On an unusually chilly summer morning, writer Susan Cheever and I embarked on a drive from her New York City apartment towards Ossining in Westchester County. Our destination was the Dutch Colonial house, characterized by its stone-ends, where Susan spent her teenage years. This residence is still inhabited by her 90-year-old mother, Mary, a testament to time’s passage. Susan, at 65, carried the slightly disheveled air of someone who had hastily packed for a long journey, her ultimate stop being Bennington College in Vermont, where she imparts the craft of non-fiction writing. However, this initial impression soon faded. As we drove away from the city, a warm, almost radiant glow enveloped her face. To my surprise, she was relishing our conversation, which centered entirely on her father, Cheever John, the celebrated American author. I had anticipated the discussion to be fraught with discomfort. “Oh, yes,” she acknowledged when I mentioned this, “I’m somewhat captivated by my family. I have this peculiar family adoration.” She peered intently through the fogged windshield. “Just wait until you see the house! This magnificent structure that has now become the most unsightly place on earth. It’s akin to the House of Usher.”
Susan Cheever in her New York apartment. Photograph: New York Times/Redux /eyevine
It was evident that Susan was more than prepared for my inquiries. How could she not be? Cheever John passed away in 1982, at the zenith of his career as a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, renowned for his five novels and a collection of some of the most exceptional short stories ever penned. Yet, in the years following his death, a cascade of revelations about his personal life flooded the public sphere, unsettling the once clear waters of his legacy with remarkable efficiency. His life has been scrutinized extensively. Susan initiated this wave with her memoir, Home Before Dark (1984), a preemptive move against an unauthorized biography. In her book, she disclosed the depth of her father’s alcoholism and subtly alluded to his bisexuality, mentioning his affection for a young man named Rip in his later years.
Subsequently, a compilation of Cheever John’s letters, curated by Susan’s brother, Benjamin, further unveiled intimate aspects of his life. Benjamin, in his introduction, recounted the difficulty of confronting his father’s homosexuality and acknowledged composer Ned Rorem for revealing that Cheever John’s orgasms were invariably accompanied by visions of “sunshine, or flowers.” Finally, in 1990, Cheever John’s journals, amassing approximately 4 million words, were auctioned by the family, with excerpts published in The New Yorker and later in a single volume.
These journals showcased some of Cheever John’s finest prose, yet they were undeniably harrowing. The anguish, solitude, secrecy, and shame were palpable. Cheever John, a self-perceived fraud in his own life, transformed self-loathing into an art form. His public image as the poet of suburbia – the “Ovid of Ossining,” as Time magazine dubbed him – suffered a potentially fatal blow. The moments of darkness in his stories now carried a renewed sense of menace, and the moments of grace seemed tinged with emptiness. Was there ever a man whose external persona was so starkly at odds with his inner turmoil? His friend John Updike certainly thought not, expressing his sorrow at this psychological abyss, hoping that Cheever John’s fiction, with its surprising sparks of optimism and its persistent movement towards light, would ultimately prevail.
Nearly two decades later, Blake Bailey’s Cheever: A Life emerged, a comprehensive biography by the author who had previously chronicled the life of another suburban alcoholic, Richard Yates. Interestingly, before settling in Ossining, the Cheever family had rented a house where Yates had once resided. Bailey’s book, spanning almost 700 pages, is meticulously detailed, revealing surprises even to Cheever John’s children. Susan recounted her initial encounter with the manuscript: “When I first received the manuscript, it was in electronic form. I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that I initially used the ‘find Susan’ function to read it. That took about an hour. I thought, ‘Okay, there’s nothing too terrible about me.’ Then I read it from the beginning. It might sound narcissistic, but I found it captivating. My memory only truly engaged when he returned from the war. So, his childhood was entirely new to me. And then, I was unaware of the extent of his gay activity…”
Susan expressed her admiration for the book, considering Bailey’s portrayal of her father to be honest, unflinching, and capturing his essence. However, she questioned the subdued ending, particularly the chapters covering the last seven years of his life when, against all odds, he achieved sobriety. “For me, the end of his life is triumphant. He ceases drinking. He writes what I believe to be his best book [*Falconer*, a novel centered on a drug addict imprisoned for fratricide, who engages in a relationship with another inmate]. He became the man he was meant to be.”
