Visions of Grace

The Stories of John Cheever By John Cheever Knopf, 693 pp., $15 Ten years ago, when John Cheever was in his mid-fifties, he was astonished to report that some of his early stories had been written so long ago that they were already in the public domain. This new collection goes back a mere thirty years and denies us the earlier achievements; but it covers enough time and space to give us an eagle’s-eye view of Cheever country, and—to use a phrase of his—what a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful country it is. (That’s a reminder of the ending of his novel Bullet Park: but see the final phrase of his story “The Worm in the Apple,” where the blessed couple “got richer and richer and richer and lived happily, happily, happily, happily”; and in a dozen other stories we find in Cheever’s language, at the coda, that unashamed harping on the dominant-tonic as if repetition may quiet unbelief—a Beethoven-simplicity of utterance.)

Already we are removed from the world of the mere “story.” Pick up a Cheever story and let his people get a hold on you, and you become so engaged in their inner being that you disdain to ask of the author what you should always ask of the mere narrator: “What happens next?” Sometimes nothing happens at all, unless you open your heart to the resonances of a man whose eye sees the world of the spirit, where your hack novelist is about to have his hero say, “Follow that car!”

WR

About the Author

William F. Rickenbacker

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The Stories of John Cheever By John Cheever Knopf, 693 pp., $15 Ten years ago, when John Cheever was in his mid-fifties, he was astonished to report that some of his early stories had been written so long ago that they were already in the public domain. This new collection goes back a mere thirty years and denies us the earlier achievements; but it covers enough time and space to give us an eagle’s-eye view of Cheever country, and—to use a phrase of his—what a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful country it is. (That’s a reminder of the ending of his novel Bullet Park: but see the final phrase of his story “The Worm in the Apple,” where the blessed couple “got richer and richer and richer and lived happily, happily, happily, happily”; and in a dozen other stories we find in Cheever’s language, at the coda, that unashamed harping on the dominant-tonic as if repetition may quiet unbelief—a Beethoven-simplicity of utterance.)

Already we are removed from the world of the mere “story.” Pick up a Cheever story and let his people get a hold on you, and you become so engaged in their inner being that you disdain to ask of the author what you should always ask of the mere narrator: “What happens next?” Sometimes nothing happens at all, unless you open your heart to the resonances of a man whose eye sees the world of the spirit, where your hack novelist is about to have his hero say, “Follow that car!”