THE STORIES OF JOHN CHEEVER by John Cheever; Knopf; 693 pages; $15.95
Although fame came to him as a novelist, John Cheever has been writing and publishing short stories for nearly 50 of his 66 years. Knowing this is one thing; finding and reading the stories has been something else again. Over the decades, magazines carrying Cheever's stories fluttered past, destined for the attic or remote stacks in public libraries. At intervals, hardbound collections of some of Cheever's short fiction appeared, sold tastefully and then went out of print. A few pieces survived the drift toward transiency to which most stories are prone: The Enormous Radio became a standard inclusion in fiction anthologies; The Swimmer inspired an inadequate Hollywood film. The continued existence of other tales, though, came to depend chiefly on word of mouth or hearsay. Cheever's reputation as a master American storyteller seemed rooted in the memory of admirers.
There are colder, less hospitable places, of course. The tricks memory plays are usually flattering. But one of the surprises to be found in The Stories of John Cheever is that the stories are almost always better than people remember. Never before has it been possible to see so much of his short work so steadily and so whole. Never before has the received notion of a "typical" Cheever story—a satire on suburbia, based on fading Protestant morality —seemed further from the more complex and entertaining truth. This massive retrospective of 61 stories (selected by Cheever) is not only splendid from beginning to end paper; it charts one of the most important bodies of work in contemporary letters.
Those who have denied Cheever this stature argue that his characters are too narrow and too much of a piece, that their sheltered lives yield up only hothouse malaise or gilded exaltations. Such complaints put Cheever in excellent company; the work of such different writers as Jane Austen and Henry James has suffered and easily endured similar cavils.
But Cheever deserves a defense. Unquestionably, his wealthy New Yorkers and suburbanites have much in common. The author describes them in one story as "the company of those people who were most free to develop their gifts." These fortunate few are much more significant than critics seeking raw social realism will admit. Well outside the mainstream, the Cheever people nonetheless reflect it admirably. What they do with themselves is what millions upon millions would do, given enough money and time. And their creator is less interested in his characters as rounded individuals than in the awful, comic and occasionally joyous ways they bungle their opportunities.