It is true that Bailey, despite being both an ardent admirer of Cheever John’s writing and a compassionate biographer, does not depict the ending as unequivocally jubilant. His portrayal of late-life Cheever John is, in some respects, as confined as his earlier self. One significant reason for this perspective is the cooperation of “Rip,” Cheever John’s last lover, whose real name is Max Zimmer, with Bailey on the biography. Zimmer provided a painfully detailed account of his relationship with the older writer, depicting himself as a destitute young man with nowhere else to turn but his benefactor’s bed. Max, who had a Mormon upbringing and is now married with children, had been Cheever John’s student and harbored aspirations of becoming a published writer.
Zimmer described the sexual aspect of their relationship to Bailey as repulsive, implying subtle coercion. Furthermore, Cheever John remained conflicted and secretive about their relationship, often treating Max as little more than a servant in public settings.
However, Susan challenges this narrative. She believes her father desired an open life with Max and that they had even discussed it. “Without alcohol, he became his true self,” she asserts. “Had he lived longer, he would have come out. That was the trajectory, and it would have been a joyous development. He simply couldn’t envision how to achieve that without causing pain to others.”
When asked about her feelings regarding Max’s account, Susan responded, “Oh, I’m saddened by it. Max was like a brother. He was very kind and supportive after my father’s passing. He mentioned to Blake that he was grateful we made room for him in the pew [at Cheever John’s funeral]. But he was a pallbearer! Come on! I know the reality of what transpired.”
It was Benjamin Cheever who suggested to Bailey the idea of writing a new biography of his father, unauthorized yet completely unimpeded. Ben’s wife, Janet Maslin, a critic for the New York Times, had admired Bailey’s biography of Yates. Susan was initially less enthusiastic until she had dinner with Bailey and realized the potential enjoyment it would bring her elderly mother to have “an attractive and intelligent man paying attention to her.” Bailey frequented Mary Cheever’s house in Ossining, and his book includes a vivid portrayal of one of the most intricate and, at times, cruel marriages imaginable. “It was quite a European marriage,” Susan remarked, as she handed me her bag to search for toll money. “They were individuals who didn’t necessarily believe their feelings were sufficient grounds to dismantle a family. They certainly inflicted pain on each other, but they didn’t automatically view that as a reason for divorce.”
Did she ever wish they would simply separate? In addition to novels and two memoirs about her parents, Susan, who has been married three times, has also authored books addressing her own alcoholism (she has been sober for two decades) and her inclination towards sexual obsession. From an external perspective, it is hard not to wonder if some of this unhappiness might have been inherited.
“I’m uncertain whether we would have all been happier if he had left her, or she had left him. When Blake’s book was released [in the US], I was concerned people would call and express sympathy about my childhood. But if I have found peace with it, others should too. There was a dynamic within our family that was not apparent from the outside. It’s not that we are exceptionally successful or remarkable, but all three of us [she, Benjamin, and their younger brother, Federico, known as Fred, a law professor] have fared quite well. I’ve contemplated extensively what might have contributed to this. Because we are not emotionally scarred. Firstly, my father was incredibly humorous. Sometimes it was truly cutting; you would laugh and cry simultaneously. He was utterly unscrupulous in his methods to elicit laughter. But we were all laughing, and there is something profoundly therapeutic about laughter. My other theory is that there is something deeply healing in reading, and we were constantly immersed in books. Whatever it was, I am grateful for it. I simply found my parents so interesting. I still do. My mother… well, you are about to meet her. I never know what she will say next, even after all these years.”
Cheever John was born in 1912 in Quincy, Massachusetts, and from his early years, he harbored grand aspirations. When his shoe salesman father faced financial difficulties and resorted to drinking, and his mother opened a gift shop to support the family – filled with doilies, china kittens, and Toby jugs – he viewed her endeavor with intense shame. Hadn’t his father always reminded him to remember he was “a Cheev-?” Apparently, his parents’ predicament had little to do with broader economic circumstances – the decline of the New England shoe and textile industries was a long-term trend – and everything to do with what he perceived as their unique peculiarity and vulgarity. Later, when Mary, his well-bred wife, playfully teased him about the family “gift shoppe,” the memories evoked “an actual sensation of discomfort in [his] scrotum.”
