaso… Que contratiempo ¿qué haces? ¿quitas la mosca? ¿tiras el whisky? ¿te pones otro vaso?, ya da igual ese momento no vuelve.
En nuestro cuento todo es agradable, que bien escribe Cheever, que familia tan estupenda, esos norteamericanos de familias antiguas irlandesas de Nueva Inglaterra, y sin embargo hay un elemento disruptivo que quiere cargarse toda esa armonía, diría que quiere dinamitar el cuento entero.
Por cierto, para mí uno de esos grandísimos finales de la narrativa.
(Tiempo de lectura: 30-40 minutos)
February 4, 2025
An unreliable narrator tells about the conflict between him and his brother as they spend time at their family's island vacation home. This story is beautifully constructed, and is considered to be one of his best.
"Goodbye, My Brother"is the first story in the collection, "The Stories of John Cheever."
"Goodbye, My Brother"is the first story in the collection, "The Stories of John Cheever."
July 17, 2018
This short story is one of the best. Cheever's voice and narration nails it. The last four pages are so inightful -
Goodbye my brother:
"I let him get ahead again and I walked behind him, looking at his shoulders and thing of all the goodbyes he had made. When Father drowned he to church and said goodbye to Father. It was only three years later that he concluded that Mother was frivolous and said goodbye to her. In his freshman year at college, had been very good friends with his roommate, but the man drank too much, and the beginning of the spring term Lawrence changed roommates and said goodbye to this friend. When he had been in college for two years, he concluded that that atmosphere was too sequestered and said goodbye to Yale. He enrolled at Columbia and got his law degree there, but he found his first employer dishonest, and at the end of six months said goodbye to a good job. He married Ruth in City Hall and said goodbye to the Protestant Episcopal Church; they went to live in on a back street in Tuckahoe and said goodbye to middle class. In 1938, he went to Washington to work as a government lawyer, saying goodbye to private enterprise, but after eight months in Washington he concluded that that Roosevelt administration was sentimental and he said goodbye to it. They left Washington for a suburb of Chicago, where he said goodbye to his neighbors one by one, on counts of drunkenness, boorishness, and stupidity. He said goodbye to Chicago and went to Kansas; he said goodbye to Kansas and went Cleveland. Now he had said goodbye to Cleveland and come East again, stopping at Laud’s Head to say goodbye to the sea.
It was elegiac and it was bigoted and narrow, it mistook circumspection for character, and I wanted to help him."
"Oh what can you do with a man like that? How can you dissuade his eye in a crowd from seeking out the cheek with acne, the infirm hand; hos can you teach him to respond to the inestimable greatness of the race, the harsh surface beauty of life; how can you put his finger for him on the obdurate truths before which fear and horror are powerless?"
Goodbye my brother:
"I let him get ahead again and I walked behind him, looking at his shoulders and thing of all the goodbyes he had made. When Father drowned he to church and said goodbye to Father. It was only three years later that he concluded that Mother was frivolous and said goodbye to her. In his freshman year at college, had been very good friends with his roommate, but the man drank too much, and the beginning of the spring term Lawrence changed roommates and said goodbye to this friend. When he had been in college for two years, he concluded that that atmosphere was too sequestered and said goodbye to Yale. He enrolled at Columbia and got his law degree there, but he found his first employer dishonest, and at the end of six months said goodbye to a good job. He married Ruth in City Hall and said goodbye to the Protestant Episcopal Church; they went to live in on a back street in Tuckahoe and said goodbye to middle class. In 1938, he went to Washington to work as a government lawyer, saying goodbye to private enterprise, but after eight months in Washington he concluded that that Roosevelt administration was sentimental and he said goodbye to it. They left Washington for a suburb of Chicago, where he said goodbye to his neighbors one by one, on counts of drunkenness, boorishness, and stupidity. He said goodbye to Chicago and went to Kansas; he said goodbye to Kansas and went Cleveland. Now he had said goodbye to Cleveland and come East again, stopping at Laud’s Head to say goodbye to the sea.
