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"Heartrending...Can be read as a writer's notebook, a family chronicle, a brutally honest autobiography, and almost as an unfinished novel...A daring contribution to American letters."--New York Times
519 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1990
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2434 people want to read
About the author
John Cheever
297 books1,069 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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August 13, 2016
Having nothing better to do…I read two old journals. High spirits and weather reports recede into the background, and what emerges are two astonishing contests, one with alcohol and one with my wife. (1968)
That sounds like what I read. Until Cheever gets sober—1975—the entries of this 5% selection alternate, fairly neatly, between marital standoffs in an atmosphere of alcoholic cafard, and lyrical-libidinous celebration of life, love, nature and consciousness. The gin-soaked husband and the leaping faun are always overtaking one another:
John and Mary will end the night in separate rooms, in front of different TVs, she determinedly aloof, he checked out on whiskey and Seconal; but come morning he’ll feel the rush of resumed consciousness, he’ll be very horny, he’ll be primed to write a story or chop firewood or ski the mountains in the morning light—until, of course, the bottles in the pantry begin to sing; and another night comes on, and with it “the struggle to recoup some acuteness of feeling, the feeling that some margin of hopefulness has been debauched.”
Though it is a tender and intelligent reminiscence of Cheever, Updike’s review of the Journals underrates their literary importance. He says the four hundred pages of undated, unannotated entries frazzle the brain, and the emotional circularity “depresses the spirit.” (Behind Updike I see the ghost of Henry James, frowning over the Goncourt Journal: “It may be an inevitable, or it may even for certain sorts of production be an indispensable, thing to be a névrose; but in what particular juncture is it a communicable thing?”) Reading the Journals after decades of admiring the stories, Updike found only rawness and repetition, and missed, I think, the daring thing Cheever made: a confessional voice, candid yet solipsistic, and spooked by itself. The voice of an isolated, amnesiac or unreliable narrator—but autobiographical. With Humbert Cheever might say, “This then is my story…At this or that twist of it I feel my slippery self eluding me, gliding into deeper and darker waters than I care to probe.” What Cheever did not care to probe is the relational context of his life. Mary Cheever, for instance, appears as a totally enigmatic figure, a stranger who shares his house; and because her habits and moods, her comings and goings, are only externally described, they make an artful, irreducible mystery. Cheever’s older brother Fred—perhaps the most significant relationship on his life—was trying to drink himself to death in the same years. Their parallel paths of alcoholic suicide intersect here and there, and Fred is suggestively, memorably glimpsed, though never examined in any depth. The vagueness of Mary and Fred, and their never-more-than-glimpsed histories with Cheever, may be creations of the editing; but this morning I read Colm Tóibín on Cheever’s novels—“in his stories he could create a tragic, trapped individual in a single scene or moment; he had a deep knowledge of what that was like…but he struggled so much with the novels simply because there were vast areas of himself that he could not use as a basis for a character dramatized over time”—and I said aha!
These journals are worth reading because Cheever was the site of intense contests—between spleen and ideal, responsiveness and ennui, “between what I dream and what life has made me” (Pessoa, whose Book of Disquiet shares with these journals a cultivated monotony, a speculative temper ruled by tedium); between straight and gay, although “straight” doesn’t convey the nearly aesthetic ideal of conventional domesticity fashioned and worshipped by this surplus son of Depression-broken gentility, no more than “gay” captures the utter loss of status and identity, the submersion of selfhood in a troglodytic carnality, that Cheever’s hateful and paranoid society taught him to associate with men loving men. They are also worth reading simply because they show a great writer watching his world. From start to finish the prose is chiseled and luminous. Cheever described writing as the “bridge of language, metaphor, anecdote, and imagination that I build each morning to cross the incongruities of my life”—and his journals were a mode of writing impervious to hangovers. They were thus the daily exercise of his devotion. Among the saddest entries are the last, as they taper off toward death from cancer. “For the first time in forty years I have failed to keep this journal with any care. I am sick. That seems to be my only message.” “I have climbed from a bed on the second floor to reach this typewriter. This was an achievement.” Accepting the National Medal for Literature two months before his death, Cheever affirmed that “a page of good prose remains invincible.” “All the literary acolytes assembled there,” Updike writes, “fell quite silent, astonished by such faith.”
Thunderstorms, polished air; the light seems honed, buffed, and, late in the day, strikes from a low angle. I swim at around four, but the poignance of a swimming pool in September seems to have lost its legitimacy for me. The pool is real enough and the crux, the truth of a humid afternoon. There are leaves in the water these days. I am the last swimmer. The wind in the leaves is highly vocal. The light is pure and very elegiac. I enjoy swimming at this time of year. The water is in the sixties. The stones are warm and I lie naked on them. Happy, happy. (1970)
That sounds like what I read. Until Cheever gets sober—1975—the entries of this 5% selection alternate, fairly neatly, between marital standoffs in an atmosphere of alcoholic cafard, and lyrical-libidinous celebration of life, love, nature and consciousness. The gin-soaked husband and the leaping faun are always overtaking one another:
An unseasonably warm day: fevers in the blood. I walk with Frederico. The sense of odors, exhalations, escaping from the earth is volcanic. The country stirs like a crater. The imperative impulse is to take off my clothes, scamper like a goat through the forest, swim in the pools. The struggle to sustain a romantic impulse through the confusions of supper, the disputes, the television, the baby’s bath, the ringing of the telephone, the stales of the dishpan, but I have in the end what I want and I want this very much.(1960)
John and Mary will end the night in separate rooms, in front of different TVs, she determinedly aloof, he checked out on whiskey and Seconal; but come morning he’ll feel the rush of resumed consciousness, he’ll be very horny, he’ll be primed to write a story or chop firewood or ski the mountains in the morning light—until, of course, the bottles in the pantry begin to sing; and another night comes on, and with it “the struggle to recoup some acuteness of feeling, the feeling that some margin of hopefulness has been debauched.”
Though it is a tender and intelligent reminiscence of Cheever, Updike’s review of the Journals underrates their literary importance. He says the four hundred pages of undated, unannotated entries frazzle the brain, and the emotional circularity “depresses the spirit.” (Behind Updike I see the ghost of Henry James, frowning over the Goncourt Journal: “It may be an inevitable, or it may even for certain sorts of production be an indispensable, thing to be a névrose; but in what particular juncture is it a communicable thing?”) Reading the Journals after decades of admiring the stories, Updike found only rawness and repetition, and missed, I think, the daring thing Cheever made: a confessional voice, candid yet solipsistic, and spooked by itself. The voice of an isolated, amnesiac or unreliable narrator—but autobiographical. With Humbert Cheever might say, “This then is my story…At this or that twist of it I feel my slippery self eluding me, gliding into deeper and darker waters than I care to probe.” What Cheever did not care to probe is the relational context of his life. Mary Cheever, for instance, appears as a totally enigmatic figure, a stranger who shares his house; and because her habits and moods, her comings and goings, are only externally described, they make an artful, irreducible mystery. Cheever’s older brother Fred—perhaps the most significant relationship on his life—was trying to drink himself to death in the same years. Their parallel paths of alcoholic suicide intersect here and there, and Fred is suggestively, memorably glimpsed, though never examined in any depth. The vagueness of Mary and Fred, and their never-more-than-glimpsed histories with Cheever, may be creations of the editing; but this morning I read Colm Tóibín on Cheever’s novels—“in his stories he could create a tragic, trapped individual in a single scene or moment; he had a deep knowledge of what that was like…but he struggled so much with the novels simply because there were vast areas of himself that he could not use as a basis for a character dramatized over time”—and I said aha!
These journals are worth reading because Cheever was the site of intense contests—between spleen and ideal, responsiveness and ennui, “between what I dream and what life has made me” (Pessoa, whose Book of Disquiet shares with these journals a cultivated monotony, a speculative temper ruled by tedium); between straight and gay, although “straight” doesn’t convey the nearly aesthetic ideal of conventional domesticity fashioned and worshipped by this surplus son of Depression-broken gentility, no more than “gay” captures the utter loss of status and identity, the submersion of selfhood in a troglodytic carnality, that Cheever’s hateful and paranoid society taught him to associate with men loving men. They are also worth reading simply because they show a great writer watching his world. From start to finish the prose is chiseled and luminous. Cheever described writing as the “bridge of language, metaphor, anecdote, and imagination that I build each morning to cross the incongruities of my life”—and his journals were a mode of writing impervious to hangovers. They were thus the daily exercise of his devotion. Among the saddest entries are the last, as they taper off toward death from cancer. “For the first time in forty years I have failed to keep this journal with any care. I am sick. That seems to be my only message.” “I have climbed from a bed on the second floor to reach this typewriter. This was an achievement.” Accepting the National Medal for Literature two months before his death, Cheever affirmed that “a page of good prose remains invincible.” “All the literary acolytes assembled there,” Updike writes, “fell quite silent, astonished by such faith.”
