Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

This is the thread for the buddy read of the short stories of John Cheever. Readers are welcomed to read and comment on as many or as few of the stories as they wish. The thread will remain active for 2025, as anyone reading all the stories may need an appreciable amount of time to fit them in.

I will join this buddy read.

I had forgotten the "The Enormous Radio," so I had great fun rereading.

What a strange, wonderful and awful radio!

I'm going to try reading the stories in the order they appear in the book. Cheever is known for his stories about brothers, and "Goodbye, My Brother" is one of his best. I'm looking forward to discussing it with the group.

I am also going to take them as they appear in the book, Connie. I intend to read them all. I believe I have only read one Cheever story, so this will be a bit of a new experience for me.

Sara wrote: "I am also going to take them as they appear in the book, Connie. I intend to read them all. I believe I have only read one Cheever story, so this will be a bit of a new experience for me."

I had only read "The Enormous Radio" and "The Swimmer," so the stories are new to me too.

I will read all the stories in order too and will finish the book by the end of the year.

Ah, The Swimmer is the one of his I have read!

Delighted you will be along for all of them, Cynda.

I am here for this and suggest that the stories be read in order slowly, at least to start. Many of these stories are good topics for discussion and Cheever is excellent at provoking thought which in some cases may last you years. Except for the first story, which is kind of a taste of how good Cheever can write, the stories are in written order I believe, so we'll get a chance to see Cheever develop as a writer. Aside from the short stories, Cheever wrote five novels and his journals are also published and supposedly very good.

I am going to be dipping in to Blake Bailey's biography, Cheever: A Life, while reading this. Cheever had flaws and normally I would not mention it, but there are elements that may be relevant to our stories so you might want to be aware of the this.

On a personal note, "Goodbye, My Brother," the first story, has haunted from when I first read it years ago. Every so often, the story will come to me and occupy me for a couple of days I try and figure out what makes it so stirring. I have looked at it once again quite a while ago and look forward to this present read.

Is this the same as The Stories of John Cheever, published in 1978? It begins with
"Goodbye, My Brother"
"The Common Day"
"The Enormous Radio"
"O City of Broken Dreams"...

That's the one I can get on Libby, but it doesn't have the same title, so I'm not sure, and I'd like to read them in the same order everyone else is.

Teri-K wrote: "Is this the same as The Stories of John Cheever, published in 1978? It begins with
"Goodbye, My Brother"
"The Common Day"
"The Enormous Radio"
"O City of Broken Dreams"...

That's the ..."

Yes, you have the right book, Teri-K. I'm glad you're joining us.

Hooray! For short stories, I plan to read all 61 from beginning to end. Fingers crossed. The only thing I have read by Cheever is The Wapshot Chronicle.

We are on even footing, Bob. One story apiece. I am planning to read the first story tonight.

Also happy to see you here, Teri!

Connie (on semi-hiatus) wrote: "Yes, you have the right book, Teri-K. I'm glad you're joining us...."

Sara wrote: "We are on even footing, Bob. One story apiece. I am planning to read the first story tonight.

Also happy to see you here, Teri!"

Thanks, both of you. I'm pretty sure I've only read one Cheever story - The Swimmer. I read it in college, in a post-grad class, in a couple of writing classes, etc. And I don't really get it. So I'm not promising to read them all, but I want to try some of them out, at least.

Hopefully the discussions can help me get a better handle on what he's doing - besides just being weird. (Which I don't mean in an offensive way at all. I just can't wrap my head around that story. lol)

I'm off to read story #1...

The Swimmer is the only thing I've read by Cheever, and I loved it. (That doesn't mean I necessarily understand it either, Teri-K, but I have thoughts!) I'll get my copy on Monday, and start reading then.

As Bob says, hooray for short stories!

When Sam mentioned dipping in a biography of John Cheever, I followed practice of reading about the writer. From KU, I have borrowed John Cheever: A Biography by Scott Donaldson.

By looking over the story titles, I see how John Cheever can take a commonplace topic and turn it into a story. When beginning to read "Prehistory" in the biography, I read this quote and know I am on to an idea:

The most remarkable thing about John Cheever was his capacity for invention.

This will be fun with commonplace idea taken new places --like how how jazz is a tune taken and expanded upon.

