The Stories of John Cheever

Zusatztext "Profound and daring. . . . Some of the most wonderful stories any American has written." — The Boston Globe "John Cheever is an enchanted realist, and his voice, in his luminous short stories . . . is as rich and distinctive as any of the leading voices of postwar American literature." —Philip Roth "As stories go, as compellingly readable narratives of a certain sort of people in a certain time and place— our time and place—John Cheever’s stories are, simply, the best." — The Washington Pos t "A grand occasion in English literature." — The New York Times "Cheever’s crowning achievement is the ability to be simultaneously generous and cynical, to see that the absurd and the profound can reside in the same moment, and to acknowledge both at the detriment of neither." — The Guardian Informationen zum Autor John Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912. He is the author of seven collections of stories and five novels. His first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, won the 1958 National Book Award. In 1965 he received the Howells Medal for Fiction from the National Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1978 The Stories of John Cheever won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Shortly before his death in 1982, he was awarded the National Medal for Literature from the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Klappentext NATIONAL BESTSELLER Winner of the Pulitzer Prize Winner of the National Book Award When The Stories of John Cheever was originally published, it became an immediate national bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize. In the years since, it has become a classic. Vintage Books is proud to reintroduce this magnificent collection. Here are sixty-one stories that chronicle the lives of what has been called "the greatest generation." From the early wonder and disillusionment of city life in "The Enormous Radio" to the surprising discoveries and common mysteries of suburbia in "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill" and "The Swimmer," Cheever tells us everything we need to know about "the pain and sweetness of life." “The Enormous Radio” Jim and Irene Westcott were the kind of people who seem to strike that satisfactory average of income, endeavor, and respectability that is reached by the statistical reports in college alumni bulletins. They were the parents of two young children, they had been married nine years, they lived on the twelfth floor of an apartment house near Sutton Place, they went to the theatre on an average of 10.3 times a year, and they hoped someday to live in Westchester. Irene Westcott was a pleasant, rather plain girl with soft brown hair and a wide, fine forehead upon which nothing at all had been written, and in the cold weather she wore a coat of fitch skins dyed to resemble mink. You could not say that Jim Westcott looked younger than he was, but you could at least say of him that he seemed to feel younger. He wore his graying hair cut very short, he dressed in the kind of clothes his class had worn at Andover, and his manner was earnest, vehement, and intentionally naïve. The Westcotts differed from their friends, their classmates, and their neighbors only in an interest they shared in serious music. They went to a great many concerts–although they seldom mentioned this to anyone–and they spent a good deal of time listening to music on the radio. Their radio was an old instrument, sensitive, unpredictable, and beyond repair. Neither of them understood the mechanics of radio–or of any of the other appliances that surrounded them–and when the instrument faltered, Jim would strike the side of the cabinet with his hand. This sometimes helped. One Sunday afternoon, in the middle of a Schubert quartet, the music faded away altogether. Jim struck the cabinet repeatedly, but there was no response; the Schubert was lo...

Product details

• Authors: John Cheever
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 16.05.2000
• EAN: 9780375724428
• ISBN: 978-0-375-72442-8
• No. of pages: 704
• Dimensions: 130 mm x 203 mm x 30 mm
• Series: VINTAGE BOOKS; Vintage International; Vintage International
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature