John Cheever (66 page)

Among those whose letters have been invaluable in helping to fill in the gaps are Rollin Bailey, Helen Barolini, Stephen Becker, Livingston Biddle, Peter Blume, William S. Boice, Mimi Boyer, Philip Boyer, Frederick Bracher, Josiah Bunting III, Hortense Calisher, Hayden Carruth, Bev Chaney, Jr., Federico Cheever, Mary Cheever, Eleanor Clark, David Clarke, Samuel Coale, Hennig Cohen, Robert G. Collins, Blanche W. Cook, Malcolm Cowley, Robert C. Daugherty, Robert L. deVeer, James Dickey, Mary Douglas Dirks, Dean B. Doner, Frederick Exley, Sherry Farquharson, Daniel Fuchs, Dr. Bernard C. Glueck, Gordon Godfrey, Dana Gioia, Allan Gurganus, Ron Hansen, Hugh Hennedy, John Hersey, L. Rust Hills, Sarah Irwin, Dr. Robert A. Johnson, Eugene Kennedy, X. J. Kennedy, John Leggett, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, Frances Lindley, Tanya Litvinov, Bernard Malamud, Jerre Mangione, William Maxwell, James McGraw, Paul Moor, E. W. Nash, Edward Newhouse, James O'Hara, Grace L. Osgood, Anne Palamountain, David C. Robertson, Jr., Raphael Rudnik, Stephen Sandy, Nora Sayre, Laurens R. Schwartz, Arthur P. Spear, Elizabeth Spencer, Leonard Spigelgass, George Starbuck, Wallace Stegner, Richard G. Stern, Caskie Stinnett, Lewis Turco, John Updike, James Valhouli, Gore Vidal, Aileen Ward, Larry Watson, Mary Weatherall, John D. Weaver, Lillian H. Wentworth, and Beatrice Wood.

Some of those named above have been kind enough to let me see copies of their letters from Cheever. In addition, I am indebted to a number of major research libraries for the opportunity to read portions of his correspondence. Particular acknowledgment goes to Margaret M. Mills and Nancy Johnson of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters; Victor A. Berch of the Brandeis University library; Bonnie Hardwick of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; Maggie Fusco of the Regenstein Library, University of Chicago; Nora J. Quinlan of the University of Colorado at Boulder library; Bernard R. Crystal of the Butler Library, Columbia University; Dolores Altemus of the University of Delaware library; Elizabeth Ann Falsey of the Houghton Library, Harvard University; Carolyn A. Sheehy of the Newberry Library; Lola L. Szladits of the Berg Collection, New York Public Library; Carolyn A. Davis and Kathleen Mainwaring of the George Arents Research Library, Syracuse University; and Steve Jones of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

In his later years Cheever was frequently interviewed. Sessions in recorded or printed form with Joseph Barbato, Bruce Benidt, Jo Brans, John Callaway, Dick Cavett, Susan Cheever Cowley, Robert Cromie, Dana Gioia, Millicent Dillon, Michael Stillman, Annette Grant, John Hersey, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, Lewis Nichols, Christina Robb, Jaqueline Tavernier-Courbin and Robert G. Collins, James Valhouli, and Will Wyatt have been extremely useful.

The most important book dealing with Cheever's life is Susan Cheever's
Home Before Dark
, a sensitive memoir that provides fascinating quotations from his journals and letters. Scholarly books on his work have been written by Samuel Coale, Father George W. Hunt, and Lynne Waldeland. Robert G. Collins has edited a collection of critical essays, and written some of the ablest criticism himself. Others who have done first-rate articles on Cheever's fiction include Frederick Bracher, John W. Crowley, Robert Morace, Stephen C. Moore, and James O'Hara. Doctoral dissertations by Dennis Coates and James Valhouli proved of particular value, partly because of the authors' friendship with Cheever. Reminiscences by Samuel Coale, Malcolm Cowley, and Dana Gioia provided intimate glimpses into Cheever's personality. David Rothbart's World War II journal, Laurens Schwartz's journal covering the mid-1970s, and Max Zimmer's journal of 1981–82 furnished essential background data and contributed significant perceptions.