Kathleen wrote: "The Swimmer is the only thing I've read by Cheever, and I loved it. (That doesn't mean I necessarily understand it either, Teri-K, but I have thoughts!) I'll get my copy on Monday, and start readin..."

Great! Can't wait to hear your thoughts!

Goodbye, My Brother (1951)

"Goodbye, My Brother" is a great story told by an unreliable narrator. The narrator portrays his brother, Lawrence, as a negative person who is always putting a damper on any social situation. But Lawrence himself does not actually say much in the story, and his observations are often very realistic such as his worry about the erosion of the cliff by the waves. The narrator pretends that he can read his brother's thoughts, and he comes up with some harsh views about the family.

The family does have problems that the narrator is not facing, but he pretends that thoughts about these problems only belong to Lawrence. The narrator is speculating that Lawrence is having these negative thoughts because the narrator is unable to face his own concerns about the problems. For example, the narrator knows his mother drinks too much, but he is ignoring the problem. He pretends that only Lawrence is having thoughts about her problems with alcohol.

The narrator compares Lawrence to a Puritan cleric, and the Pommeroy family had Puritan ministers in their past. Lawrence is not a likable, social person, but he is a realist. While the narrator could be fun at a party, he is also very dangerous. He hit his brother on the head with a rock when they were children, and now he hits his brother with a heavy tree root on the beach and wishes Lawrence was dead.

It was interesting how Cheever used the sea as a motif. The narrator loves the sea, and enjoys sailing and swimming. Lawrence refuses to swim, and views the sea as a force that will destroy the sea wall and the cottage. The sea is beautiful, but it also has destructive power, just like this family. Cheever also uses other wonderful imagery which would be interesting for the group to discuss.

If anyone needs a copy of that first story online, I found it here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/19...

I just finished Goodbye, My Brother, and I'm going to share some initial thoughts here. Then I'll go away and think about it some more and eventually read what others say about it - that's my favorite way of dealing with literature.

First we have the unreliable narrator. As I read I couldn't help but be amused at how much he assumes he knows what his brother is thinking - about everything, all the time. I began to wonder how much of his interpretation was accurate or if he was projecting his own uneasiness and hidden feelings onto his brother. Also, sometimes "the brother's" observations seem spot on to me, as in the costume party.

However, given how the brother's family behaves I can't see him as a totally innocent nice guy in the story. At the least they are uncomfortable among the others.

There are a ton of allusions to passions, expiation, penitence, etc. All very Puritan and harking back to the family background. Plus Helen, Diana, Venus rising from the sea - very Greek mythology.

When he spoke about the ability of swimming in the ocean to "purify" everyone's emotions, I thought "probably due to the exercise and being out in nature". Then realized the narrator would lump me in with the brother, for taking the romance out of it. lol

The cook really stands out to me. "... I am as good as anybody, and I do not have to have people like that getting into my way all the time and feeling sorry for me."

"The company of a lie is unbearable..." Yes, but which lies, to whom? And who is finding them unbearable?

Then there's everybody's relationship with their mother....

Well, that's more than a couple of thoughts, but those are where my mind is going right now.

This certainly left me with something to mull. There is no first hand evidence about Lawrence, everything is what the brother thinks he is thinking or his slant on what is going on. Even when he is observing the games, Lawrence makes no comments, he just watches...from that brother infers that he thinks they are playing for each other's souls and not for the money...pretty big leap.

I couldn't quite wrap myself around the incident with the cook. We have no idea what happened between her and Lawrence, but I found it significant that the brother says nothing to anyone of the cook's complaint and yet there is no further problem.

What we do know is that the brother hits Lawrence in the head hard enough to make him pass out, he leaves him bleeding to come to and make his way home, he wishes him dead. Even if Lawrence is the grumpiest guy in the canyon, who is evil here?

Cheever makes Lawrence unlikable intentionally, he portrays the wife and children as almost afraid, but who are they afraid of? If you take each of the family members individually, there are a lot of problems here that don't have anything to do with Lawrence, but there must be a reason Lawrence mourns the father so intensely and yet has severed from the mother.

I come from a large family. Family dynamics are always interesting to me. I must say Cheever pulled me in and left me pondering.