Only his older brother, Frederick, seemed to offer solace, becoming the “most significant relationship in his life,” as he once confessed to a psychiatrist. Bailey, drawing on Cheever John’s journals and an interview with a confidant, even suggests the relationship may have been incestuous.
Regardless of the nature of their bond, Frederick initially provided financial support to his brother when he relocated to New York with aspirations of becoming a writer, an ambition he quickly realized. In his early twenties, he began selling stories to The New Yorker, a publication that would feature his work for the next four decades. Despite this success, he remained impoverished, living in a series of cramped garrets, subsisting on stale bread, raisins, and a daily bottle of milk.
Even after marrying Mary Winternitz, whose father was a renowned surgeon and whose family spent summers at their 50-acre New Hampshire estate, Treetops, complete with a swimming pool and tennis court, his financial struggles persisted. Cheever John worried about maintaining Mary in the lifestyle she was accustomed to, a lifestyle he yearned for himself, even as he professed to despise it in his journals.
Gradually, circumstances improved. After Mary and John started a family, they decided to move to the suburbs, initially to a rented house in Scarborough and subsequently to the house in Ossining. (Benjamin Cheever later pointed out that Don Draper from the TV series Mad Men, another character grappling with feelings of being an imposter, also resides in Ossining, suggesting it might not be coincidental.) Cheever John adored his new home and boasted about its age, claiming it dated back to the 18th century, though it was actually built in 1928. He also loved Westchester County. It wasn’t just the opportunity to pose in a Fair Isle sweater with a labrador at his feet and engage in masculine activities like skating, chopping wood, and scything (Cheever John was particularly proud of his scything skills). The wooded valleys seemed to resonate with his soul. “We have a nice house with a garden and a place outside for cooking meat, and on summer nights, sitting there with the kids and looking into the front of Christina’s dress as she bends over to salt the steaks, or just gazing at the lights in heaven, I am as thrilled as I am thrilled by more hardy and dangerous pursuits, and I guess this is what is meant by the pain and sweetness of life,” declares the narrator in his story “The Housebreaker of Shady Hill.” For Cheever John, there was something luminous, even numinous, about suburban life. Perhaps he believed it could be his salvation.
But suburban life, of course, could not save him. By the early 1960s, Cheever John could justifiably consider himself successful. He had a beautiful and capable wife (Mary was a teacher and poet) and three children. He possessed his dream home. After struggling for years to write a novel, he finally published The Wapshot Chronicle, which garnered positive reviews and sold well. Time magazine featured him on its cover. However, behind the façade, things were far from perfect. Cheever John was often drunk before noon, leading to impotence, at least with Mary. His wife had emotionally withdrawn (understandably so), and Cheever John filled pages of his diaries lamenting her coldness.
Sometimes, she would give him the silent treatment. At other times, they would engage in bitter fights. Cheever John would remind her of the mental illness in her family. “What about the times you couldn’t get it up?” she would retort. Underlying all of this was his growing terror of his own sexual desires. By this point, Cheever John had already had sexual encounters with at least three men, including the photographer Walker Evans. However, in the suburbs, his shame intensified into a pervasive fear. In his journals, this manifested as homophobia. Cheever John frequently expressed his disdain for gay men, whom he considered effeminate, even obscene. The idea of waking up next to a man was particularly abhorrent: “It is one thing to tear off a merry piece behind the barn with the goatherd but one wouldn’t, once your lump is blown, want to take it any further.” After spending a night with writer Calvin Kentfield, he was so consumed by self-loathing that he briefly developed agoraphobia.
This misery persisted relentlessly. Reading Bailey’s book, one might feel overwhelmed by the prospect of spending another 400 pages in this man’s company. Cheever John’s loneliness grew so profound that he would approach strangers on the train to New York, asking, “Wouldn’t you rather talk than read?” By the late 1960s, his drinking was uncontrollable. His journal entries detailed his struggles to abstain from gin even until 10 a.m., often sneaking “scoops” in the pantry as soon as his family left the house.
