Looking for Work

by Susan Cheever

Her first book. Dust jacket art by Janet Halverson.

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Looking for Work, Susan Cheever’s first novel, is the story of Salley Gardens, daughter of a respected Columbia University professor. The book describes Salley’s haphazard quest for personal fulfillment in America at an unspecified moment in time—likely the early 1970s. Cheever makes it clear that Salley has come of age in a world that has more regard for her looks than her abilities and treats her as an appendage of the men in her life. When the novel begins, Salley, a recent Radcliffe graduate, is living in Wyoming, working for the Laramie Eagle, “the only newspaper that offered me a job when I graduated from college with a gentlewoman’s C- average.” But Salley is ambitious. Smart and confident, she enjoys her independence and does not like the idea of being tied down. But, confident or not, she cannot defy expectations and say no when her beau, Jason Gardens (the son of close friends of her parents), proposes. Setting her doubts aside, Salley leaves her job, moves to New York, and marries Jason, an editor at a prestigious magazine, and to her regret is instantly subsumed into his life and milieu. From this point Cheever’s novel becomes a series of encounters as Salley struggles to escape the smothering cocoon of her marriage and establish an identity for herself and thereby achieve a kind of rebirth. Her confusion is brilliantly evoked in the set pieces that are Cheever’s primary focus. These episodes establish her growing ambivalence toward the institution of marriage, her attraction to men other than Jason, and her doubts regarding children and motherhood. Along the way Salley endures one humiliating interview after another as she hunts for satisfying work and becomes attuned to the body language of the men (it is always men doing the interviewing) seated across the desk as they smile and cheerily dismiss her accomplishments and qualifications and tell her to keep in touch. Eventually, her marriage having fizzled, she embarks on a series of casual dalliances, eventually falling in love with Max Angelo, a famous sculptor, an impulsive, intensely selfish, sensual man of the world. But even here the luster dims because the relationship proceeds on Max’s terms: Salley is always being called upon to accommodate Max’s schedule and cater to Max’s whims and desires. In the end Salley accepts a lowly position with a national publication. But it’s a foot in the door, and she understands that as a young woman navigating a man’s world, she must take whatever crumbs fall her way. Salley’s story may not be spellbinding, but it is never less than amusing, and Cheever’s sophisticated, crystalline prose frequently achieves dazzling poetic heights. Inevitably some readers will be put off by Salley’s moneyed lineage and secure standing as the daughter of white, east-coast privilege—How can we be expected to sympathize with someone who’s never known a moment of hardship in her life? Indeed, the novel provoked annoyance on precisely this score when it was published in 1980, and Cheever’s heroine was dismissed as insipid and self-centred. However, assessed on its own terms, Susan Cheever’s debut fiction achieves an extraordinary feat: it draws us into the rarefied world of a spoiled, coddled young woman whom we would probably detest in real life, and keeps us entertained until the end.

[Alex Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was Susan Cheever's first novel, and like many first novels it is clearly autobiographical. It has some of the flaws that first novels often have - aside from Salley, the narrator, who is Cheever's alter ego, virtually all of the characters are very sketchily drawn. The only exception is a handsome, charming, swashbuckler of an artist, who seems less like a real human being and more like a romantic fantasy figure out of a true romance novel. Shirley Jackson wrote that a first novel's purpose is to "get even with your parents", and there appears to be a lot of score-settling going on here. Salley complains about others not meeting her needs- her husband who isn't making her happy, her disapproving mother-in-law, her parents who are unsupportive about her divorce, her husband's possessive daughters from his first marriage. - - but she never expresses any interest in what these people might deserve from her. It's always a lament about what Salley's not getting from others, not what she might be expected to give others, which makes her seem painfully self-absorbed. She also periodically whines about having nothing to do (it never occurs to her to try to find fulfilling volunteer work until she can secure a paying job) and about being bored. The latter trait is particularly annoying in an episode in San Francisco when Salley expects sympathy because her lover cannot take an afternoon off from his art exhibition to be with her, and she self-righteously sulks about "having nothing to do." I wanted to yell, "It's San Francisco! Go to a museum, an art gallery, a park, architecturally notable houses, an independent movie theater. Or wallow in self-pity because someone actually had a priority for an afternoon other than you." The novel's most effective episodes deal with some of the same issues as "The Women's Room." Salley experiences infuriating and demoralizing sexism in her job searches, and after Salley's divorce male acquaintances crassly come on to her, apparently considering her an easy sexual target now that she no longer has a husband.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Susan is my former Bennington advisor and current Bennington tennis partner so it’s hard to be unbiased in a review. She is one of my favs! I read this after an email exchange with her complaining about the correlation between my lack of day job and lack of self worth and she told me she wrote this, her first book, in a similar situation. I suspected there might be something in here for me, and there was. It’s not a perfect book but what you can find is a wonderfully snarky, honest and self-depreciating voice, and a keen look at the marriage plot (this one in the late 1970s) and where it’s left women told through the eyes of an entirely unsentimental narrator figuring out her own self-sufficiency.

[Levben Parsons · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though a very easy read, this book seemed indulgent filled with anecdotes and trivialities of braggadocio.