It was elegiac and it was bigoted and narrow, it mistook circumspection for character, and I wanted to help him."
"Oh what can you do with a man like that? How can you dissuade his eye in a crowd from seeking out the cheek with acne, the infirm hand; hos can you teach him to respond to the inestimable greatness of the race, the harsh surface beauty of life; how can you put his finger for him on the obdurate truths before which fear and horror are powerless?"
August 28, 2016
I quite like Cheever, so I enjoyed reading this short story. I feel like Cheever often manages to capture the essence of interpersonal relationships, and in this case, family dynamics. Whenever I was invited to family gatherings of large families, I have noticed that the relationships and bonds formed as children and family dynamics often don't change when people have become adults.
July 12, 2020
i think lot of people misunderstand the theme of this story. it really represents the conflict between light and darkness,but narrator is nothing like light.i think lawrence (brother of the narrator) is excluded because he is the only one who can see the dark side of his family.(how his sister in law flirts with his other brother or how his mother is addicted to alcohol and etc.)lawrence is the victim of his own family ,total outsider and in my opinion it explains his pessimism. i would like to say that it is a great story with interesting symbols and biblical allusions but really bothers me that people see lawrence as a bad guy and darknes. it’s total misunderstanding.
Read
October 18, 2017This is not so much a review as a quick observation. What makes this story so interesting to me is that the narrator is completely unreliable. He and his family are corrupt and delude themselves about their happiness and social position. The brother, who is the outsider, is not, and is shunned by the family for his rectitude.
November 13, 2018
This short story, about 6o pages, was the first in a collection titled "The Stories of John Cheever". I knew what to expect with Cheever - I had read serious and well considered pieces on his brilliance as a writer, his gift for that "devastating phrase". I had seen samples of this brilliance, and had read one other short story of his, "Reunion".
"Goodbye, My Brother" is a masterpiece. You can really tell straight away that such a piece as this could only have been authored by a master stylist. John Cheever, perhaps more than any other 20th century American writer, has a truly distinguishable style. A big part of his secret, as other great writers in the past executed so well – Hazlitt, Serge, Joyce – is in his combination of adjectives, and a preternatural gift for selecting the right word. In this he shares a close resemblance to Victor Serge. An example from this story: “Mother plays a shrewd, an ardent, and an interfering game". The whole sentence hinges on the word "interfering", he is very good at what he does.
This story is about family, it is about Lawrence, a misanthrope of a brother, whose only delight is to ruin the pleasure of others. He detests his family for all the familiar reasons, but the narrative at play is reinforced by the dissection of character, the psychological impulse, which Cheever treats with deftness and a light touch. "Lawrence couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old when he decided that Mother was frivolous, mischievous, destructive, and overly strong. When he had determined this, he decided to separate himself from her."; "He came home very seldom after he had made his unfavourable judgment on Mother, and when he did come home, he always tried, in his conversation, to remind her of his estrangement.”; "If Mother asked Lawrence to stay out of the kitchen, he would make a grievance out of the request. He could make a grievance out of anything"
It's a very funny story in the way the misanthropic point of view is funny in Dostoevsky. Lawrence is an absolute bore of a person, a persistent and unforgiving inquisitor, a pathetic bulk of a man. His brothers and sisters make cruel jokes at his expense (never in his face), and he always has a cynical thought on his lips. "but I think that Lawrence felt that in watching our backgammon he was observing the progress of a mordant tragedy in which the money we won and lost served as a symbol for more vital forfeits. It is like Lawrence to try to read significance and finality into every gesture that we make, and it is certain of Lawrence that when he finds the inner logic to our conduct, it will be sordid."
It's a great story, and one likely to gain the trust of readers to Cheever's mastery of language and narrative.