Thunderstorms, polished air; the light seems honed, buffed, and, late in the day, strikes from a low angle. I swim at around four, but the poignance of a swimming pool in September seems to have lost its legitimacy for me. The pool is real enough and the crux, the truth of a humid afternoon. There are leaves in the water these days. I am the last swimmer. The wind in the leaves is highly vocal. The light is pure and very elegiac. I enjoy swimming at this time of year. The water is in the sixties. The stones are warm and I lie naked on them. Happy, happy. (1970)
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June 23, 2025I'm not sure why I purchased this book. It's not like I'm a John Cheever fan or even read much of his work. I think I once abandoned The Wapshot Chronicles and maybe read two stories, "The Swimmer" and "The Enormous Radio." Ask me what I recall of them, though.
That said, I like reading writer's journals because they often write about (wait for it) writing AND what they've been reading. Curiously, there's some but not much of that in these 400 pages. They are undated BUT do come in under the heading of years. The writing is much more polished than you'd expect from a journal and confessional in every way. Which is to say, you'll come out at the other end knowing more than you want to about JC.
Chiefly? His marriage was rocky as hell, despite having three kids. Successful suburbanite. Liked church (Catholic) and sentimental as hell. Weird things could make him teary. Horny, from the earliest entries to his dying day. Preoccupied with sex, sometimes getting some from the wife and more often not. Bisexual. Fighting, fighting, OK giving into homosexual impulses. Then back to fighting.
But the heavy hitter here is booze. Surprise! An American writer battling the bottle! He admired Hemingway, so enough said. There's a hero for you (frightening as that may be for your liver). To wake up and think first thing not of coffee but of booze is, well, scary as hell, but that was his life for decades. If you're looking for the Diary of an Alcoholic, then you can do no better than this.
But, in the end, he does check in to a place to dry out. And join AA. And write about THAT, too, entertainingly enough. While doing rearguard battle against his wife Mary. It has to be one of the most unhappy marriages known to man. Not sure how the kids (Ben, Susan, Federico) managed under all that, but they did and, in fact, gamely allowed the editor of these journals full access to print what he wished of these open-book, confessional-style entries.
Word for word, all of it? No. These are selected and edited, but that's fine and perhaps all for the better. Considering I had no horse in the race (pro- or anti-Cheever), I enjoyed it. My leap of faith in choosing a writer's journal paid off.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
That said, I like reading writer's journals because they often write about (wait for it) writing AND what they've been reading. Curiously, there's some but not much of that in these 400 pages. They are undated BUT do come in under the heading of years. The writing is much more polished than you'd expect from a journal and confessional in every way. Which is to say, you'll come out at the other end knowing more than you want to about JC.
Chiefly? His marriage was rocky as hell, despite having three kids. Successful suburbanite. Liked church (Catholic) and sentimental as hell. Weird things could make him teary. Horny, from the earliest entries to his dying day. Preoccupied with sex, sometimes getting some from the wife and more often not. Bisexual. Fighting, fighting, OK giving into homosexual impulses. Then back to fighting.
But the heavy hitter here is booze. Surprise! An American writer battling the bottle! He admired Hemingway, so enough said. There's a hero for you (frightening as that may be for your liver). To wake up and think first thing not of coffee but of booze is, well, scary as hell, but that was his life for decades. If you're looking for the Diary of an Alcoholic, then you can do no better than this.
But, in the end, he does check in to a place to dry out. And join AA. And write about THAT, too, entertainingly enough. While doing rearguard battle against his wife Mary. It has to be one of the most unhappy marriages known to man. Not sure how the kids (Ben, Susan, Federico) managed under all that, but they did and, in fact, gamely allowed the editor of these journals full access to print what he wished of these open-book, confessional-style entries.
Word for word, all of it? No. These are selected and edited, but that's fine and perhaps all for the better. Considering I had no horse in the race (pro- or anti-Cheever), I enjoyed it. My leap of faith in choosing a writer's journal paid off.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
August 15, 2017
Tutti i diari sono documenti intimi ma alcuni sono più intimi degli altri.
Ho letto questo libro con molta lentezza perché qui in un certo senso non succede nulla , non sei condotto fra le pagine dal seguire azioni o avvenimenti. Procedendo nella lettura però si delinea per piccoli tocchi e con crescente chiarezza la complessità di un uomo come Cheever e nell'imparare a conoscere le sue inquietudini e le sue sconfitte ho provato un senso di intimità che non avevo mai trovato in letture analoghe.
Il suo mondo interiore, che è pure vasto, è però riconducibile a pochi temi fondamentali e questo credo che valga per la maggior parte di noi; si possono cambiare con facilità amicizie, amori, città e occupazioni ma i temi principali a cui torniamo sempre sono pochi e meno mutevoli di quanto crediamo .
Nel suo caso c'è una forte sensibilità e tensione verso la bellezza del quotidiano: la neve che cade, un lago ghiacciato, la luce del tramonto in giardino. L'amore e il desiderio spesso destinati alla frustrazione. E due ombre che lo accompagneranno tutta la vita: l'omosessualità che vive con grande senso di colpa e l'alcolismo, suo compagno quotidiano per decenni fra tentativi di riscatto e ricadute.
Leggendo queste pagine si ha quasi la sensazione che Cheever sia stato scrittore a sua insaputa; perché tranne qualche rara annotazione sui contemporanei ( in genere di elogio per gli altri -ah, la bravura di Saul Bellow - e di amarezza per sé stesso) il mestiere dello scrivere è raramente presente sia come progetto che come registrazione di successi o sconfitte.
E non si sente neanche mai che Cheever si rivolga ad un ipotetico lettore; è piuttosto quasi un flusso di coscienza questo diario che racconta eventi solo se minimi ( potato l'albero, passeggiata col cane, cena dai vicini ) senza rappresentare con esattezza lo scenario esterno ma disegnando con grande sottigliezza il paesaggio interiore di un uomo condannato a sentirsi inadeguato al mondo.
" E penso alla mia famiglia, soprattutto a mio fratello e a volte mia madre. Siamo in una fotografia di gruppo, io di solito all'estremo destra o dietro, sullo sfondo, in genere con un bicchiere in mano. Sembriamo stampati in un colore diverso dal resto del gruppo, ma non abbiamo l'intelligenza per capirlo, e così saremo sempre un po' impacciati, un po' sciocchi, e a volte intensamente infelici".
Ed è la scrittura limpida e disarmata con cui Cheever parla a sé stesso - a noi - che rende questo libro coinvolgente e unico.
Ho letto questo libro con molta lentezza perché qui in un certo senso non succede nulla , non sei condotto fra le pagine dal seguire azioni o avvenimenti. Procedendo nella lettura però si delinea per piccoli tocchi e con crescente chiarezza la complessità di un uomo come Cheever e nell'imparare a conoscere le sue inquietudini e le sue sconfitte ho provato un senso di intimità che non avevo mai trovato in letture analoghe.
Il suo mondo interiore, che è pure vasto, è però riconducibile a pochi temi fondamentali e questo credo che valga per la maggior parte di noi; si possono cambiare con facilità amicizie, amori, città e occupazioni ma i temi principali a cui torniamo sempre sono pochi e meno mutevoli di quanto crediamo .
Nel suo caso c'è una forte sensibilità e tensione verso la bellezza del quotidiano: la neve che cade, un lago ghiacciato, la luce del tramonto in giardino. L'amore e il desiderio spesso destinati alla frustrazione. E due ombre che lo accompagneranno tutta la vita: l'omosessualità che vive con grande senso di colpa e l'alcolismo, suo compagno quotidiano per decenni fra tentativi di riscatto e ricadute.
Leggendo queste pagine si ha quasi la sensazione che Cheever sia stato scrittore a sua insaputa; perché tranne qualche rara annotazione sui contemporanei ( in genere di elogio per gli altri -ah, la bravura di Saul Bellow - e di amarezza per sé stesso) il mestiere dello scrivere è raramente presente sia come progetto che come registrazione di successi o sconfitte.
E non si sente neanche mai che Cheever si rivolga ad un ipotetico lettore; è piuttosto quasi un flusso di coscienza questo diario che racconta eventi solo se minimi ( potato l'albero, passeggiata col cane, cena dai vicini ) senza rappresentare con esattezza lo scenario esterno ma disegnando con grande sottigliezza il paesaggio interiore di un uomo condannato a sentirsi inadeguato al mondo.