Assistance was also rendered by a number of people in ways not easily categorized. Among these benefactors are Harold S. Crowley, Jr., Robin Dougherty, Carl Dolmetsch, Judith Ewell, James L. Greenfield of the
New York Times
, Thomas Heacox, H. Hobart Holly and Doris Oberg of the Quincy Historical Society, Charles M. Holloway, David F. Morrill, Emil P. Moschella of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, DeLois L. Ruffin of the U.S. Department of State, Lee S. Strickland of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gene vonKoschembahr of the Smithers Alcoholism Rehabilitation Center, and Aileen Ward and the members of the Biography Seminar of the New York Institute for the Humanities. A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities financed a year of the four years' work that went into the making of the book. In the summer of 1984, Arthur and Stella Spear were kind enough to rent us their home in Briarcliff Manor while they made their annual pilgrimage to Maine. During those warm-weather months, living just four miles from Cheever's home, I talked to a number of his closest friends and began to get acquainted with the territory. A research grant from the College of William and Mary subsidized that summer's work, and the college has been generous since in allowing me time to write. David Raney stayed with the project through the last year, bringing his literary intelligence to the mundane task of getting the book down on paper. Vivian Donaldson's encouragement kept me going at times when it would have been easy to stop.

Finally,
John Cheever: A Biography
would not have been possible without the cooperation of the author's widow and executor, Mary Cheever. She submitted to long hours of questions, suggested additional sources, and opened a number of doors—as, for example, to her husband's literary friends and his doctors and psychiatrists—that might otherwise have remained closed.

None of the people listed above is in any way culpable for errors of fact or interpretation in this biography.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After graduating from Yale, S
COTT
D
ONALDSON
received his master's degree and Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. He served in the Far East during and after the Korean War and then began a ten-year career in the newspaper business as reporter, editor and publisher.

Since 1966, he has been affiliated with the College of William and Mary and became the Louise G. T. Cooley Professor there in 1984. He is the author of
Poet in America
about Winfield Townley Scott;
By Force of Will
, about Hemingway; and
Fool for Love
, about F. Scott Fitzgerald. He lives in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Scott Donaldson's literary biographies are
Poet in America: Winfield Townley Scott
(1972);
By Force of Will: The Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway
(1977);
Fool for Love, F. Scott Fitzgerald
(1983);
John Cheever: A Biography
(1988);
Archibald MacLeish: An American Life
(1992), winner of the 1993 Ambassador Book Award for biography; and
Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald
(1999). His career in the field to 1990 is chronicled in the
Dictionary of Literary Biography
volume on American Literary Biographers: DLB, 111 (1991): 53–64.

Donaldson has written many articles on twentieth century American literature and culture, and edited a number of books, including
Critical Essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald's “The Great Gatsby”
(1984);
Conversations with John Cheever
(1987);
New Essays on “A Farewell to Arms”
(1990); and the
Cambridge Companion to Hemingway
(1996).

After beginning his career as a newspaper reporter and editor in his native Minneapolis, Donaldson taught at the College of William and Mary for 26 years, retiring as Louise G.T. Cooley Professor of English in 1992. He served as a Fulbright senior lecturer in Finland (1970–1971) and Italy (1979). He was the Bruern fellow at the University of Leeds (1972–1973) and a visiting fellow at Princeton (1978). He received awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the writing of his Cheever and MacLeish biographies (1984–1985 and 1990–1991), as well as a semester for research grants from William and Mary in 1975, 1981, and 1988. Other awards have come from the Rockefeller foundation (1982) and the MacDowell Colony (1980, 1981). In 1994 He was listed among prominent Virginia authors by the Virginia Center for the Book. In 1996 he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, given the MidAmerica award for contributions to Midwestern literature, and chosen as an honorary member of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society. In 1999 he won the Monroe K. Spears prize for the best essay of the year in
Sewanee Review
.

Donaldson was a founding director of the Fulbright Alumni Association. In 1999 he was elected to the board and became treasurer of the Ernest Hemingway Society & Foundation; in 2000 he was elected president of the organization.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Originally published by Random House.

Copyright © 1988, 2001 by Scott Donaldson

ISBN: 978-1-5040-2995-7

Distributed in 2016 by Open Road Distribution

180 Maiden Lane

New York, NY 10038

www.openroadmedia.com