When I started, I thought it was narrator saying, “Goodbye, my brother,” but when the story ended, I thought it was Lawrence.

Great thought, Terry. I agree.

I also think the title is a little ironic. It reads as if it is going to be a sweet, loving story...a story of loss. Doesn't quite turn out that way.

I am loving the comments. One of the reasons I llike this story is because Cheever has written it in a way that the interpretation of the story falls almost wholly on our prejudices and beliefs and if you are like me, then comes a troubling questioning of whether you feel as secure in those beliefs as you felt when originally reading the story. Ultimately, I think Cheever is showing us that we are not going to see eye to eye. There will be disagreements, conflict, and even violent conflict. And one of the things that troubles me is that despite that Cheever shows us this, there is a sense of relaxed tension at the end of the story, even a sense that everything is okay. Cheever IMO, has shown us a reality tht is as frightening as personal mortality and still manages to console us into accepting that reality.

I don't mean to infer anyone else's thoughts are wrong. I, when first reading the story, sided with Lawrence. But there is something that proverbially gnaws at me. What do we do with the fact that all of us have at one time or another felt the frustration our narrator feels with Lawrence and extending that, I think most of us have felt that frustration with someone and we have felt it justified. And taking it one step further, some of us have felt that frustration with someone which in time proves to be perfectly justified. A later event will show whatever feeling we originally had was correct about that person and that person deserved our negative judgement. But also there are times when our judgement is not proved right and perhaps we are even wrong. I feel this is also suggested in the story. My view is that Cheever posits all of this in the story. It is my opinion that Cheever has designed this very intentionally to provoke thought, designed it in a way that we question our own ideas of right and wrong, designed it in a way for us to think beyond the idea of right and wrong, and instead meant us to see the situation as something that just is, something we must accept.

Does anyone see that possibilty in this story?

You make some very good points, Sam. I would not disagree. I was not liking Lawrence and feeling the brother's irritation was natural (and, yes, I have felt this with some people), but then the attempt to kill him was so over the top, I was taken aback. I then reviewed all the things that had happened in the course of the story and realized I had misjudged Lawrence and the brother. They literally flipped places in my mind. Perhaps another lesson we might draw from this is to be careful how we judge someone based on what another thinks or says about him. I could see the brother making fun of Lawrence in a group and everyone there nodding along with him. None of them would think hitting Lawrence on the head and leaving him bleeding was okay.

Also, there are small things that tell us something, but we elect to miss them. For instance, Lawrence will not go into the sea and swim with the others. It is made to look like he is being petulant, but we have been told (and at the end are reminded) that the father drowned. Another reason this place might be a more gloomy spot than an uplifting one for Lawrence.

We are told Lawrence is less successful and wealthy than the others, but again it is petulance that keeps him from gambling at backgammon. Perhaps he simply cannot afford to lose the $100 that the brother names as sometimes bet. In this time, $100 would not be a small wager.

If you have ever been patronized by a group of people, made to feel outside when you ought to be inside, you know how uncomfortable this visit is for both Lawrence and his family. The other wives are "buddies", Ruth is not one of them. The other children know each other and play together, these children cling to their mother for safety. Kids pick up on adult feelings and the feelings of this couple are that they would rather be anywhere else in the world. Lawrence is less successful, but we only have the brother's word that that is entirely his own fault, and he admits he just came to sell his share of the home.

When I finished the story, I almost felt like I had read two different tales, because my mind changed so abruptly from one version of this family to the other.

Connie said "The sea is beautiful, but it also has destructive power, just like this family." Very good thought. I have to wonder about the father and his relationship to everybody. Was he more like Lawrence, and his death was actually a release for them to go on living in denial? Who knows.

It's interesting to me that in a brief search online of discussions of this story the critics and study sites are generally insisting that Lawrence is in the wrong -

'Goodbye, My Brother' becomes the first of many of Cheever's early stories that deal with the necessity of exorcising an Edenic place, situation or mental state of a corrupting influence."—Literary critic Patrick Meanor in John Cheever Revisited

"The Dionysians and their celebration of the physical body are Cheever's response to the dark denial and shame of the Puritan ethos that his story clearly condemns." Meanor again

My feeling, and we seem to mostly be agreeing here, is that their home is not Edenic. I'd go so far as to say it's poisoned by those staying there and living the lie that all is fine. "The company of a lie is unbearable..." So Lawrence had to leave, because he couldn't take the lie of the place.