In 1975, Cheever John was temporarily exiled to Boston to teach at the University. One day, John Updike visited him to escort him to Symphony Hall. To Updike’s shock, Cheever John greeted him completely naked. He would sit with homeless individuals on park benches, sharing their fortified wine. When a policeman threatened to arrest him, the writer responded with a haughty look and drawled, “My name is Cheever John.” He began engaging with male prostitutes. Even rare moments of joy were tainted by Cheever John’s particularly toxic self-hatred. At the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he met the gay novelist Allan Gurganus. Cheever John adored Gurganus, yet he still wrote of him, “The more he flirts, the more he seems like a woman.”
Finally, a turning point arrived. In 1975, Cheever John returned to Ossining, and on April 9th, Mary drove him to the Smithers Alcoholism Treatment and Training Centre in New York. (He attempted to jump out of the car en route, but a part of him clearly knew he needed help.) Throughout his treatment, Cheever John, a skeptic of Alcoholics Anonymous, was alternately ironic and falsely humble, a “classic denier,” according to one of his psychologists. But the treatment was effective. He left Smithers on May 7th and never drank again. He resumed writing Falconer, and upon its publication in 1977, he was featured on the cover of Newsweek with the headline: “A Great American Novel: Cheever John’s Falconer.” In 1978, the oversight of most of his short story collections being out of print was rectified with the publication of The Stories of John Cheever. It remained on the New York Times bestseller list for six months and won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the American Book Award.
Then came Max Zimmer, whom he met while teaching in Utah. It is difficult to articulate the nature of their connection. A significant part of the attraction seemed to be that Max possessed “none of the attributes of a sexual irregular,” meaning Cheever John considered him masculine in appearance, not effeminate. Cheever John promised to assist Max with his writing and encouraged him to leave Utah, assuring him of help in securing a place at Yaddo, the writers’ colony with which Cheever John had strong ties.
Thus began their relationship, of sorts. In Bailey’s book, Max describes one of their early sexual encounters as “just a gruesome thing to have to do.” Cheever John never managed to have one of Max’s stories published in The New Yorker or elsewhere. However, when Cheever John was diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 1981, Max frequently drove him to the hospital for radiotherapy. In the months leading up to Cheever John’s death, with Max having divorced his wife and lacking another residence, the house in Ossining became an unlikely sanctuary. Mary moved Cheever John back into their marital bedroom for the first time in years, and Cheever John moved Max into the spare bedroom. Mary cooked, Max chopped wood, and Cheever John, when physically able, would take Max – or another lover, Tom Smallwood – into the woods for sexual encounters. (Throughout everything, Cheever John maintained an astonishing libido.) With sex with men now commonplace, Cheever John looked back on his former self with a degree of amusement. “Nothing could be more natural,” he wrote of his “exertions.” And Mary? He now regarded his marriage with a kind of prayerful wonder. “The word ‘dear’ is what I use: ‘How dear you are.’ It is the sense of moving the best of oneself toward another person. I think this was done most happily within my marriage, although I do remember being expelled to sofas in the living room… I do recall the feeling of moving, rather like an avalanche, toward Mary.” It was an unconventional form of peace, but peace nonetheless.
Susan’s assessment of the house was accurate. From a distance, through the rain-soaked foliage, it appears idyllic. But up close, scenes from old horror films come to mind. It seems to be gracefully decaying, like a movie set abandoned long after production wrapped. Upon our arrival, Mary and Ben, who lives in nearby Pleasantville, were waiting. They emerged from the house’s slate steps to greet us at the sound of the car. The resemblance between mother and son is striking: dark-skinned, long-faced, small, and wiry. Mary, in her wide-legged tweed trousers, appears frail, seemingly as if she could crumble like a potato chip. Her voice is famously girlish, reminiscent of Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (Susan mentioned that people would call the house, hear Mary, and ask, “Is your mother in?”) But appearances are deceiving. Despite her professed ignorance of mundane matters, it’s clear she is astute, knowing, and remarkably resilient. How could she not be? She is Cheever John’s widow. This realization struck me as profound, sending a shiver down my spine.