"Goodbye, My Brother" is a masterpiece. You can really tell straight away that such a piece as this could only have been authored by a master stylist. John Cheever, perhaps more than any other 20th century American writer, has a truly distinguishable style. A big part of his secret, as other great writers in the past executed so well – Hazlitt, Serge, Joyce – is in his combination of adjectives, and a preternatural gift for selecting the right word. In this he shares a close resemblance to Victor Serge. An example from this story: “Mother plays a shrewd, an ardent, and an interfering game". The whole sentence hinges on the word "interfering", he is very good at what he does.
This story is about family, it is about Lawrence, a misanthrope of a brother, whose only delight is to ruin the pleasure of others. He detests his family for all the familiar reasons, but the narrative at play is reinforced by the dissection of character, the psychological impulse, which Cheever treats with deftness and a light touch. "Lawrence couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old when he decided that Mother was frivolous, mischievous, destructive, and overly strong. When he had determined this, he decided to separate himself from her."; "He came home very seldom after he had made his unfavourable judgment on Mother, and when he did come home, he always tried, in his conversation, to remind her of his estrangement.”; "If Mother asked Lawrence to stay out of the kitchen, he would make a grievance out of the request. He could make a grievance out of anything"
It's a very funny story in the way the misanthropic point of view is funny in Dostoevsky. Lawrence is an absolute bore of a person, a persistent and unforgiving inquisitor, a pathetic bulk of a man. His brothers and sisters make cruel jokes at his expense (never in his face), and he always has a cynical thought on his lips. "but I think that Lawrence felt that in watching our backgammon he was observing the progress of a mordant tragedy in which the money we won and lost served as a symbol for more vital forfeits. It is like Lawrence to try to read significance and finality into every gesture that we make, and it is certain of Lawrence that when he finds the inner logic to our conduct, it will be sordid."
It's a great story, and one likely to gain the trust of readers to Cheever's mastery of language and narrative.
October 5, 2018
[Philosophically]
It's a story that teaches you the need to find beauty, not to be depreciative of everything, to seize life. Because, if you're constantly unable to enjoy any remnant of life, you'll may just as well end up a sad and lonely person.
Mr. Cheever, both in his short stories and novellas, is quite good at giving us a subtle and yet powerful lesson on life.
It's a story that teaches you the need to find beauty, not to be depreciative of everything, to seize life. Because, if you're constantly unable to enjoy any remnant of life, you'll may just as well end up a sad and lonely person.
Mr. Cheever, both in his short stories and novellas, is quite good at giving us a subtle and yet powerful lesson on life.
September 14, 2017
این آقای نویسنده عجب ذهن قوی ای داره
این داستان پر بود از استعاره های دینی، فلسفی و اسطوره ای
دوس دارم مدتها به داستانش فکر کنم و باز هم فکر کنم
این داستان پر بود از استعاره های دینی، فلسفی و اسطوره ای
دوس دارم مدتها به داستانش فکر کنم و باز هم فکر کنم
November 16, 2020
it’s a great short story!
March 14, 2023
again. john cheever loves rich people with unstable minds!
June 19, 2021
Some stories belong to small circles, and by 'small' I am referring to the fact that we live in a world in which more than 7 billion people live, and compared to this world, the southern United States of the 1950s is small (even if it is located in the big old and mighty US).
To me, a story that ignores the general truths of humankind and clings to the petty concerns of a certain kind of family with a certain kind of background in a certain kind of setting is by no means remarkable—even if certain critics insist so (probably because it has struck a chord with them who, quite 'coincidentally', happen to belong to the same circle).
No sir, no. Perhaps remarkable to you, but not remarkable to me.
To me, a story that ignores the general truths of humankind and clings to the petty concerns of a certain kind of family with a certain kind of background in a certain kind of setting is by no means remarkable—even if certain critics insist so (probably because it has struck a chord with them who, quite 'coincidentally', happen to belong to the same circle).
No sir, no. Perhaps remarkable to you, but not remarkable to me.
June 24, 2020
This one by John Cheever is more of an abruptly placed story. There seems to be no certain viewpoint that the author is trying to convey. Even though it entails all the basic themes that are common in his stories, it never really throws light on something significantly.