The section on how Lawrence walked away from so many things in life interested me, because in walking away you could also be said to walk toward something better, which most families would see as a good thing. After all, our narrator admits he still teaches and will never be put in charge of the school. (As a teacher myself I don't see that as bad, but in this setting it's clearly something he feels he has to justify.) Is he really happier this way, or is he a failure who hasn't achieved his own desires and so resents his brother? The fact that so many at the costume party wore things that had them looking back instead of forward is telling to me.

Oddly, the attack didn't shock me, it felt Biblical - Cain and Abel. But the whole story feels like a fever dream. And by this time I don't think the narrator is very connected with reality, so he feels no remorse or concern.

Sam said "Cheever... meant us to see the situation as something that just is, something we must accept." I don't see it that way, but that doesn't make you wrong; it's an interesting way to look at things.

This story reminds me so much of Shakespeare. One of the things I love about his plays is that they make us ask questions but don't give us the answers. And every time I reread them I wrestle again with those questions and answers. I think Cheever is not, as some sources say, giving us a polemic against Puritan ideals, but is presenting us with questions about perceptions, judging others, and dealing with those who are different. Several sources have said that he wrote this in response to his own troubled relationship with his brother, and that it's a common theme in his stories. So maybe he's feeling his way around these questions, without any answers, just like we are when we read this.

Like you, Connie, I don't see this family as living in Eden at all. It might be that Lawrence is the only one leading an authentic life. This is wonderfully nebulous and I think no one can say for certain how it should be interpreted. That is part of what makes it work. It reminds me of the way the argument goes on (and will to the end of time) as to what really happens in The Turn of the Screw. I don't disagree with anyone else's interpretation that can be backed up with the texts, I just see it much as Connie does.

I also came around to the conclusion that Lawrence was the most reasonable in the story, even though I didn’t start there. When one has a toxic member of the family, which the narrator truly demonstrates with his attack, it is probably best for all to excise oneself from the situation. I have seen this in family dynamics, first hand unfortunately.

I moved on to the second story today. It didn’t seem to equal the first.

Cheever had a difficult relationship with his own brother. This is some interesting background information about Cheever himself, and his writing process in writing "Goodbye, My Brother":

"Much of Cheever's own life was a similar battle between ebullience and the sporadic bouts of depression which haunted him for years. Cheever once remarked that "Goodbye, My Brother" emerged from just such a struggle, that the two Pommeroy brothers represent halves of himself as he alternately "rejoiced and brooded during a summer on Martha's Vineyard" (Hunt 273). In first draft, in fact, as Cheever wrote to Malcolm Cowley in 1953, "Goodbye" was "the story of one man... There was no brother; there was no Lawrence" (Letters 160). The story's dark brother, Scott Donaldson observes in his 1988 biography, "lies both within and without, just as Cheever had a brother he simultaneously loved and hated and was himself inhabited by both the demon of depression and the angel of joy" (139). In casting fictional brothers, Cheever gave himself a stage for the exorcism of some very personal demons."

Raney, David, "What We Keep: Time and Balance in the Brother Stories of John Cheever" (paragraph 25)
https://journals.openedition.org/jsse...

The Common Day feels a bit uninspired after reading Goodbye, My Brother. The opening was interesting to me because it seemed so opposite of normal--the city is usually where people feel assaulted (noise, traffic, busy people), but Jim feels assaulted in the country by the mountains and the sunlight.

What follows is, I suppose, meant to detail a monotonous and uneventful day, and it does seem to have little meaning in it for any of our characters. But I could not see that there was much point in the story or the questions it addressed, other than that of class distinctions. These people seem to be existing more than living, and, while summering in the country should have been a luxury and joy, if we judge by Jim, I would have to say the beauty and serenity is lost on them. They seem to spend most of their time in negative activities…arguing with servants, killing animals, looking at dilapidated houses they do not intend to buy.

Connie (on semi-hiatus) wrote: "Cheever had a difficult relationship with his own brother. This is some interesting background information about Cheever himself, and his writing process in writing "Goodbye, My Brother":

"Much of..."