Inside, almost nothing had changed since Cheever John’s death, although the scent of cats was prominent (Mary had taken in a lodger with ten cats; “Well, I didn’t know she had ten cats,” she explained). Even his books remained scattered around. The ceilings were low, and the atmosphere was dim, with wallpaper gently peeling. Yet, Ben and Susan displayed a cheerful attitude towards it all. It didn’t seem to depress them. Behind their mother’s back, and sometimes openly, they made exaggerated faces and rolled their eyes. They teased, coaxed, and argued. Most surprisingly, at least to an outsider, they made no allowances for Mary’s age regarding propriety, and she didn’t seem to expect it. Never before had I discussed oral sex in front of a 90-year-old woman, let alone the oral sex enjoyed by her husband with another man. In this setting, however, it seemed almost expected. No one seemed to notice my blushing. The Cheevers, with gusto and a certain bravery, continued to dissect their father’s life until every detail was exposed. It was quite remarkable.
Ben also admired Bailey’s biography. “He portrays him as a hero, without distorting the truly ghastly facts.” Did he learn anything new? “Oh, yes! The facts, the sordid facts and the glorious facts, were already known to me. But he’s presented a fairly accurate picture. When Daddy was alive, he was constantly changing everything. We were in a wonderful house! We were in a terrible house! So and so was his friend! So and so was despicable! I was his beloved son! I was a terrible embarrassment! It was very confusing. Blake has organized all of that.”
Was reading it painful? “The most painful part of this process was reading the journals. One of the most hurtful things for all of us is our near absence in them. You’re almost relieved when you appear in them as a disappointment!”
Cheever John constantly criticized Susan about her weight, desiring a slender, pretty daughter and considering her too gluttonous. But perhaps Ben endured worse. Cheever John would lament in his journal that his elder son was effeminate, and to his face, he would say, “Speak like a man!” and “You laugh like a woman!” Ben recounted a time when he questioned whether he was actually gay and only acting heterosexual to please his father. Adding to this, it was to Ben that his father came out two weeks before his death, during a phone call to Ben’s office at Reader’s Digest. “What I wanted to tell you,” he stated bluntly, “is that your father has had his cock sucked by quite a few disreputable characters…”
Did this mean Ben had been unaware of Max’s role in his father’s life until that moment? “No, I hadn’t. In fact, I remember Max flirting with me slightly, and I was shocked. I thought Daddy would be horrified if he knew Max was a homosexual. But I think actual knowledge follows intellectual knowledge. My father told me that, but I didn’t really… realize it until some time afterward. It was upsetting, but not as upsetting as being yelled at as a child for being effeminate. I’ve had to reorganize a lot over the years, and I’m still somewhat engaged in that process. But this [the biography] is a story I can accept. Daddy has redeeming qualities. He was so funny.”
Has it been challenging to be Benjamin Cheever? “Yes and no. I was interested in becoming a writer, and I disliked people telling me they expected better from Cheever John’s son. That was tough. My first novel was rejected by many, and no one could believe it. I’m sure many people confidently believe they would be a better writer than me if they had my name. Everyone has a father; everyone has a psychic burden. But I’m also fortunate. In my attempts to understand him, I have access to all these documents, and they are quite well-written. You’re right to think I’ve had my ups and downs with him, even after his death. Sometimes I’d think, ‘He was a hero! He overcame all these terrible things.’ But other times, I’d think, ‘What a jerk! He’d destroy everything just to get a drink, just to get blown.'”
“We all construct our own sense of righteousness, and I strongly believe that, as lonely as you might be, you don’t approach the first available person on the train and try to… you know. This is my second marriage, but it’s been 27 years.”
Does he believe Cheever John would have shared a home with Max, or attempted to, had he lived? “I don’t think Max would have remained that important, had he lived. He was always a very fickle man. He would have found another boyfriend.”
Throughout this conversation, Mary, who has not read the biography (“I suppose I have to… but there’s nothing about me in it, is there?”), remained mostly silent. Occasionally, however, she interjected. “He was an egotist!” she exclaimed when Ben described their hurtful absence in Cheever John’s journals. When asked, she admitted she always knew, deep down, what her husband was. In Bailey’s book, she states, “I sensed that he wasn’t entirely masculine.” To me, she said more humorously, “He was both!” So what attracted her to him? “His overcoat was too big, and I felt sorry for him.” Was he handsome? “In a way, yes. He was funny. He made me laugh. His fault was caring about class and money. He admired the life of the wealthy. He desired a good life. That’s what attracted him to me. I had a family. He had no family, only a brother.”