There is a dichotomy here between the deluded family members who have drifted apart over time and are merely together for the sake of appearances and the odd and pessimistic brother who is driven by his rectitude and high standards of morality and how unlike the rest of the family, he doesn't mince his words when calling out their fake behaviour.
Here Cheever achieves to show two sides of a coin by focusing the story on Lawrence(the odd brother) who fails to see a silver lining in things and can only pick out the worst things about human behaviour and in turn has to constantly bid adieu to all good things in his life. He also hints that the brother is progressing towards losing his wife and kids to his pessimistic attitude.
Having said that, there isn't anything wrong about what he pinpoints in his dysfunctional family as he calls all their bluffs and superficial emotions in turn revealing how twisted and messed up they are despite their numerous efforts to hide the reality of their thoughts.
The bottomline in the story is that in this messed up world, it is important to take things with a pinch of salt and not be pessimistic about everything. Because nothing in the world is perfect and if you only see the negative then you may always overlook the positive that is around you.
There is a dichotomy here between the deluded family members who have drifted apart over time and are merely together for the sake of appearances and the odd and pessimistic brother who is driven by his rectitude and high standards of morality and how unlike the rest of the family, he doesn't mince his words when calling out their fake behaviour.
Here Cheever achieves to show two sides of a coin by focusing the story on Lawrence(the odd brother) who fails to see a silver lining in things and can only pick out the worst things about human behaviour and in turn has to constantly bid adieu to all good things in his life. He also hints that the brother is progressing towards losing his wife and kids to his pessimistic attitude.
Having said that, there isn't anything wrong about what he pinpoints in his dysfunctional family as he calls all their bluffs and superficial emotions in turn revealing how twisted and messed up they are despite their numerous efforts to hide the reality of their thoughts.
The bottomline in the story is that in this messed up world, it is important to take things with a pinch of salt and not be pessimistic about everything. Because nothing in the world is perfect and if you only see the negative then you may always overlook the positive that is around you.
July 19, 2025
Goodbye My Brother by John Cheever
John Cheever was a great writer, who had to struggle with a drinking problem and, from what I have read somewhere, sexual identity issues.
Which raises the question- what do we care about what the author did at various points…isn’t the work enough. I have started an outstanding book- Flaubert’s Parrot and deals from the very start with this issue: the great work of Flaubert and his insistence upon considering only his oeuvre, not his life. Indeed, we should read Proust considering the narrator and his exploits with a woman always considering this to be a “lie”, since Proust was gay and the saga told in the first person must have involved another man and not a woman?
There is a tension building up to the dramatic happening which I will not disclose here, interrupted by the funny intermission of the cook. In the house there is a cook who has an obsession with…food
She wants everybody in and outside the house to- eat! She gives food to the family, the gardener and even the mailman. To take it to an unusual, pathological (?) extreme, the cook is even concerned with the actors playing in the movies- Bette Davis doesn’t look like she eats well, which in this day and age is proved to be the right healthy thing to do- Bette Davis went on to live beyond eighty- I think.
The Okinawa people have been studied and it is demonstrated that their diet, which for women means about 1,200 calories per day, contributes decisively to their extraordinary longevity.
John Cheever has a knack of telling a story; even one which seems to develop along “consecrated “lines like this one.
Tifty is the negative character of the story, always complaining that the house will crumble… he gets some payback for all his “contribution „to the well being of the others, I will spare you the details, to let you enjoy the story.
As a moral message and a psychological conclusion:
It is not good to be pessimistic and negative. Not only you spoil the others ‘pleasures, but in the end you live shorter, less meaningful lives.
Tifty is the sound that the slippers made and from here the nickname. If you place this guy in a group, the level of happiness drops, if they have a project, chances are it will fail.
John Cheever was a great writer, who had to struggle with a drinking problem and, from what I have read somewhere, sexual identity issues.