This is really interesting and sheds even more light on the story. Thanks for sharing it.

"The Common Day" (1947) shows conflicts between the characters who love the city and the ones that enjoy the country, as well as conflicts between the classes, as Sara pointed out. I found the parts of the story about the servants the most interesting.

The trap and the rifle provide tension in the story because we worry that a child might be harmed. The trap can be seen as a symbol of how the servants are feeling trapped by their years of service. Greta and Agnes long to visit their families in Europe. Nils is tired, aging, and frustrated that he's been told to move the lilies again back to their original location. Agnes' life is described on page 25:

"Moistened with dishwater and mild eau de cologne, reared in narrow and sunless bedrooms, in back passages, back stairs, laundries, linen closets, and in those servants' halls that remind one of a prison, her soul had grown docile and bleak."

Nils' outburst of frustration, directed at Mrs Garrison, is followed soon by the outburst of the rifle shooting the coon.

The title suggests that this is just an ordinary day, and life will go on tomorrow with the wealthy and the servants behaving in the same way, knowing their proper roles.

Is there a protocol for discussing the stories? I read An Enormous Radio tonight. What fun! It had the feeling of one of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone stories.

I don't think so, Terry. So far we are taking them in order, but you are free to discuss any one that you wish as you read them. I will try to read An Enormous Radio tomorrow. I loved Twilight Zone, so this should be fun.

"The Common Day" was meh for me. I'm sure it could be analyzed for deeper meanings, but it didn't interest me enough to want to do that. As a general rule I'm not a fan of stories full of well-off people who are unhappy with their lives, or where everybody is miserable but no one is trying to improve anything.

I will read The Enormous Radio soon.

I'm catching up, so want to go back to Goodbye, My Brother for a minute.

What a Rorschach test of a story! I love all of these comments, and I especially related to Sam's: then comes a troubling questioning of whether you feel as secure in those beliefs as you felt when originally reading the story.

I started the story, having read only The Swimmer, thinking oh geez, all this drinking, it really gets on my nerves. I bet all the stories will be like this. I wonder if I'll make it through them. Then, as the story goes on I realize, oh my, I'm Larry! Then I get so mad at Larry for being so cold toward all of his family that it seems perfectly reasonable that the narrator hits him with the root. (And having played with seaweed on the beach, I can understand not realizing this could be as dangerous as it was.)

What a successful story! The unreliable narrator helped to make me view this from many sides. (I felt particularly sorry for Larry's wife, left alone at the party.) And what a great way to begin the collection. I'm ready now, for all the drinking and all the exposing that Cheever will be accomplishing.

Just a quick note because I am busy. First, I want to say I agree 100% with what everyone is saying about the first story, especially Teri-K since i think I may have been vague about what I wrote in my post on the story since she echoed my thoughts almost to a T and the remark on a similarity of positing multiple contrasting views like Shakespeare is dead on IMO. Connie added even more depth, suggesting that part of this is Cheever's investigation of his own positive and negative sides which adds even more depth.

But, I wqnted to add a couple of more remarks since we really only explored the interpretation.

Did you notice how well Cheever captured this northeast island idyll in his prose? His capturing of the setting and the various details that bring this family very vividly to life in these few pages is fascinating. With the dance he evokes a s3nse of this whole island community in paragraphs.

Also, note how Cheever gradually and carefully develops the tension building in the narrator and eventually being released on Lawrence. I espially like how Cheever foreshadows with the narrator's getting so angry at losing the backgammon match, he has to step outside to cool down.

I could go on and on, because I see more every time I read the story but the two points deserve more chatter. First the line, "Oh, what can you do with a man like that?" and the repetition, "What can you
do?" Those lines ocurring there, phrased that way is the one of the things that lifts this story into classic status. Second, after more rationalization our narrator comments on the women, Diana and Helen, emerging from the sea, "naked." Again, fantastic ending but what does it mean to us reading?
I will come back later for thoughts on the next story.

Sam wrote: ". Second, after more rationalization our narrator comments on the women, Diana and Helen, emerging from the sea, "naked." Again, fantastic ending but what does it mean to us reading?"

