I’m trying to figure out Susan Cheever.
I haven’t read her fiction, but I’ve read some of her nonfiction, as you can see from my bookshelf below:
She clearly can write. She clearly can think. She has clearly pondered deeply her relationship with her famous father, John Cheever.
But there’s something about her writing and thinking that makes me uncomfortable. It’s an underlying tone. A tone of envy? Regret? Denial? Rage? Sadness? Depression? Longing?
Imagine having a famous father. A famous father – or mother – of any kind. A race car driver. A movie star. The best local mason or truck driver. It’s an extra load on the psyche of any child.
Then imagine having a famous father as bizarrely complicated as John Cheever, the novelist, short story writer, journal writer, and famous letter writer.
But then add to that the fact that John Cheever was an alcoholic, a closeted gay, bisexual, bad with money, poor most of his life, and always deep in various sexual affairs and you have a real stew. Especially when, like Susan, you were (mostly) in the dark about the sexual aspects until he died. His life was so complex yet somehow amusing in a droll way that it even showed up as an element in a “Seinfeld” TV episode.
“WHEN ALL THE MEN WORE HATS: Susan Cheever on the Stories of John Cheever” is Susan’s attempt to discuss her father with a focus on his actual work, and how the actual work reflected the actual and hidden life stories that were percolating just below the surface of what appeared to be a money-poor version of an upper class – or at least an intellectual – life. And there’s another confounding thing: this intellectual literary genius never even graduated from high school.
It’s a slightly disjointed work. It’s repetitive. It’s sometimes hard to follow when she jumps from fiction to nonfiction.
John Cheever’s greatest story might be “The Swimmer”, which was made into a Burt Lancaster movie and is now a famous cult classic. It’s about an upper class, preppie, old money guy who decides to swim home by way of all his neighbors’ swimming pools on a bright, warm, sunny day in some place like Westchester County.
As the movie goes along, we learn more about Neddy, Lancaster’s character. Most of it not good.
The day starts out jolly. As pool follows pool, and neighbor follows neighbor, it gets darker and colder outside, and we learn that Neddy might have career problems, affairs, marital difficulties, money trouble, and, biggest of all, mental health and alcohol issues.
The day ends with Neddy shivering in a pile of dead late autumn leaves at the front door of his home, which is now as dead and dark and shuttered and abandoned as an old ship wreck. His family is gone, his wife and his four beautiful daughters are gone, his door and life are locked.
Neddy has lost reality. He has had a full mental breakdown.
I think this style of writing is called “magical realism”. It can’t happen in real life, only in a mentally disturbed parallel universe. Even though the story is a masterpiece and is perfect, “The New Yorker” was hesitant to publish it, because it was too unhinged. His editor Bill Maxwell said something to the effect that “it can’t go from summer to autumn in one afternoon”.
John Cheever could convincingly make life go from summer to autumn in one afternoon.
This is what Susan Cheever still has to deal with.