" E penso alla mia famiglia, soprattutto a mio fratello e a volte mia madre. Siamo in una fotografia di gruppo, io di solito all'estremo destra o dietro, sullo sfondo, in genere con un bicchiere in mano. Sembriamo stampati in un colore diverso dal resto del gruppo, ma non abbiamo l'intelligenza per capirlo, e così saremo sempre un po' impacciati, un po' sciocchi, e a volte intensamente infelici".
Ed è la scrittura limpida e disarmata con cui Cheever parla a sé stesso - a noi - che rende questo libro coinvolgente e unico.
November 15, 2016
The ultimate writer's journal. John Cheever is a very recent discovery for me. I have heard of him, but never dwell into his world, till I saw the film "The Swimmer." I loved the film, and was curious about the short story that the film is based on - well, I read it. Amazing. I then read other short stories by Cheever, and bingo, I realized that I really missed something here. He's an incredible and very insightful writer. His Journals are no exception to his skill. Some of the material here is very painful, but the most interesting aspect is when he talks about his drinking. He's not delusional, in fact, he's almost like a scientist or someone like Burroughs who can detect their 'problem' with a certain substance. Throughout this huge book, he touches on the world of alcoholism. He never sells himself into a world of fantasy. And on top of that, he knows how to write about his surroundings in great livid detail. I think anyone who keeps an ongoing journal (i do) should read this book.
August 16, 2022
John Cheever wrote in his journal consistently for over forty years. His journals, first published eight years after his death, at the beginning of the nineties contain only some of those millions of words he put down.
The journals are four hundred pages of peering into the soul of an enormously gifted and tormented writer. His talent was natural - there isn’t a bad sentence in this whole book. Writing was what he was meant to do and throughout his life, it poured out of him even when he wasn’t writing fiction. He talks about his marriage, unfulfilled sexual longings, and struggles with alcohol. His honesty and vulnerability are deeply touching and the scenes from his own life are just as well crafted as any of his best stories.
As the entries don’t have context I found that having read his biography beforehand helped greatly to grasp his journals. Although for the sheer pleasure of reading pitch-perfect sentences they work without any background information as well.
The journals are four hundred pages of peering into the soul of an enormously gifted and tormented writer. His talent was natural - there isn’t a bad sentence in this whole book. Writing was what he was meant to do and throughout his life, it poured out of him even when he wasn’t writing fiction. He talks about his marriage, unfulfilled sexual longings, and struggles with alcohol. His honesty and vulnerability are deeply touching and the scenes from his own life are just as well crafted as any of his best stories.
As the entries don’t have context I found that having read his biography beforehand helped greatly to grasp his journals. Although for the sheer pleasure of reading pitch-perfect sentences they work without any background information as well.
January 28, 2016
“One must act with a free heart—there can be nothing covert—and seek the best ways of expressing ourselves within the conditions under which we live. And waking I think how narrow and anxious my life is. Where are the mountains and green fields, the broad landscapes?” (1957)
John Cheever, what a perfect writer, what a tormented human. His journals, which read beautifully and show themselves to be intended for publication (thus lessening that stinging feeling of voyeurism that I get reading dead people’s diaries), are a stirring and often heartbreaking window into his life and his demons: particularly, alcoholism, his lifelong wrestling with homosexual desire and his tireless ambition to be great, to be remembered. The entries are undated, except for the year, and composed with brilliance and clarity and stark self-awareness. He is always harder on himself than he is on other people (even his frequently desired/despised wife, Mary), and there is a touching humility and brokenness that marks these pages.
“What we take for grief or sorrow seems, often, to be our inability to put ourselves into a viable relationship with the world; to this nearly lost paradise. Sometimes we see the reasons for this and sometimes we do not. Sometimes we wake up to find the lens that magnifies the excellence of the world and its people broken.” (1954)
John Cheever, what a perfect writer, what a tormented human. His journals, which read beautifully and show themselves to be intended for publication (thus lessening that stinging feeling of voyeurism that I get reading dead people’s diaries), are a stirring and often heartbreaking window into his life and his demons: particularly, alcoholism, his lifelong wrestling with homosexual desire and his tireless ambition to be great, to be remembered. The entries are undated, except for the year, and composed with brilliance and clarity and stark self-awareness. He is always harder on himself than he is on other people (even his frequently desired/despised wife, Mary), and there is a touching humility and brokenness that marks these pages.
“What we take for grief or sorrow seems, often, to be our inability to put ourselves into a viable relationship with the world; to this nearly lost paradise. Sometimes we see the reasons for this and sometimes we do not. Sometimes we wake up to find the lens that magnifies the excellence of the world and its people broken.” (1954)
December 8, 2016
Un libro duro, in cui Cheever si mette a nudo senza sconti.
Un libro pieno di fallimenti, di dolore e per questo così umano, così vero.
Cheever, con l'abilità della scrittura, spinge il lettore ad amare il proprio abisso, indipendentemente da quanto quest'ultimo lo spinga verso il baratro.
Un libro pieno di fallimenti, di dolore e per questo così umano, così vero.
Cheever, con l'abilità della scrittura, spinge il lettore ad amare il proprio abisso, indipendentemente da quanto quest'ultimo lo spinga verso il baratro.
September 15, 2013
Solo un grande scrittore può scrivere "non c'è niente di più meraviglioso del treno del lunedì alle 8:22" e convincerti che è vero. Ma come ogni diario, alcune pagine sono bellissime, intense, poetiche; altre sono delle annotazioni, quasi dei racconti, altre ancora sono ossessive, fin troppo. Insomma, non l'ho apprezzato in tutto; a volte mi pareva di guardare dal buco della serratura, come leggere i pensieri prima che vengano formulati ed espressi.
March 6, 2025
Totally bowled over—intimate, melancholic, beautiful, and full of paradoxes, I loved reading this soooo much.
August 31, 2020
Fiction continues to thrive as an art form because its dramas play out in the singular realm of the human imagination, where the exterior and interior worlds meet. Novels and stories are imaginative interfaces. Together, the author and the reader create a living landscape that is more complete, immersive, and charged with meaning than the expensively produced moving images on even the most high fidelity flat screen. But how does a writer go about triggering this magical act of co-creation? The answer, in part, is that we allow readers to experience the exterior world from inside a particular character. This concept is known as interiority.
The unique quality of the novel that allows us to become immersed in another human mind is central to its value and its popularity. Perhaps in part because we are denied it in everyday life, we crave the experience of accompanying a consciousness that is not our own as it confronts antagonists, goes on journeys, yearns, searches, reacts, muses, reflects, falls in love, and deals with the stress and emotional difficulties associated with good storytelling. In fiction it’s not the external plot (though external plot is of course essential), but the inner landscape that truly matters. This inner landscape is something novels do better than any other medium, and the reason they will never be fully supplanted by movies or TV or video games.
But why is the inner landscape so irresistible to us? And how can we as fiction writers make it more so?
To look for answers, I turned to one of the most inexplicably propulsive books of unplotted, unstructured narrative I’ve ever read: The Journal of John Cheever. This is a 400 page book with no plot per se, and no arc or dramatic need in the traditional sense either, other than the day-by-day, moment-by-moment struggle of one human being to come to terms with himself and the world. And yet you can’t put it down. Cheever’s inward-looking journal entries are so vivid, so charged with meaning, and so entertaining to read that they are immediately, irresistibly addictive, like heroin or Fritos corn chips. For these reasons, The Journal seems a fitting place to attempt to isolate the factors that make interiority irresistible, even in the absence of an underlying narrative infrastructure.
Read the rest of my review here: https://timweed.net/fictions-inner-la...
The unique quality of the novel that allows us to become immersed in another human mind is central to its value and its popularity. Perhaps in part because we are denied it in everyday life, we crave the experience of accompanying a consciousness that is not our own as it confronts antagonists, goes on journeys, yearns, searches, reacts, muses, reflects, falls in love, and deals with the stress and emotional difficulties associated with good storytelling. In fiction it’s not the external plot (though external plot is of course essential), but the inner landscape that truly matters. This inner landscape is something novels do better than any other medium, and the reason they will never be fully supplanted by movies or TV or video games.
But why is the inner landscape so irresistible to us? And how can we as fiction writers make it more so?
To look for answers, I turned to one of the most inexplicably propulsive books of unplotted, unstructured narrative I’ve ever read: The Journal of John Cheever. This is a 400 page book with no plot per se, and no arc or dramatic need in the traditional sense either, other than the day-by-day, moment-by-moment struggle of one human being to come to terms with himself and the world. And yet you can’t put it down. Cheever’s inward-looking journal entries are so vivid, so charged with meaning, and so entertaining to read that they are immediately, irresistibly addictive, like heroin or Fritos corn chips. For these reasons, The Journal seems a fitting place to attempt to isolate the factors that make interiority irresistible, even in the absence of an underlying narrative infrastructure.
Read the rest of my review here: https://timweed.net/fictions-inner-la...
January 3, 2013
I think John Cheever was an interesting man. In keeping his journals he wrote above an understanding about himself which he didn't have to reveal on the page because he possessed such complete insight. It's this imperfect picture of the man which makes him so interesting. He writes on and on at length but you don't quite get down to where the real John Cheever was.
The private Cheever revealed here doesn't strike me as being particularly literary. He was, of course, but he doesn't talk to himself in the journals about his work. You won't learn much about his fiction here. All the same, he must have relied on some worldview or rolled in some philosophical groove. It's difficult to label. He viewed himself with intellectual introspection without expressing a marked degree of intellectualism. He was merely meditative, and in ways I find fascinating, engaging.
The introduction by his son to these printed journals states the family had to come to terms with some of Cheever's perspectives. The family agonized over the picture he wrote of himself and of the revelations which come to light, openly written about during his lifetime. They include his struggle with alooholism, his bisexuality and affairs. It may be the hardest challenge was facing up to how he saw his married life. What he writes of his marriage and his wife, Mary, isn't a flattering, happy picture. In his marriage Cheever saw himself to be the abused and neglected one. In many of these entries about the ups and downs of his relationship with his wife you can detect his pain and unhappiness. I sense an aloofness, too. No doubt he wasn't perfect, but from his point of view he was savaged more than he dished out.
And I sense at the end he gave up and gave in. He beat the alcoholism but gave in to his taste in men. Maybe the latter because in the final years he seems to express an estrangement from the family. In all journals, though, what's always true is that only one side is being expressed. We think of Cheever as a writer. The story he writes here is of a fairly successful man in postwar America living in an unhappy family environment while struggling with sexual needs and alcohol but who always stands above it defiantly insisting he has the right to be who he is.
The private Cheever revealed here doesn't strike me as being particularly literary. He was, of course, but he doesn't talk to himself in the journals about his work. You won't learn much about his fiction here. All the same, he must have relied on some worldview or rolled in some philosophical groove. It's difficult to label. He viewed himself with intellectual introspection without expressing a marked degree of intellectualism. He was merely meditative, and in ways I find fascinating, engaging.
The introduction by his son to these printed journals states the family had to come to terms with some of Cheever's perspectives. The family agonized over the picture he wrote of himself and of the revelations which come to light, openly written about during his lifetime. They include his struggle with alooholism, his bisexuality and affairs. It may be the hardest challenge was facing up to how he saw his married life. What he writes of his marriage and his wife, Mary, isn't a flattering, happy picture. In his marriage Cheever saw himself to be the abused and neglected one. In many of these entries about the ups and downs of his relationship with his wife you can detect his pain and unhappiness. I sense an aloofness, too. No doubt he wasn't perfect, but from his point of view he was savaged more than he dished out.
And I sense at the end he gave up and gave in. He beat the alcoholism but gave in to his taste in men. Maybe the latter because in the final years he seems to express an estrangement from the family. In all journals, though, what's always true is that only one side is being expressed. We think of Cheever as a writer. The story he writes here is of a fairly successful man in postwar America living in an unhappy family environment while struggling with sexual needs and alcohol but who always stands above it defiantly insisting he has the right to be who he is.
February 28, 2022
I'm not the biggest fan of Cheever's novels, though I do like many of his stories (ie: "The Swimmer"). But the man fascinates me, and it took me around half a decade to read these journals. I'd pick them up, put them down, pick them up, put them down. I brought them to five cities and towns, to two separate countries, and so much of my life has changed between the time I bought it at a used bookstore in Massachusetts to now. In fact I began reading them not far from where Cheever died. And I finished them far away from there.
This, I think, is how the journals of a writer should be read - across significant stretches of time, across significant happenings in the reader's own life, and, probably more importantly, across years and years of things that don't seem significant in the moment but that, much later, they develop almost mythic proportions.
So okay. Cheever's public persona was tremendously at odds with who he was inside. He was at the very least a closeted bisexual, and his inner world had a bleakness to it that shocked those who knew him in life and who, upon the publication of these journals, expressed that shock publicly. Much of his journals grapple with shame, with desire, with guilt, with jealousy, with self-hatred. The writing is stunning, poetic, beautiful. They're hard to read, undated, and tremendously human.
I'm not sure who I'd recommend these journals to. Maybe nobody. But they were perfect for me, and I can see myself, in another five years time, picking them up and starting them over again, when I'm a different person.
This, I think, is how the journals of a writer should be read - across significant stretches of time, across significant happenings in the reader's own life, and, probably more importantly, across years and years of things that don't seem significant in the moment but that, much later, they develop almost mythic proportions.
So okay. Cheever's public persona was tremendously at odds with who he was inside. He was at the very least a closeted bisexual, and his inner world had a bleakness to it that shocked those who knew him in life and who, upon the publication of these journals, expressed that shock publicly. Much of his journals grapple with shame, with desire, with guilt, with jealousy, with self-hatred. The writing is stunning, poetic, beautiful. They're hard to read, undated, and tremendously human.
I'm not sure who I'd recommend these journals to. Maybe nobody. But they were perfect for me, and I can see myself, in another five years time, picking them up and starting them over again, when I'm a different person.
April 14, 2025
« Sono via. Lascio messaggi alle cameriere. Bevo un Martini. Aspetto che squilli il telefono.
Quando mi va male mi ubriaco, vado al cinema e torno a Bristol. L'idea sarebbe di andarmene da un posto, ma non me ne vado mai veramente, non arrivo mai in un altro posto. Cerco di divincolarmi dalle cose che mi legano, ma dimentico la natura dei legami. Vado al cinema. Mi sveglio alle quattro e leggo fino all'alba. Faccio tutto fuorché lavorare, che era il motivo per cui sono venuto.».
3,5 ⭐️ Non ci ho messo poco a leggere i diari di John Cheever, scritti dalla fine degli anni quaranta fino alla sua morte nel 1982. Cheever era un uomo pieno di contraddizioni: amava la moglie e i figli, ma si sentiva profondamente solo; amava le donne, ma amava anche gli uomini; si odiava perché aveva il vizio di bere, ma per gran parte della vita non riusci a smettere.
Qui la scrittura di Cheever è totalmente libera, una fonte inesauribile di poesia e di considerazioni sulla natura dell'amore, del sesso, del desiderio e della vita.
Quando mi va male mi ubriaco, vado al cinema e torno a Bristol. L'idea sarebbe di andarmene da un posto, ma non me ne vado mai veramente, non arrivo mai in un altro posto. Cerco di divincolarmi dalle cose che mi legano, ma dimentico la natura dei legami. Vado al cinema. Mi sveglio alle quattro e leggo fino all'alba. Faccio tutto fuorché lavorare, che era il motivo per cui sono venuto.».
3,5 ⭐️ Non ci ho messo poco a leggere i diari di John Cheever, scritti dalla fine degli anni quaranta fino alla sua morte nel 1982. Cheever era un uomo pieno di contraddizioni: amava la moglie e i figli, ma si sentiva profondamente solo; amava le donne, ma amava anche gli uomini; si odiava perché aveva il vizio di bere, ma per gran parte della vita non riusci a smettere.
Qui la scrittura di Cheever è totalmente libera, una fonte inesauribile di poesia e di considerazioni sulla natura dell'amore, del sesso, del desiderio e della vita.
February 7, 2008
I found reference to this book in a "source material" list Rick Moody placed at the end of his short story collection "Ring of the Brightest..." and it makes sense, if you've read Moody. Makes sense because Cheever was a tormented soul that battled, unsuccessfully with alcohol, among other things (including his inability to come to terms with his own sexuality), and it's all documented in these journal entries. The writing is pure Cheever, which is lucid and gorgeous and about five zillion other types of adjectives. This is dark stuff and best taken in small doses. And it's damn good.
August 7, 2019
Literary pastries!
January 8, 2024
4.5, Cheever at his personal best. A taste, from, page 393, 1982:
So, feeling I have conquered cancer, I stroll happily around the house. A loaf of bread is needed, and I will search for one. What more simple and universal pursuit could there be than a man looking for a new loaf of bread? The last of the unseasonable snow has melted and there is a curious greennes of fragrance in the air that represents what-death! I have not conquered cancer, I have merely worsened. So off I go to the supermarket, which is closed. The sight of this place without lights, without delivery trucks, and without a full parking lot is like some apocalyptic vision. In this society, in this world, at this time of day, finding the supermarket closed is an upheaval. I go to the lesser, and the losing, market and hope deeply that it will not have been forced to stay open in competition; but it too, happily, is closed. Christ the Lord is risen. It is at the bakery that I find the new bread. And how for me a bakery is the heart -and sometimes the soul- of a village! I remember the bakery in the little town north of Rome. I remember stopping at a restaurant in Romania with C. and being told that we could not yet have lunch; the bread hadn't been baked. One smiles at the girls in the bakery and wishes them a happy Easter.
March 22, 2020
"La cosa più meravigliosa della vita sembra essere che alla fine usiamo solo una parte infinetisimale del nostro potenziale autodistruttivo. Magari lo desideriamo, magari �� ciò che sognamo, ma basta un raggio di luce, un cambio del vento per dissuaderci."
"Le otto e mezza. Molte stelle. Niente luna. La spada e la cintura di Orione brillano e anche tutte le altre costellazioni delle quali ho dimenticato o non ho mai saputo il nome. Ripenso alla mia giovinezza e ai laghetti su cui pattinavo, a quella carica di forza, coraggio e determinazione che suscitava allora in me la luce delle stelle. Non è cambiato molto. Forse i miei sentimenti sono meno ardenti, le stelle sembrano brillare più dolcemente in questo periodo, ma quel piacere che mi fa rimanere a bocca aperta nel trovarle lì appese sopra il ghiaccio non è diminuito."
"Scrivere delle stupide agonie dell'ansia, e quando terminano, di come si rinnova la nostra forza; scrivere della nostra dolorosa ricerca di noi stessi, messa a repentaglio da uno sconosciuto all'ufficio postale, da un volto intravisto dietro il finestrino di un treno; scrivere dei continenti e dei popoli dei nostri sogni, dell'amore e della morte, del bene e del male, della fine del mondo."
Una specie di solitudine. I diari
John Cheever
Editore: Feltrinelli
Pag: 502
Voto: 4/5
"Le otto e mezza. Molte stelle. Niente luna. La spada e la cintura di Orione brillano e anche tutte le altre costellazioni delle quali ho dimenticato o non ho mai saputo il nome. Ripenso alla mia giovinezza e ai laghetti su cui pattinavo, a quella carica di forza, coraggio e determinazione che suscitava allora in me la luce delle stelle. Non è cambiato molto. Forse i miei sentimenti sono meno ardenti, le stelle sembrano brillare più dolcemente in questo periodo, ma quel piacere che mi fa rimanere a bocca aperta nel trovarle lì appese sopra il ghiaccio non è diminuito."
"Scrivere delle stupide agonie dell'ansia, e quando terminano, di come si rinnova la nostra forza; scrivere della nostra dolorosa ricerca di noi stessi, messa a repentaglio da uno sconosciuto all'ufficio postale, da un volto intravisto dietro il finestrino di un treno; scrivere dei continenti e dei popoli dei nostri sogni, dell'amore e della morte, del bene e del male, della fine del mondo."
Una specie di solitudine. I diari
John Cheever
Editore: Feltrinelli
Pag: 502
Voto: 4/5
January 16, 2023
Potser ara m'és una mica més fàcil viure
Read
March 26, 2018Continuo a pensare che un diario intimo, perfino qualora abbia velleità di pubblicazione già in vita, non debba essere suscettibile di critiche e giudizi estetici/artistici. Come per Pavese, che pure aveva dato ai suoi diari un'impronta più analitica e, in un certo senso, più filosofica, anche per Cheever le pagine rivelano un'esistenza inquieta, cui pure si unisce un evidente spirito vitale, per quanto malinconico.
Per mezzo di una scrittura tipicamente americana, quindi limpida e trasparente, Cheever confessa le proprie contraddizioni e i propri tormenti, dall'omosessualità - dapprima vissuta come repressione, poi come scoperta - all'alcolismo, sullo sfondo di un'America e di un mondo che cambiano e che sono raccontati con tenerezza e ironia. Soprattutto queste parole lunghe quarant'anni sembrano sempre preferire l'uomo allo scrittore, e pochi infatti sono i riferimenti ai propri successi letterari, mentre invece costanti sono i riferimenti all'ossessione dei piaceri del corpo, all'amore famigliare e coniugale, al fascino insuperabile del quotidiano. Ed ecco che la poesia non è poi così evidente, si nasconde tra le righe di frequenti episodi ripetitivi e insignificanti, come possono essere le cene con amici e vicini, le passeggiate solitarie, lo spogliarsi degli alberi. Durante il corso della lettura, allora, la più grande rivelazione che si possa avere è che anche i Grandi, per quanto grandi, sono immischiati negli alti e bassi della vita di tutti i giorni, e sono proprio come noi, amano, piangono, mangiano, giocano, soffrono e vengono sconfitti.
Per mezzo di una scrittura tipicamente americana, quindi limpida e trasparente, Cheever confessa le proprie contraddizioni e i propri tormenti, dall'omosessualità - dapprima vissuta come repressione, poi come scoperta - all'alcolismo, sullo sfondo di un'America e di un mondo che cambiano e che sono raccontati con tenerezza e ironia. Soprattutto queste parole lunghe quarant'anni sembrano sempre preferire l'uomo allo scrittore, e pochi infatti sono i riferimenti ai propri successi letterari, mentre invece costanti sono i riferimenti all'ossessione dei piaceri del corpo, all'amore famigliare e coniugale, al fascino insuperabile del quotidiano. Ed ecco che la poesia non è poi così evidente, si nasconde tra le righe di frequenti episodi ripetitivi e insignificanti, come possono essere le cene con amici e vicini, le passeggiate solitarie, lo spogliarsi degli alberi. Durante il corso della lettura, allora, la più grande rivelazione che si possa avere è che anche i Grandi, per quanto grandi, sono immischiati negli alti e bassi della vita di tutti i giorni, e sono proprio come noi, amano, piangono, mangiano, giocano, soffrono e vengono sconfitti.
January 20, 2023
Cuando un escritor se pone serio con los diarios suele ser una experiencia reveladora para el lector, no solo para conocerlo en sí, sino también para conocer su visión del mundo, cómo describe su realidad y hasta vincular experiencias con el propio lector. Este es el caso. Cheever pinta su realidad y la que lo rodea de manera compleja e interesante, tanto como su obra ficcional.
Lo primero que me llamó la atención es la cantidad de veces que Cheever describe viajes en ruta y las experiencias que va sintiendo de acuerdo a lo que ve. Hay algo en ese espacio sin dueño y sin tiempo que lo refleja, que lo hace sentir libre y triste a la vez; habla de la oscuridad del camino, de alguna luz que ve, de algunas personas que se cruza en su total fugacidad, sin comprometerse. Esto último es algo que Cheever tiene muy presente: todo el tiempo lucha contra su esencia, nadie lo conoce de verdad y eso lo lleva a la tristeza y al alcohol.
Esa tristeza subrayada muchas veces por cómo describe su vínculo con su familia, a quienes quiere, pero que a la vez quisiera dejar de lado para irse lejos. Aclaro que es un estado mental más que físico, pues aún cuando viaja (Roma por ejemplo), le cuesta disfrutar. El sexo ocasional y el consumo de bebidas también reflejan esa tristeza, por lo que todo el libro se ve empañado en ese sentimiento.
Hay un fragmento en el que habla de la infancia difícil de su esposa y cómo eso genera en ellos una relación desgastante; Cheever parecería aprovecharlo como excusa para su alcoholismo, pero en realidad lo usa para justificar su matrimonio: prefiere esa vida mayormente aburrida y rutinaria de una familia estable que las aventuras del soltero. El alcohol y las peleas, entonces, son para él meras anécdotas secundarias, apéndices de un tipo de vida que no quiere perder. En este fragmento también está la lluvia como telón de fondo.
La edición de Rodrigo Fresán aporta contexto necesario a muchas partes aunque siento que a veces se va de mambo con las anotaciones. Sin embargo no llena el libro, sino que aparece puntualmente, lo que es de agradecer.
Lo primero que me llamó la atención es la cantidad de veces que Cheever describe viajes en ruta y las experiencias que va sintiendo de acuerdo a lo que ve. Hay algo en ese espacio sin dueño y sin tiempo que lo refleja, que lo hace sentir libre y triste a la vez; habla de la oscuridad del camino, de alguna luz que ve, de algunas personas que se cruza en su total fugacidad, sin comprometerse. Esto último es algo que Cheever tiene muy presente: todo el tiempo lucha contra su esencia, nadie lo conoce de verdad y eso lo lleva a la tristeza y al alcohol.
Esa tristeza subrayada muchas veces por cómo describe su vínculo con su familia, a quienes quiere, pero que a la vez quisiera dejar de lado para irse lejos. Aclaro que es un estado mental más que físico, pues aún cuando viaja (Roma por ejemplo), le cuesta disfrutar. El sexo ocasional y el consumo de bebidas también reflejan esa tristeza, por lo que todo el libro se ve empañado en ese sentimiento.
Hay un fragmento en el que habla de la infancia difícil de su esposa y cómo eso genera en ellos una relación desgastante; Cheever parecería aprovecharlo como excusa para su alcoholismo, pero en realidad lo usa para justificar su matrimonio: prefiere esa vida mayormente aburrida y rutinaria de una familia estable que las aventuras del soltero. El alcohol y las peleas, entonces, son para él meras anécdotas secundarias, apéndices de un tipo de vida que no quiere perder. En este fragmento también está la lluvia como telón de fondo.
La edición de Rodrigo Fresán aporta contexto necesario a muchas partes aunque siento que a veces se va de mambo con las anotaciones. Sin embargo no llena el libro, sino que aparece puntualmente, lo que es de agradecer.
July 21, 2020
Finally finished this massive collection from one of America's leading literary stalwarts. It's not easy getting through this. Cheever's entries are for the most part unedited, he meanders from idea to idea within each entry, and it's hard sometimes to follow what he's referring to; it's better to place the type of writing somewhere between prose and poetry.
It's also difficult to get through the level of disdain, murky cynicism that he holds for those close to him, especially his wife Mary. It reads as if he was battling not only alcoholism, but depression, and at life's end, bone cancer. And indeed much acreage is spent on his coming to terms with his homosexuality. His critique of post-war and late 20th century suburban life is incisive, yet I wish it had more of the satire that makes this writing like this more delightful (viz Jonathan Franzen). Close readers might advise that the point of Cheever's writing is not to please or delight, but I still find it off-putting.
I'm glad I got through this, and am hoping that with more formal writing I can examine what his short stories and novels are like.
It's also difficult to get through the level of disdain, murky cynicism that he holds for those close to him, especially his wife Mary. It reads as if he was battling not only alcoholism, but depression, and at life's end, bone cancer. And indeed much acreage is spent on his coming to terms with his homosexuality. His critique of post-war and late 20th century suburban life is incisive, yet I wish it had more of the satire that makes this writing like this more delightful (viz Jonathan Franzen). Close readers might advise that the point of Cheever's writing is not to please or delight, but I still find it off-putting.
I'm glad I got through this, and am hoping that with more formal writing I can examine what his short stories and novels are like.
January 10, 2019
I found much of this insufferable and inauthentic, as Cheever during most of his life surely was. Only at the very end, as he finally accepts — at a very late age — his sexual proclivities (which even into his 50’s he was denying to himself, even as he had engaged in homosexual activities since adolescence), and as he begins to confront his terminal illness does the neurotic self-absorption rise above itself and strike a note of pathos — or at least a tone of bathos. That’s petty..., that last.
Disappointing (as was the novel, Falconer), and this lowers somewhat my opinion of Cheever’s stories, quite a number of which, in retrospect, seem to fail. Still, some are outstanding. Well, so it goes...
Disappointing (as was the novel, Falconer), and this lowers somewhat my opinion of Cheever’s stories, quite a number of which, in retrospect, seem to fail. Still, some are outstanding. Well, so it goes...
April 2, 2018
"الحنين ليس شيئاً على الإطلاق.
نصف البشر في العالم يشعرون بالغربة، طوال الوقت.
إنهم لايشتاقون لوطنٍ ما ،بل يشتاقون لشيءٍ ما داخل أنفسهم يفتقدونه،
أو ربما لايملكون القدرة على إيجادة."
-----
جون شيفر
-----
"الإنسان الوحيد، كائنٌ مُنعزل. ربما يكون:
عَظمة ؛ قطعة من الخشب؛ حجرٌ؛ إناءٌ للنبيذ؛ قامةٌ مُقَوَّسة الظَّهْرِ
تجلسُ على حافةِ سريرِ الفندق، وتطلق آهاتٍ عميقة،
مثل رياحِ الخريف ."
----
في منتصف العمر ، هناك سرٌما ، هناك منطقة غموض، أكثر ما يمكنني فعله هذه الساعة هو الشعور بالعزلة ، حتى جمال العالم المرئي بدأ يتلاشى، حتى الحب، شعرت أن هناك بعض التحولات الخاطئة لكني لم أعلم متى حدثت، ولم يعد لدي أملٌ في البحث عنها .
نصف البشر في العالم يشعرون بالغربة، طوال الوقت.
إنهم لايشتاقون لوطنٍ ما ،بل يشتاقون لشيءٍ ما داخل أنفسهم يفتقدونه،
أو ربما لايملكون القدرة على إيجادة."
-----
جون شيفر
-----
"الإنسان الوحيد، كائنٌ مُنعزل. ربما يكون:
عَظمة ؛ قطعة من الخشب؛ حجرٌ؛ إناءٌ للنبيذ؛ قامةٌ مُقَوَّسة الظَّهْرِ
تجلسُ على حافةِ سريرِ الفندق، وتطلق آهاتٍ عميقة،
مثل رياحِ الخريف ."
----
في منتصف العمر ، هناك سرٌما ، هناك منطقة غموض، أكثر ما يمكنني فعله هذه الساعة هو الشعور بالعزلة ، حتى جمال العالم المرئي بدأ يتلاشى، حتى الحب، شعرت أن هناك بعض التحولات الخاطئة لكني لم أعلم متى حدثت، ولم يعد لدي أملٌ في البحث عنها .
August 20, 2010
Journals as written genius. He couldn't write a bad sentence, whether in a journal, a short story, anything. Shows that writers write, tortured or not. Whether a journal, or a short story, or an edit of a short story, or parts of a novel, or edits of a novel, or, hell, even a Goodreads entry, writers write. It's in their blood, good or bad. And if you're not writing--no matter what it is--you're not a writer. Period.
This collection shows that.
This collection shows that.
February 21, 2011
Completely engrossing. You feel like such a decadent voyeur dipping into these pages. Cheever has a way of luring you in to his world and making you feel guilty for bearing witness to it all at once. These journals are full of scandal and intellect and beauty. They are the perfect nightstand reading. Eat up.
June 28, 2021
Esistono quei libri viscerali, che ti scavano dentro.
La dimensione più intima di Cheever - John uomo e John scrittore - è racchiusa nelle pagine del suo diario, abbraccia gli anni '30-'80, in una prosa limpida e onesta.
Cheever non nasconde le sue contraddizioni, le crisi matrimoniali, il suo eterno conflitto con la bisessualità, gli impulsi sessuali, la costante malinconia. E l'alcool, compagno costante di vita.
È stata Olivia Laing a farmi conoscere questo grande autore americano con "Viaggio a Echo Spring", un saggio-memoir che racconta dei grandi scrittori americani alcoolizzati. John Cheever era uno sconosciuto tra le bestie sacre Hemingway e Fitzgerald, ma la sua storia mi ha colpito, a volte succede che un autore ti penetra nella pelle, ti fa sentire meno sola, ti lacera. È successa la stessa comunione di spirito con Sylvia Plath, di cui non smetterò mai di consigliare i suoi diari e che bene si accosta con l'anima alle memorie di Cheever.
Uno dei libri più belli che abbia mai letto, che mi ha fatto sentire meno outsider perché "il massimo che riesca a cogliere in questo periodo è una specie di solitudine".
Su un tram affollato a Roma all'ora di chiusura una sera d'inverno, qualcuno per sbaglio mi tocca la spalla. Non mi giro a guardare chi è e non saprò mai se è un uomo o una donna, una sgualdrina o un prete, ma quel tocco delicato scatena in me un tale desiderio di tenerezza e di cura che sospiro; mi sento cedere le ginocchia. Non è un sospiro profumato di violette né uno spasimo chopinesco: è qualcosa di rozzo e reale come i peli sulla mia pancia.
La dimensione più intima di Cheever - John uomo e John scrittore - è racchiusa nelle pagine del suo diario, abbraccia gli anni '30-'80, in una prosa limpida e onesta.
Cheever non nasconde le sue contraddizioni, le crisi matrimoniali, il suo eterno conflitto con la bisessualità, gli impulsi sessuali, la costante malinconia. E l'alcool, compagno costante di vita.
È stata Olivia Laing a farmi conoscere questo grande autore americano con "Viaggio a Echo Spring", un saggio-memoir che racconta dei grandi scrittori americani alcoolizzati. John Cheever era uno sconosciuto tra le bestie sacre Hemingway e Fitzgerald, ma la sua storia mi ha colpito, a volte succede che un autore ti penetra nella pelle, ti fa sentire meno sola, ti lacera. È successa la stessa comunione di spirito con Sylvia Plath, di cui non smetterò mai di consigliare i suoi diari e che bene si accosta con l'anima alle memorie di Cheever.