Which raises the question- what do we care about what the author did at various points…isn’t the work enough. I have started an outstanding book- Flaubert’s Parrot and deals from the very start with this issue: the great work of Flaubert and his insistence upon considering only his oeuvre, not his life. Indeed, we should read Proust considering the narrator and his exploits with a woman always considering this to be a “lie”, since Proust was gay and the saga told in the first person must have involved another man and not a woman?
There is a tension building up to the dramatic happening which I will not disclose here, interrupted by the funny intermission of the cook. In the house there is a cook who has an obsession with…food
She wants everybody in and outside the house to- eat! She gives food to the family, the gardener and even the mailman. To take it to an unusual, pathological (?) extreme, the cook is even concerned with the actors playing in the movies- Bette Davis doesn’t look like she eats well, which in this day and age is proved to be the right healthy thing to do- Bette Davis went on to live beyond eighty- I think.
The Okinawa people have been studied and it is demonstrated that their diet, which for women means about 1,200 calories per day, contributes decisively to their extraordinary longevity.
John Cheever has a knack of telling a story; even one which seems to develop along “consecrated “lines like this one.
Tifty is the negative character of the story, always complaining that the house will crumble… he gets some payback for all his “contribution „to the well being of the others, I will spare you the details, to let you enjoy the story.
As a moral message and a psychological conclusion:
It is not good to be pessimistic and negative. Not only you spoil the others ‘pleasures, but in the end you live shorter, less meaningful lives.
Tifty is the sound that the slippers made and from here the nickname. If you place this guy in a group, the level of happiness drops, if they have a project, chances are it will fail.
October 28, 2021
John Cheever certainly brings out the strife in family life and brings a quite interesting read.
Story in short- The Pomeroy family meet again for the summer at their shared home at Laud's Head with their own families.
The difference in individuals and how one can ruin the atmosphere, sometimes it is better to ignore and let them go.
"These stories date from my Honorable Discharge from the Army at the end of World War II. Their order is, to the best of my memory, chronological and the most embarrassingly immature pieces have been dropped. 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. "
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌ spoiler alert ❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌
"Lawrence couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old when he decided that Mother was frivolous, mischievous, destructive, and overly strong. When he had determined this, he decided to separate himself from her. He was at boarding school then, and I remember that he did not come home for Christmas. He spent Christmas with a friend."
“Come out of this gloominess. Come out of it. It’s only a summer day. You’re spoiling your own good time and you’re spoiling everyone else’s. We need a vacation, Tifty. I need one. I need to rest. We all do. And you’ve made everything tense and unpleasant. I only have two weeks in the year."
“I don’t like it here,” he said blandly, without raising his eyes. “I’m going to sell my equity in the house to Chaddy. I didn’t expect to have a good time. The only reason I came back was to say goodbye.”
"He was still on his knees. I looked up and down. No one had seen us. The naked beach, like a piece of the moon, reached to invisibility. The spill of a wave, in a glancing run, shot up to where he knelt. I would still have liked to end him, but now I had begun to act like two men, the murderer and the Samaritan. With a swift roar, like hollowness made sound, a white wave reached him and encircled him, boiling over his shoulders, and I held him against the undertow. Then I led him to a higher place. The blood had spread all through his hair, so that it looked black. I took off my shirt and tore it to bind up his head. He was conscious, and I didn’t think he was badly hurt. He didn’t speak. Neither did I. Then I left him there."
"He stood in the door, looking half dead. He had taken off the bloody bandage and he held it in his hand. “My brother did this,” he said. “My brother did it. He hit me with a stone—something—on the beach.” His voice broke with self-pity. I thought he was going to cry. No one else spoke. “Where’s Ruth?” he cried. “Where’s Ruth? Where in hell is Ruth? I want her to start packing. I don’t have any more time to waste here. I have important things to do. I have important things to do.” And he went up the stairs."