I immediately thought of the painting The Birth of Venus by Botticelli. I think the narrator is pushing the idea of the island being this perfect, Edenic place where they all live in carefree happiness. and innocence. The reader will draw their own conclusions.

I will add that by the end of the story I'd changed my ideas of Lawrence. I suspected him of not being a great person because of how his wife and kids seemed so nervous and detached. Which is still possible, but if you threw me in among those people as a child I'd have been very uncomfortable, too.

I read The Country Husband by John Cheever (1954) . The story can be found in my old college textbook Fiction 100: An Anthology of Short Stories and also in my husband's old textbook The Second Edition of Norton's Anthology of Literature.

I read it in 1982 the first time. There are study questions at the back that ask about the satirical humour in this piece. I never saw any humor in it. It felt very sad to me. As a college student I could relate to the feeling of being directed each day through a series of social expectations, and as a 19 or 20 year old had a natural desire to leave the perfectly good home my parents had provided to make my own way.

The writing is lovely. Symbolism abounds, perhaps almost too much. I remember 40 years ago writing a paper in the College class about how depressing all the assigned stories were and wondering if good literature was required to have an element of hopelessness in it. The professor actually addressed that question in one of her lectures.

The story had lovely writing and a very strong critique of the conventions of mid-century American life

I love the Botticelli image, Teri, and the idea it carried with it. I thought that it was another bit of irony, they were emerging from the sea like goddesses, but we already know they are far from that, and they are being observed by the brother, who says they are "naked, unshy, beautiful and full of grace. He makes them sound like girls, but they are not young at all. And "unshy" seemed out of place for me with his other praises. This closing did not feel like innocence to me, but like someone trying to impose innocence. But, then, by then I had decided that I had gotten Lawrence and this brother all wrong from the beginning.

I have also downloaded an ebook copy of The Stories of John Cheever - 61 stories in the order ya'll mentioned. Did you read the Preface written by Cheever? I liked how he said these stories were a sort of biography of himself and how he found his Immaturity embarrassing. I think we can relate to that!

It was interesting that he often wrote his stories by talking aloud!

I liked the mix of reality and magical realism/science fiction in The Enormous Radio (1947). It also had some humor when Irene would close the door and turn on the radio so she could purposely eavesdrop on her neighbors' conversations. The first paragraph has the sentence:

"The Westcotts differed from their friends, their classmates, and their neighbors only in an interest they shared in serious music."

The truth of that was shown at the end. Irene wanted to be reassured that she and Jim were happier than the neighbors, but there were so many underlying problems that they were ignoring. Their lives were as flawed as their neighbors.

Lynn wrote: "I have also downloaded an ebook copy of The Stories of John Cheever - 61 stories in the order ya'll mentioned. Did you read the Preface written by Cheever? I liked how he said these st..."

I did read the preface and I was amazed what a mature and enduring short story the very first one was. I was expecting to start off with something lesser. I think it will be interesting to see how many of them seem profound...Goodbye, My Brother did, to me.

I enjoyed The Enormous Radio. I wondered if Irene saw her own life reflected that of the neighbors...her melancholy could have been empathy vs. sympathy.

As I read the stories, I keep getting reminded of what a difficult time the post-war period/mid century was. Educated women were asked and very nearly required to conform to a certain outward way of being: comportment, dress, manners. How shocking to find out how her appropriate-appearing neighbors were inappropriate by social or ethical standards must have been shocking. And more shocking to be called out on her imperfections. What a lovely satire.

I do see the magical realism and the science fiction elements. These things make the story timeless, don't they.

The thing about short stories that makes me prefer novels is that I just about get interested in the characters and then the story is over. And I hate ambiguous endings. I want to know what happens to the people I have invested in getting to know. The ending of O City of Broken Dreams irritated me. I want to know what happens next.

"O City of Broken Dreams" (1948)

I loved Cheever's descriptions of the couple taking out their best clothes and their nest egg of $35 to travel to New York City. The city is viewed as glittering with diamonds and gold, but we can soon tell that the farm couple will not be able to fulfill their dreams. Their lives have not prepared them for the wheeler-dealers in NYC. Cheever makes us care about the outcome of this hardworking family who seem very real. It doesn't really matter if they get off the train at Chicago or continue on to the West Coast because they don't have the street smarts to navigate Hollywood either.