Uno dei libri più belli che abbia mai letto, che mi ha fatto sentire meno outsider perché "il massimo che riesca a cogliere in questo periodo è una specie di solitudine".
Su un tram affollato a Roma all'ora di chiusura una sera d'inverno, qualcuno per sbaglio mi tocca la spalla. Non mi giro a guardare chi è e non saprò mai se è un uomo o una donna, una sgualdrina o un prete, ma quel tocco delicato scatena in me un tale desiderio di tenerezza e di cura che sospiro; mi sento cedere le ginocchia. Non è un sospiro profumato di violette né uno spasimo chopinesco: è qualcosa di rozzo e reale come i peli sulla mia pancia.
October 6, 2021
Es el mejor diario que he leído en mi vida.
August 20, 2024
Ecco perché un racconto non può durare per 500 pagine.
December 4, 2023
Starting this book for my book club, I had never read any John Cheever and I didn't know anything about him. I went into it blind. At first I really struggled reading his diary and despaired of the 400 pages I would have to slog through. Slowly, I became more drawn into what I was reading. Not sure if his writing in his journals became more interesting and well written or if I just got absorbed into the story of his life. The diaries span 35 years, with the last entry written just days before he died, so by the end I felt very invested in him and his life. It was very moving, being an observer of someone's private thoughts for the majority of their adult lives.
I had, fleetingly, this morning, a sense of the world, of one's life, one's friends, and one's lovers as givens.Here it all is-comprehensible, lovely, a sort of paradise. That this will be taken quite as swiftly as it has been given is difficult to remember.
To have been expelled from Thayer Academy for smoking and then to have been given an honorary degree from Harvard seems to me a crowning example of the inestimable opportunities of the world in which I live
It seems that in my coming of age I missed a year-perhaps a day or an hour-so that the consecutiveness of growth was damaged. But how can I go back and find this moment that was lost?
His life was not an easy one on certain levels. Yes, he was a successful author. He had healthy children. He had a beautiful home. He traveled to fascinating places. He had friends. He had a long marriage. Yet....he was an alcoholic. He was attracted to men in an era when that was shameful and upsetting. He struggled with depression and anxiety. He became addicted to pills. His marriage turned sour. He never felt he had enough money. He felt despondent about his talent and skill as a writer. Shades of imposter syndrome.
I have no time to waste and yet I waste my days.
All | lack is guts. I may be completely mistaken in all my feelings; but they are mine at the moment.
In an upper-class gathering I suddenly think of myself as a pariah- a small and dirty fraud, a deserved outcast, spiritual and sexual impostor, a loathsome thing.
What we take for grief or sorrow seems, often, to be our inability to put ourselves into a viable relationship to the world.
a man can be given nearly everything the world has to offer and go on yearning.
Throughout the book I kept wondering how his life would have unspooled if he had been able to take antidepressants. If he had not self-medicated his depression with pills and alcohol. I wondered how much his depression and anxiety was genetic and how much of it stemmed from feeling a deep sense of shame over his sexual desire. He must have used the word "lewd" easily a hundred times when describing his feelings for men. Was he bisexual as he claimed? Was he gay and just could not admit that to himself? He loved being married, having kids and having a stable home. He felt he could only have than with a woman. Women represented that security of home and men represented freedom and sexual pleasure. He felt he could not have both security and sexual pleasure but he wanted both. It killed him, trying to pick one or the other. If only he had been born in 2012 instead of 1912! He would have grown up knowing 2 men could marry and have kids and a home and a life together. Those desires would have been merged - sexual fulfillment and the fulfillment of a relationship and a family. Would he have turned to alcohol and pills to numb himself if he had to freedom to be who he really was all along?
Today I wake up in the morning feeling lewd and high-spirited, but my only harvest is haggard looks and bitter contradictions.
the thought of being a homosexual terrifies me
To have the good fortune to love what is seemly and what the world counsels one to love, and to be loved in , is a lighter destiny than to court a sailor in Port-au-Prince who will pick your pockets, wring your neck, and leave you dead in a gutter.
Then thoughts of such lewdness cross his mind that he rolls onto his side and sends up toward Heaven an earnest prayer for some better understanding of cleanliness.
I am tired of worrying about constipation, homosexuality, alcoholism, and brooding on what a gay bar must be like. Are they filled with scented hobgoblins, girlish youths, stern beauties? I will never know.
Lunching with friends who talked about their tedious careers in lechery, I thought: I am gay, I am gay, I am at last free of all this. This did not last for long.
Homosexuality seemed to me a lingering death. If I followed my instincts I would be strangled by some hairy sailor in a public urinal. Every comely man, every bank clerk and boy, was aimed at my life like a loaded pistol.
It was difficult to read his struggles with addiction, especially as he aged and the impact on his health grew larger. He would write about what a sick old man he was and I would have to remind myself that he was 60 when writing that. Not old at all to my 55 year old self! He was old though, both in body and in spirit. The years and years of smoking and pill popping and drinking - oh the heavy drinking! - destroyed his body. He also seemed exhausted by the years of internal struggles with his depression and his relationship issues. He had affairs with women and men on top of his long marriage but he never seemed happy with any of them. By the end of his diaries he came across as worn out, as used up, as exhausted with life. I hope death brought him peace.
Mary is depressed, although my addiction to gin may have something to do with her low spirits.
I could very easily destroy myself. It is ten o'clock now and I am thinking of the noontime snort.
I am round-shouldered and bent-necked and dreary and nothing but a pint of bourbon will straighten me out.
Each noon I reach for the whiskey bottle. I don't seem able to drink temperately and yet I don't seem able to stop.
I drink two Martinis before lunch and feel very playful. I seem entitled to these drinks. As the afternoon wanes the turmoil waxes, and when I get home I think I deserve a few cocktails. I drink after dinner. In the morning I feel sick, disgusted with myself, despairing and obscene. I have a drink to pull myself together at half past eleven
I drink to forget my troubles, but this only seems to deepen the abyss
I drink to still my anxieties and misgivings, but I fail.
To describe my alcoholic thirst beginning at nine in the morning and becoming sometimes unmanageable at eleven-thirty. To describe the humiliation of stealing a drink in the pantry and the galling taste of gin
I have a drink at the Biltmore, where my hand is shaking so that it is difficult to get the glass to my mouth.
I seem unable to resurrect the months in Boston. The role alcohol played is inestimable. I seem to have lost some manuscripts. I claim not to be troubled beyond worrying that they might fall into someone else's hands. I cannot face the thought of having lost my moorings through drunkenness.
Cheever wrote a fair amount about his church going. To me it seemed less about actual religious belief and more about the community, the tradition, the stability that going to Sunday services meant. From what I've heard about his fiction, he focused a lot on the traditional suburban life of America in the 1950s and 1960s, and regular church attendance was part of that life. I wondered too if his attraction to church was related to his unhappiness over his "lewd" desires. That church was also a punishment.
I pray to understand the transports and infirmities of my flesh; not to be spared the pain of sickness and hurt but to understand it; and to be spared the pain of what I think of as moral uncleanliness
it seems that we cannot reform our sexual natures.
People who seek, who are driven to seek, love in urinals, do not deserve the best of our attention.
there seems to be some kind of knot, some hard-shell and insoluble element that, as far as I can see, conforms to social usage and custom and contradicts the hankerings and declarations of my flesh.
I have acted only on my own instincts, tried, discreetly, to relieve my drunken loneliness, my troublesome hunger for sexual tenderness. Perhaps sin has to do with the incident, and I have had this sort of intercourse only three times in my adult life.
He spent a fair amount of time writing about his house and garden and the joy he felt spending time in them. From what I could gather, his childhood was unpleasant and stressful and he wanted to create something different for himself as an adult. Both his parents sounded awful, at least what he chose to write about them. His parents divorced and I think the trauma surrounding that was one reason he never divorced his wife Mary. He also didn't want to leave his house! Back then the woman pretty much automatically got the house and kids. That stable home meant so much to him, it kept him in an unhappy marriage.
Housework seems trivial, but for what it means. One of my greatest difficulties with women has turned on this. It begins with my grandmother. When she, through some breakdown of finances, was obliged to wash the dishes, the men of my family suffered. It was our fault that she, a distinguished, wellborn, and intelligent woman, was bent over a dishpan. If we offered to help, she would wave us away; but we had failed her, not only as providers but as men. The same was true of my mother. When she was obliged to do housework and wash dishes, the sense was always that she had been martyred by the inadequacy, the stupidity of the male sex. Why was this distinguished and intelligent woman suffered to wield a carpet sweeper? It was because her sons and her husband were next to worthless.
When my mother went to work she abdicated all of her responsibilities as a woman. Our house was cold.