The narrator tells of a family summer holiday with his 3 siblings and their families and their mother. The narrator's wife is Helen, his brother Chaddy and his wife Odette and Diana without her children. Lawrence, the brother who is the odd man out comes with his wife Ruth and his children who are also different from the rest. Lawrence sees life as matter a fact, gloomy and critical of all he sees around him. Their father drowned when they were young, maybe in their teens. Lawrence soon after their father died, he was critical of their mother and he comes to the summer retreat criticising and causing a tension which is hard for the family to bare. The narrator tells of 25 years ago, he hit Lawrence on the head with a rock and told on him to his father, this happens again but this time he tells his mother. When asked why he came where he was so miserable, Lawrence told this was goodbye because he was not coming back.
“Lawrence couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old when he decided that Mother was frivolous, mischievous, destructive, and overly strong. When he had determined this, he decided to separate himself from her. He was at boarding school then, and I remember that he did not come home for Christmas. He spent Christmas with a friend.”
“I don’t like it here,” he said blandly, without raising his eyes. “I’m going to sell my equity in the house to Chaddy. I didn’t expect to have a good time. The only reason I came back was to say goodbye.”
“Come out of this gloominess. Come out of it. It’s only a summer day. You’re spoiling your own good time and you’re spoiling everyone else’s. We need a vacation, Tifty. I need one. I need to rest. We all do. And you’ve made everything tense and unpleasant. I only have two weeks in the year.”
“He was still on his knees. I looked up and down. No one had seen us. The naked beach, like a piece of the moon, reached to invisibility. The spill of a wave, in a glancing run, shot up to where he knelt. I would still have liked”
“to end him, but now I had begun to act like two men, the murderer and the Samaritan. With a swift roar, like hollowness made sound, a white wave reached him and encircled him, boiling over his shoulders, and I held him against the undertow. Then I led him to a higher place. The blood had spread all through his hair, so that it looked black. I took off my shirt and tore it to bind up his head. He was conscious, and I didn’t think he was badly hurt. He didn’t speak. Neither did I. Then I left him there.”
“He stood in the door, looking half dead. He had taken off the bloody bandage and he held it in his hand. “My brother did this,” he said. “My brother did it. He hit me with a stone—something—on the beach.” His voice broke with self-pity. I thought he was going to cry. No one else spoke. “Where’s Ruth?” he cried. “Where’s Ruth? Where in hell is Ruth? I want her to start packing. I don’t have any more time to waste here. I have important things to do. I have important things to do.” And he went up the stairs.“
Story in short- The Pomeroy family meet again for the summer at their shared home at Laud's Head with their own families.
The difference in individuals and how one can ruin the atmosphere, sometimes it is better to ignore and let them go.
"These stories date from my Honorable Discharge from the Army at the end of World War II. Their order is, to the best of my memory, chronological and the most embarrassingly immature pieces have been dropped. 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. "
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌ spoiler alert ❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌
"Lawrence couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old when he decided that Mother was frivolous, mischievous, destructive, and overly strong. When he had determined this, he decided to separate himself from her. He was at boarding school then, and I remember that he did not come home for Christmas. He spent Christmas with a friend."
“Come out of this gloominess. Come out of it. It’s only a summer day. You’re spoiling your own good time and you’re spoiling everyone else’s. We need a vacation, Tifty. I need one. I need to rest. We all do. And you’ve made everything tense and unpleasant. I only have two weeks in the year."
“I don’t like it here,” he said blandly, without raising his eyes. “I’m going to sell my equity in the house to Chaddy. I didn’t expect to have a good time. The only reason I came back was to say goodbye.”
"He was still on his knees. I looked up and down. No one had seen us. The naked beach, like a piece of the moon, reached to invisibility. The spill of a wave, in a glancing run, shot up to where he knelt. I would still have liked to end him, but now I had begun to act like two men, the murderer and the Samaritan. With a swift roar, like hollowness made sound, a white wave reached him and encircled him, boiling over his shoulders, and I held him against the undertow. Then I led him to a higher place. The blood had spread all through his hair, so that it looked black. I took off my shirt and tore it to bind up his head. He was conscious, and I didn’t think he was badly hurt. He didn’t speak. Neither did I. Then I left him there."