Did she consider leaving him? “Oh, yes, quite often. But I couldn’t leave the children, and how would I have supported them?” Did she miss him after he was gone? “Yes! I lived with him my entire life. We didn’t always get along badly.”
“You were very important to him, as someone to adore and someone to despise,” Ben said, not softly but matter-of-factly, as if it were self-evident. “I used to tell myself that,” Mary responded. Her mouth slightly twisted with age, her words flowed without pauses. “His whole life revolved around writing, and I believed in what he was doing, and I wanted to support that. I give myself credit for working at my marriage. More people should try that. I don’t think he would have lived as long without me. I kept him alive. I give myself credit for that, too. And now Cheever John is read worldwide, in languages I’ve never heard of. I couldn’t still live in this house if people weren’t buying Cheever John.”
She is correct about his enduring readership. Yet, sales are not overwhelming. More than 25 years after his death, The Stories of John Cheever sells only about 5,000 copies annually in the US. Falconer and The Wapshot Chronicle have struggled to remain in print, although they received a boost earlier this year when the Library of America, America’s closest equivalent to a literary canon, reissued all the novels and most stories in two volumes, with new introductions by Blake Bailey. (In the UK, to coincide with the British release of Bailey’s biography, Vintage is reissuing the stories, novels, journals, and letters with new introductions by authors like Jay McInerney and Hanif Kureishi). Nor, for reasons unknown, is he widely taught in universities.
Why is this so? Especially considering the stories. They are remarkably beautiful and unique. Cheever John possesses the flair of F. Scott Fitzgerald – an ephemeral quality like fine, cold champagne – yet he blends it seamlessly with a desolate modernism uniquely his own. “Cheever John’s characters are adult, filled with adult darkness, corruption, and confusion,” wrote John Updike in a review of Bailey’s biography shortly before his own death. “They are desirous, conflicted, alone, adrift… His errant protagonists move, in their fragile suburban simulacra of paradise, from one island of momentary happiness to the imperiled next.”
But perhaps this is too somber an interpretation. The biography seemed to depress even Updike. After our conversation, Benjamin dropped me at the station for my train back to New York. While waiting on the platform, I chose a Cheever John story that felt particularly fitting, “The Five-Forty-Eight.” The station was quiet, but the story is anything but. A businessman is confronted on the train at gunpoint by his former secretary, Miss Dent. I finished it just as my train arrived, closing the book precisely as it pulled into the station. And as it did, I recalled something Susan said during our drive: “My father is one of those writers who shifts your perception. When you look up, the world appears slightly different.”
A Literary Legacy: The Works of Cheever John
Cheever John’s prolific 50-year writing career yielded hundreds of short stories and novels including The Wapshot Chronicle, The Wapshot Scandal, Bullet Park, and Falconer. His long and fruitful relationship with The New Yorker saw the publication of 121 of his stories. His collected stories topped the New York Times bestseller list for six months and earned him the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1979. Here are some of Rachel Cooke’s recommended Cheever John works:
The Stories of John Cheever (1978)
If you choose only one, let it be this. “A page of good prose remains invincible,” Cheever John asserted, and this collection is proof. It features strange, luminous, and dark tales of suburban life, including “Goodbye, My Brother,” “The Housebreaker of Shady Hill,” “The Sorrows of Gin,” and “The Five-Forty-Eight.”
The Wapshot Chronicle (1957)
Cheever John’s debut novel, a humorous and episodic narrative of the Wapshot family residing in St. Botolph’s, a New England fishing village.
Falconer (1977)
Considered by some to be Cheever John’s masterpiece and his final novel. It recounts the story of Ezekiel Farragut, a university professor and drug addict imprisoned for killing his brother, who enters into a relationship with a fellow inmate.
The Letters of John Cheever (1988)
Edited by his son, Benjamin, these letters provided the first public glimpse into Cheever John’s inner turmoil. They also reveal the competitive struggles of a writer’s life (correspondents include Saul Bellow and John Updike) and contain moments of humor.
The Journals of John Cheever (1991)
Brutal, melancholic, shocking, and honest, Cheever John’s diaries are as compelling and extensive as those of Pepys. Did he intend for them to be published? His biographer, Blake Bailey, and his children, who auctioned them after his death, believe he did.
