The Lowboy

by John Cheever

The writer disliked his brother, Richard, a small man, who had a number of unpleasant qualities. When Cousin Mathilda offered the writer something from a group of family heirlooms, he asked for a certain lowboy, though he was not especially anxious to have it. Richard, on the other hand, wanted it very much, & badgered his brother until he got it. In his house, it became a perfect symbol of the past, standing on a rug like the one it originally stood upon, with a silver pitcher on it as of old. The writer imagines how this symbol will bring back a number of departed relatives. He recalls the horrid story of each one of the family members. When he visits Richard he finds that the lowboy has actually made Richard more disagreeable than he'd been before.

Genres: Short Stories

16 pages, Unknown Binding

First published October 10, 1959

About the author

John 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.

Reviews

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two bothers would each like to inherit a beautiful piece of furniture, a lowboy, which had passed down through generations of their family. The narrator imagines his brother's inner feelings in a similar way to Cheever's "Goodbye, My Brother." There is a sense that a rivalry between the two brothers has been present since childhood.

Real happiness is not found in material things. The narrator decides he does not want to live in the past, or acknowledge the ways his ancestors either helped or hurt him. He throws away the reminders of the past, and wants to move on and live in the present.

The title is interesting, and seems to be more than the name of a piece of furniture. It can also indicate how each brother had the feeling of being the "low boy" in the family at some time during their years of rivalry. Good story!

"The Lowboy" is story #34 in the collection "The Stories of John Cheever."

[Classic reverie · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Cheever's "The Lowboy" is a short story about disagreeable relatives and wanting not to hold on to the past. Richard seems petty and longs to impress, wanting all for himself. The narrator sees his relatives in all their troubles and looks to break with the past, seeing how small his small brother really is.

Story in short- Who gets to keep the family lowboy?


“O H I HATE small men and I will write about them no more but in passing I would like to say that’s what my brother Richard is: small. He has small hands, small feet, a small waist, small children, a small wife, and when he comes to our cocktail parties he sits in a chair. If you pick up a book of his, you will find his name, “Richard Norton,” on the flyleaf in his very small handwriting. He emanates, in my opinion, a disgusting aura of smallness. He is also spoiled, and when you go to his house you eat his food from his china with his silver, and if you observe his capricious and vulgar house rules you may be lucky enough to get some of his brandy, just as thirty years ago one went into his room to play with his toys at his pleasure and to be rewarded with a glass of his ginger ale. Some people make less of an adventure than a performance of their passions. They do not seem to fall in love and make friends but to cast, with men, women, children, and dogs, some stirring drama that they were committed to producing at the moment of their birth. This is especially noticeable on the part of those whose casting is limited by a slender emotional budget.”


“My request was halfhearted. I did not really care, but it seemed that my brother did. Cousin Mathilda wrote him that she was giving the lowboy to me, and he telephoned to say that he wanted it—that he wanted it so much more than I did that there was no point in even discussing it. He asked if he could visit me on Sunday—we live about fifty miles apart—and, of course, I invited him.”

“I understood him (who wouldn’t?), but I suspected his motives. The lowboy was an elegant piece of furniture, and I wondered if he didn’t want it for cachet, as a kind family crest, something that would vouch for the richness of his past and authenticate his descent from the most aristocratic of the seventeenth-century settlers. I could see him standing proudly beside it with a drink in his hand. My lowboy. It would appear in the background of their Christmas card, for it was one of those pieces of cabinetwork that seem to have a countenance of the most exquisite breeding. It would be the final piece in the puzzle of respectability that he had made of his life. We had shared a checkered, troubled, and sometimes sorrowful past, and Richard had risen from this chaos into a dazzling and resplendent respectability, but perhaps this image of himself would be improved by the lowboy; perhaps the image would not be complete without it.”

“There was a problem of delivery. Nice Mr. Osborn was willing to take the lowboy as far as my house but no farther. He would deliver it on Thursday, and then I could take it on to Richard’s in my station wagon whenever this was convenient. I called Richard and explained these arrangements to him, and he was, as he had been from the beginning, nervous and intense. Was my station wagon big enough? Was it in good condition? And where would keep the lowboy between Thursday and Sunday? I mustn’t leave it in the garage. When I came home on Thursday the lowboy was there, and it was in the garage. Richard called in the middle of dinner to see if it had arrived, and spoke revealingly, from the depths of his peculiar feelings. “Of course you’ll let me have the lowboy?” he asked. “I don’t understand.” “You won’t keep it?” What was at the bottom of this? I wondered. Why should he endure“

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title lowboy is an antique heirloom that becomes an obsession for one of the two brothers in the story. What I came away with was how sad it is when people cannot let go of the past and allow it to affect, and sometimes ruin, the present.

(#34 - Stores of John Cheever)

[mark propp · Rating 3 out of 5]

the first half was fun, the second half incomprehensible.

[Sarah Sammis · Rating 5 out of 5]

In most Cheever stories, he would leave some ambiguity when suggesting a paranormal event. This time, though, the ghosts are there for everyone to see. The ghosts are text and it's hilarious.

https://pussreboots.com/blog/2025/com...

Siblings Uhoria Cornfield CCCCFF