"He stood in the door, looking half dead. He had taken off the bloody bandage and he held it in his hand. “My brother did this,” he said. “My brother did it. He hit me with a stone—something—on the beach.” His voice broke with self-pity. I thought he was going to cry. No one else spoke. “Where’s Ruth?” he cried. “Where’s Ruth? Where in hell is Ruth? I want her to start packing. I don’t have any more time to waste here. I have important things to do. I have important things to do.” And he went up the stairs."
The narrator tells of a family summer holiday with his 3 siblings and their families and their mother. The narrator's wife is Helen, his brother Chaddy and his wife Odette and Diana without her children. Lawrence, the brother who is the odd man out comes with his wife Ruth and his children who are also different from the rest. Lawrence sees life as matter a fact, gloomy and critical of all he sees around him. Their father drowned when they were young, maybe in their teens. Lawrence soon after their father died, he was critical of their mother and he comes to the summer retreat criticising and causing a tension which is hard for the family to bare. The narrator tells of 25 years ago, he hit Lawrence on the head with a rock and told on him to his father, this happens again but this time he tells his mother. When asked why he came where he was so miserable, Lawrence told this was goodbye because he was not coming back.
“Lawrence couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old when he decided that Mother was frivolous, mischievous, destructive, and overly strong. When he had determined this, he decided to separate himself from her. He was at boarding school then, and I remember that he did not come home for Christmas. He spent Christmas with a friend.”
“I don’t like it here,” he said blandly, without raising his eyes. “I’m going to sell my equity in the house to Chaddy. I didn’t expect to have a good time. The only reason I came back was to say goodbye.”
“Come out of this gloominess. Come out of it. It’s only a summer day. You’re spoiling your own good time and you’re spoiling everyone else’s. We need a vacation, Tifty. I need one. I need to rest. We all do. And you’ve made everything tense and unpleasant. I only have two weeks in the year.”
“He was still on his knees. I looked up and down. No one had seen us. The naked beach, like a piece of the moon, reached to invisibility. The spill of a wave, in a glancing run, shot up to where he knelt. I would still have liked”
“to end him, but now I had begun to act like two men, the murderer and the Samaritan. With a swift roar, like hollowness made sound, a white wave reached him and encircled him, boiling over his shoulders, and I held him against the undertow. Then I led him to a higher place. The blood had spread all through his hair, so that it looked black. I took off my shirt and tore it to bind up his head. He was conscious, and I didn’t think he was badly hurt. He didn’t speak. Neither did I. Then I left him there.”
“He stood in the door, looking half dead. He had taken off the bloody bandage and he held it in his hand. “My brother did this,” he said. “My brother did it. He hit me with a stone—something—on the beach.” His voice broke with self-pity. I thought he was going to cry. No one else spoke. “Where’s Ruth?” he cried. “Where’s Ruth? Where in hell is Ruth? I want her to start packing. I don’t have any more time to waste here. I have important things to do. I have important things to do.” And he went up the stairs.“
December 29, 2025
John Cheever’s “Goodbye, My Brother” is a summer story haunted by moral absolutism. Romance appears not as desire, but as the fragile love that binds a family—and the hatred that threatens to undo it. Lawrence, the bitter, puritanical brother, rejects pleasure, forgiveness, and ease. His presence infects the seaside holiday like a moral contagion. The narrator’s love for him is reluctant, exhausted, yet indelible. Romance here is fraternal and adversarial. To love Lawrence is to endure judgement. To reject him feels like betrayal. Cheever captures this ambivalence with crystalline prose. The story’s turning point—when the narrator physically attacks Lawrence—reads like a romantic breaking point. Love can no longer absorb contempt. Violence becomes a language of release. Cheever suggests that romance within families is not chosen, but survived. Love persists even when admiration dies. “Goodbye, My Brother” treats love as moral weather: inescapable, shaping, and destructive. Romance is not warmth—it is endurance under exposure.
