The Journals of John Cheever (Vintage International)

John Cheever was born in 1912. He is the author of seven collections of stories and five novels. He won the National Book Award for
The Wapshot Chronicle
, and the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for
The Stories of John Cheever
. He received the Howells Medal for Fiction and the National Medal for Literature. He died in 1982.

Also by John Cheever

NOVELS

OH WHAT A PARADISE IT SEEMS (1982)

FALCONER (1977)

BULLET PARK (1969)

THE WAPSHOT SCANDAL (1964)

THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLE (1957)

STORIES

THE STORIES OF JOHN CHEEVER (1978)

THE WORLD OF APPLES (1973)

THE BRIGADIER AND THE GOLF WIDOW (1964)

SOME PEOPLE, PLACES, AND THINGS THAT WILL NOT APPEAR IN MY NEXT NOVEL (1961)

THE HOUSEBREAKER OF SHADY HILL (1959)

THE ENORMOUS RADIO (1953)

THE WAY SOME PEOPLE LIVE (1942)

WHEN
JOHN CHEEVER
died on June 18, 1982, he left—in his journals—a vast, unedited, unpublished body of work. It is from these twenty-nine looseleaf notebooks that Robert Gottlieb has fashioned the book that follows.

Most of the people I know reacted with enthusiasm when portions of the text ran in
The New Yorker
, but a few were hurt and bewildered by what they found. Those who broached the subject with me had two questions: Did John Cheever really want this material published? And if so, why?

I sympathize with this distress. I found reading some parts of this work to be exquisitely painful. But my father wanted his journals published. I know because he told me. I also think I know why.

The journals were not initiated with publication in mind. They were the workbooks for his fiction. They were also the workbooks for his life. He’d buy a miniature looseleaf, fill it up, then buy another. The notebook in use would sit on or near his desk. The lined sheets of filler were easy to distinguish from the standard, yellow foolscap he used for his stories and novels.

These pages—feverishly typed, with floating caps, misspellings, and cross outs—were nevertheless readable, and so they presented an extreme temptation. We were not supposed to read them. I don’t recall his exact instructions, but they were sufficiently explicit, and expressed with an edge of menace.

Therefore I was surprised when he first began to hint about their possible publication. This was in December of 1979. I had left my first wife and come to stay with my parents. I thought of my return as joyous, something approaching the triumphal. In his journals I later learned that my father’s feelings were not unmixed. He wrote: “On Saturday
morning our son Ben, after a week in a spiritual retreat where he got fucked, has left his wife and returned home, for it seems only a few hours.”

A couple of days later he was resigned to the prospects of a long visit. “My son is here. I think that we do not know one another; I think it is our destiny that we never will. I observe, in a comical way, that he does not flush the toilet. He observes that I snore. Another son returns tomorrow. I feel that I know him better, but wait and see.” And then, a little ruefully: “Some part of loving one’s children is to part with them.”

I stayed for months. And he seemed to enjoy my company. (In the journals I begin to appear again as a “beloved son.”) We talked a lot. He wanted to talk about the journals. He had sent the notebooks out by twos to various distinguished libraries. I was surprised by this, and envious. He wanted to know if the librarians would be scandalized. I don’t know if they were scandalized, but their response was disappointing to him in some way, because after a certain amount of time had passed, he’d retrieve the books.

He wondered aloud to me if his journals had any value as a document. He asked me repeatedly what I thought. I said I didn’t know. I said I assumed that there would be interest in anything he had written. I said I couldn’t judge, because I’d never read them.

Then one night in January, he presented me with one of the notebooks. He asked if I would mind looking at it.

We were in the dining room. I sat in a chair and read from the journal he had given me. He sat in another chair and watched. He asked what I thought. I said I thought that the journal was interesting; I thought it beautifully written. He asked me to read some more. I did read some more. At one point I looked up, and I could see that he was crying. He was not sobbing, but tears were running down his cheeks. I didn’t say anything. I went back to reading. When I looked up again, he seemed composed.

I told him I liked it.

He said he thought that the journals could not be published until after his death.

I agreed.

Then he said that their publication might be difficult for the rest of the family.

I said that I thought that we could take it.

He wanted to know if I really thought there would be interest.

I said that young writers would certainly be interested. Then I asked if he wanted them published, and he smiled. He seemed almost gleeful about the prospects.

The subject came up quite a few more times in the weeks that followed. He kept asking me if I really thought there would be interest. I kept saying there would be.

After that, I was allowed to read the journals. And I did. But it wasn’t fun. This was not the witty, charming man in whose guest bedroom I had been sleeping. The material was downbeat and often mean-spirited. There was a lot about homosexuality. I didn’t quite get it, or maybe I didn’t want to get it. I was also surprised at how little I appeared in the text. I was surprised at how little any of us appeared, except perhaps my mother, who was not getting the sort of treatment that leads one to crave the limelight.

   
THIS BRINGS
us to the second question: Why would anyone want this material published?

By 1979 John Cheever had become a literary elder statesman. “I’m a brand name,” he used to say, “like corn flakes, or shredded wheat.” He seemed to enjoy this status. He must have suspected that the publication of the journals would alter it. His public image was that of a courtly English gentleman who lived in an antique farmhouse and raised bird dogs. His later books had expressed a candid interest in other facets of life, but it was certainly conceivable that this interest was purely intellectual. Few people knew of his bisexuality. Very few people knew the extent of his infidelities. And almost nobody could have anticipated the apparent desperation of his inner life, or the caustic nature of his vision. But I don’t think he cared terribly about being corn flakes. He was a writer before he was a breakfast food. He was a writer almost before he was a man.

In notes and letters many writers of astonishing talent will let down their guard, and one can see them blundering along like the rest of us, searching clumsily for the cliché. This didn’t happen to my father. “I know there are some people who are afraid to write a business letter because they will encounter and reveal themselves,” he used to say with disdain. I can see now that the person he was disdaining was himself.
He couldn’t write a postcard without encountering himself. But he’d write the postcard anyway. He’d encounter himself, transform himself, and you’d have a hell of a postcard.

He saw the role of the serious writer as both lofty and practical in the same instant. He used to say that literature was one of the first indications of civilization. He used to say that a fine piece of prose could not only cure a depression, it could clear up a sinus headache. Like many great healers, he meant to heal himself.