My mother, a woman of eighty, told me that my father had left on his desk, for her to read after his death, a letter excoriating her.
I should read. I should write. I should translate a page of Italian. But all I do is drink and polish the candlesticks.
I don't want to make a life with my bachelor friends or be a dog in the households of the married people I know, bringing a bottle of wine for dinner or a present for the child.
I don't want to part with my children and I suspect that I don't want to part with the comforts of my home, a place where I can count on warm meals and company. I am afraid of living in hotel rooms and eating in cafeterias
I don't divorce, because I am afraid to-afraid of aloneness, alcoholism, and suicide. These rooms, these lawns, and the company of my son help to keep me alive.
I had, fleetingly, this morning, a sense of the world, of one's life, one's friends, and one's lovers as givens.Here it all is-comprehensible, lovely, a sort of paradise. That this will be taken quite as swiftly as it has been given is difficult to remember.
To have been expelled from Thayer Academy for smoking and then to have been given an honorary degree from Harvard seems to me a crowning example of the inestimable opportunities of the world in which I live
It seems that in my coming of age I missed a year-perhaps a day or an hour-so that the consecutiveness of growth was damaged. But how can I go back and find this moment that was lost?
His life was not an easy one on certain levels. Yes, he was a successful author. He had healthy children. He had a beautiful home. He traveled to fascinating places. He had friends. He had a long marriage. Yet....he was an alcoholic. He was attracted to men in an era when that was shameful and upsetting. He struggled with depression and anxiety. He became addicted to pills. His marriage turned sour. He never felt he had enough money. He felt despondent about his talent and skill as a writer. Shades of imposter syndrome.
I have no time to waste and yet I waste my days.
All | lack is guts. I may be completely mistaken in all my feelings; but they are mine at the moment.
In an upper-class gathering I suddenly think of myself as a pariah- a small and dirty fraud, a deserved outcast, spiritual and sexual impostor, a loathsome thing.
What we take for grief or sorrow seems, often, to be our inability to put ourselves into a viable relationship to the world.
a man can be given nearly everything the world has to offer and go on yearning.
Throughout the book I kept wondering how his life would have unspooled if he had been able to take antidepressants. If he had not self-medicated his depression with pills and alcohol. I wondered how much his depression and anxiety was genetic and how much of it stemmed from feeling a deep sense of shame over his sexual desire. He must have used the word "lewd" easily a hundred times when describing his feelings for men. Was he bisexual as he claimed? Was he gay and just could not admit that to himself? He loved being married, having kids and having a stable home. He felt he could only have than with a woman. Women represented that security of home and men represented freedom and sexual pleasure. He felt he could not have both security and sexual pleasure but he wanted both. It killed him, trying to pick one or the other. If only he had been born in 2012 instead of 1912! He would have grown up knowing 2 men could marry and have kids and a home and a life together. Those desires would have been merged - sexual fulfillment and the fulfillment of a relationship and a family. Would he have turned to alcohol and pills to numb himself if he had to freedom to be who he really was all along?
Today I wake up in the morning feeling lewd and high-spirited, but my only harvest is haggard looks and bitter contradictions.
the thought of being a homosexual terrifies me
To have the good fortune to love what is seemly and what the world counsels one to love, and to be loved in , is a lighter destiny than to court a sailor in Port-au-Prince who will pick your pockets, wring your neck, and leave you dead in a gutter.
Then thoughts of such lewdness cross his mind that he rolls onto his side and sends up toward Heaven an earnest prayer for some better understanding of cleanliness.
I am tired of worrying about constipation, homosexuality, alcoholism, and brooding on what a gay bar must be like. Are they filled with scented hobgoblins, girlish youths, stern beauties? I will never know.
Lunching with friends who talked about their tedious careers in lechery, I thought: I am gay, I am gay, I am at last free of all this. This did not last for long.
Homosexuality seemed to me a lingering death. If I followed my instincts I would be strangled by some hairy sailor in a public urinal. Every comely man, every bank clerk and boy, was aimed at my life like a loaded pistol.
It was difficult to read his struggles with addiction, especially as he aged and the impact on his health grew larger. He would write about what a sick old man he was and I would have to remind myself that he was 60 when writing that. Not old at all to my 55 year old self! He was old though, both in body and in spirit. The years and years of smoking and pill popping and drinking - oh the heavy drinking! - destroyed his body. He also seemed exhausted by the years of internal struggles with his depression and his relationship issues. He had affairs with women and men on top of his long marriage but he never seemed happy with any of them. By the end of his diaries he came across as worn out, as used up, as exhausted with life. I hope death brought him peace.
Mary is depressed, although my addiction to gin may have something to do with her low spirits.
I could very easily destroy myself. It is ten o'clock now and I am thinking of the noontime snort.
I am round-shouldered and bent-necked and dreary and nothing but a pint of bourbon will straighten me out.
Each noon I reach for the whiskey bottle. I don't seem able to drink temperately and yet I don't seem able to stop.
I drink two Martinis before lunch and feel very playful. I seem entitled to these drinks. As the afternoon wanes the turmoil waxes, and when I get home I think I deserve a few cocktails. I drink after dinner. In the morning I feel sick, disgusted with myself, despairing and obscene. I have a drink to pull myself together at half past eleven
I drink to forget my troubles, but this only seems to deepen the abyss
I drink to still my anxieties and misgivings, but I fail.
To describe my alcoholic thirst beginning at nine in the morning and becoming sometimes unmanageable at eleven-thirty. To describe the humiliation of stealing a drink in the pantry and the galling taste of gin
I have a drink at the Biltmore, where my hand is shaking so that it is difficult to get the glass to my mouth.
I seem unable to resurrect the months in Boston. The role alcohol played is inestimable. I seem to have lost some manuscripts. I claim not to be troubled beyond worrying that they might fall into someone else's hands. I cannot face the thought of having lost my moorings through drunkenness.
Cheever wrote a fair amount about his church going. To me it seemed less about actual religious belief and more about the community, the tradition, the stability that going to Sunday services meant. From what I've heard about his fiction, he focused a lot on the traditional suburban life of America in the 1950s and 1960s, and regular church attendance was part of that life. I wondered too if his attraction to church was related to his unhappiness over his "lewd" desires. That church was also a punishment.
I pray to understand the transports and infirmities of my flesh; not to be spared the pain of sickness and hurt but to understand it; and to be spared the pain of what I think of as moral uncleanliness
it seems that we cannot reform our sexual natures.
People who seek, who are driven to seek, love in urinals, do not deserve the best of our attention.
there seems to be some kind of knot, some hard-shell and insoluble element that, as far as I can see, conforms to social usage and custom and contradicts the hankerings and declarations of my flesh.
I have acted only on my own instincts, tried, discreetly, to relieve my drunken loneliness, my troublesome hunger for sexual tenderness. Perhaps sin has to do with the incident, and I have had this sort of intercourse only three times in my adult life.
He spent a fair amount of time writing about his house and garden and the joy he felt spending time in them. From what I could gather, his childhood was unpleasant and stressful and he wanted to create something different for himself as an adult. Both his parents sounded awful, at least what he chose to write about them. His parents divorced and I think the trauma surrounding that was one reason he never divorced his wife Mary. He also didn't want to leave his house! Back then the woman pretty much automatically got the house and kids. That stable home meant so much to him, it kept him in an unhappy marriage.
Housework seems trivial, but for what it means. One of my greatest difficulties with women has turned on this. It begins with my grandmother. When she, through some breakdown of finances, was obliged to wash the dishes, the men of my family suffered. It was our fault that she, a distinguished, wellborn, and intelligent woman, was bent over a dishpan. If we offered to help, she would wave us away; but we had failed her, not only as providers but as men. The same was true of my mother. When she was obliged to do housework and wash dishes, the sense was always that she had been martyred by the inadequacy, the stupidity of the male sex. Why was this distinguished and intelligent woman suffered to wield a carpet sweeper? It was because her sons and her husband were next to worthless.
When my mother went to work she abdicated all of her responsibilities as a woman. Our house was cold.
My mother, a woman of eighty, told me that my father had left on his desk, for her to read after his death, a letter excoriating her.
I should read. I should write. I should translate a page of Italian. But all I do is drink and polish the candlesticks.
I don't want to make a life with my bachelor friends or be a dog in the households of the married people I know, bringing a bottle of wine for dinner or a present for the child.
I don't want to part with my children and I suspect that I don't want to part with the comforts of my home, a place where I can count on warm meals and company. I am afraid of living in hotel rooms and eating in cafeterias
I don't divorce, because I am afraid to-afraid of aloneness, alcoholism, and suicide. These rooms, these lawns, and the company of my son help to keep me alive.
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