June 20, 2020
Powerful poetic story of kinship broken and dissolution. Hard to pinpoint the exact characters here. Is the narrator unreliable? Is Lawrence really the bad guy? Impossible to say. The story plunged into the murky waters of family relationship and stays there until the lovely end.
Perfect story. The other reviews perfectly capture the ambiguity of it. Some say it is a comedy, some a tragedy; others say it is about the upright Lawrence being victimised by the decadent and toxic family, while still others again say it is about the natural family victimising Lawrence for his misanthropy.
Who is right? What is real? That’s (as Tolstoy says) unhappy families for you: each unhappy in their distinctive way!
Perfect story. The other reviews perfectly capture the ambiguity of it. Some say it is a comedy, some a tragedy; others say it is about the upright Lawrence being victimised by the decadent and toxic family, while still others again say it is about the natural family victimising Lawrence for his misanthropy.
Who is right? What is real? That’s (as Tolstoy says) unhappy families for you: each unhappy in their distinctive way!
October 27, 2023
i bought 'the stories on john cheever' on kindle a few months back, and finally opening it today i realized that it's about a billion pages long.
so i guess i'm going to log the stories individually. it'll probably take me a billion years to read the entire thing.
this, the first story, is fine. pretty good. i found it a little long & a little saggy in the middle. i wasn't really all that fascinated by the characters or the narrator tbh, and i did find myself wishing they'd get on with things. but the ending surprised me and it had a very solid resolution. as someone who can be a bit prickly & who has prickly relatives, i appreciated the overall vibe.
pretty good, but i hope there's better to come.
so i guess i'm going to log the stories individually. it'll probably take me a billion years to read the entire thing.
this, the first story, is fine. pretty good. i found it a little long & a little saggy in the middle. i wasn't really all that fascinated by the characters or the narrator tbh, and i did find myself wishing they'd get on with things. but the ending surprised me and it had a very solid resolution. as someone who can be a bit prickly & who has prickly relatives, i appreciated the overall vibe.
pretty good, but i hope there's better to come.
March 23, 2025
Another Cheever short story, this one with one of the sons of a large family recounting the reunion of the family at their house on the seafront and showing his negativity towards one of his brothers. It is just a story, but by the end it is more than just a story and you realize that Cheever has done it again. He has given significance to all the seemingly little insignificances encountered in the telling of it.
June 16, 2023
Oh what can you do with a man like that? How can you dissuade his eye in a crowd from seeking out the cheek with acne, the infirm hand; hos can you teach him to respond to the inestimable greatness of the race, the harsh surface beauty of life; how can you put his finger for him on the obdurate truths before which fear and horror are powerless?
September 18, 2023
Who do I root for? The gloomy guy who’s living on his terms of rigidity and also enforcing this on fam or the one’s being gayly joyous and endeavouring to make the best of the short vacation from realities of life?? But if the ones being frolicking in harmless fun go on harm the non-fun ones?? Who I do root for?
August 23, 2023
I think this short story should have been shorter. There was quite a bit of stuff that we didnt need to know about. Maybe it is better for someone who is less stoic than I am. I read it very dispassionately because that is just how I am. Maybe I did see a bit of the bad brother in myself too. 😀
February 1, 2025
This story, told by an unreliable narrator, turns itself on its head at the end. I think we are meant to see things one way while reading and then realize that we need to go back and view each incident from a completely different viewpoint at the end.
(#1 The Stories of John Cheever)
(#1 The Stories of John Cheever)
February 10, 2019
Segundo relato para el book club de la biblioteca.
Drama familiar de los que no me interesan.
Drama familiar de los que no me interesan.
November 12, 2023
Yep. Definitely reading more of Cheever's work. Thank you V.S. Pritchett.
August 23, 2024
3 stars
September 27, 2025
can’t tell who the villain is here
September 13, 2024
While the analysis I've read of the story describes this story as a reverse Cain and Abel, I get more of a Prodigal Son vibe. The family feels obligated to celebrate Tifty's return but it's all very forced.
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