"Bullet Park" (1969), John Cheever’s third novel, continues his string of novels portraying life, especially life in the suburbs, in a light that becomes darker and darker with each succeeding book. Unlike his first two novels, both featuring the Wapshot family, "Bullet Park" does not use humor to soften Cheever’s vision or message.

Bullet Park is every bit the typical 1960s northeastern United States suburb. It is populated by white-collar professionals whose wives are left at home each morning when the men head to the train station and a day’s work in the city. It is a place where image is important, where one’s children are expected to succeed, where being seen in church on Sunday mornings is still important, and where adultery and drinking too much are common.

Cheever tells his story from two distinct points-of-view, beginning with Eliot Nailles who lives comfortably in Bullet Park with his wife and son. No matter how comfortable they might appear to be, however, no member of the Nailles family is particularly happy, or even content, with life in Bullet Park. Eliot still considers himself a chemist but works on nothing more exciting than the formula for his company’s latest mouthwash; Tony, his son, is reacting badly to poor high school performance; and Nellie, his wife is unhappy about Eliot’s reaction to their son’s problems.

The second part of the novel is narrated by Paul Hammer, a newcomer who moves to Bullet Park with his wife, and feels drawn to the Nailles family by the strange conjunction of their family surnames. This part of the novel deals almost exclusively with Paul Hammer’s memories of his past rather than with any interaction between the two families, making the novel’s thrilling climax an even bigger surprise to the reader than it otherwise might have been.

In "Bullet Park," Cheever has created a surreal neighborhood filled with eccentrics and troubled cynics where anything might just happen - and often does. It is such a biting piece of satire, in fact, that one has to suspect that it reflects a lifestyle that Cheever found to be particularly meaningless.

Rated at: 4.0 ( )

A serious, hilarious, quirky, disjointed allegory about 1960s upper-middle-class suburbs -- a spiritual story about people who have lost their connection to spirituality. Hermetic tropes include the 'magic Negro' faith-healer who lives over a funeral parlor in the slums, two alchemists with different sorts of laboratories, a fairy tale bastard raised by a rich fairy grandmother, a sacrificial first-born son, the summoning of erotic spirits, a variety of impossible-to-please 'White Goddess' women alternately known as bitches. Characters drink so much hard liquor I came away from the book with a contact buzz -- perhaps contact alcohol poisoning.

The narrator remains a mystery person. In Part I, s/he maintains an anonymous presence while telling us, the readers, the history and trials of suburbanite Eliot Nailles. ('Our name used to be de Noailles.' p 20) Part II is a written record made by the outsider, Paul Hammer, (yes, Hammer and Nailles is a purposeful pun) and addressed, apparently, to that same unnamed, unknown narrator. Part III is quick and brief. The narrator shows us the inevitable intersection of the two men's lives -- insider and outsider, conventional and anarchic, self and shadow.

The word 'stranger' recurs throughout the story. In one section, the protagonist Nailles is quoted at length, as he retells a significant evening with his 17 year old only child. Father and son go to an abandoned miniature golf course which serves as a gothic setting for their encounter. The shabby links are a favorite haunt of 'men and boys' on summer evenings. (113) Nailles says:

It was windy, as I say, and there was more thunder and it looked like rain and the light on the course was failing so you really couldn't see the faces of the men who played through. They were high school kids, I guess, slum kids, hoods, whatever, wearing tight pants and trick shirts and hair grease. They had spooky voices, they seemed to pitch them in a way that made them sound spooky, and when one of them was addressing the ball another gave him a big goose and he backed right into it, making groaning noises. It isn't that I dislike boys like that really, it's just that they mystify me, they frighten me because I don't know where they come from and I don't know where they're going and if you don't know anything about people it's like a terrible kind of darkness. I'm not afraid of the dark but there are some kinds of human ignorance that frighten me. When I feel this, I've noticed that if I can look into the face of the stranger and get some clue to the kind of person he is I feel better but, as I say, it was getting dark and you couldn't see the faces of any of these strangers as they played through. (116-7)

More about Cheever at http://bigblogofmarvel.blogspot.com/2...

What can you say about Cheever that hasn't already been said? OK, here goes: if Garrison Keilor were a deeply melancholic alcoholic with repressed homosexual tendencies, he would be John Cheever. It's Americana through a glass darkly. I started the book yesterday and I will finish it today. I can't put it down. I have read most of Cheever, and it's just the thing for this time of year. It's sad, beautiful, elegiac, funny, and true. It chronicles the dissipation of an unsustainable lifestyle. It's set in the suburbs, and it's a glimpse into a time that I remember vaguely - that time when it was still possible to just about remember what it was like to not be completely immersed in consumer culture. Here's a quote:

“The Ridleys were a couple who brought to the hallowed institution of holy matrimony a definitely commercial quality as if to marry and conceive, rear and educate children was like the manufacture and merchandising of some useful product produced in competition with other manufacturers. They were not George and Helen Ridley. They were “The Ridleys.” One felt that they might have incorporated and sold shares in their destiny over the counter. “The Ridleys” was painted on the door of their station wagon. There was a sign saying “The Ridleys” at the foot of their driveway. In their house, matchbooks, coasters and napkins were all marked with their name. They presented their handsome children to their guests with the air of salesmen pointing out the merits of a new car in a showroom. The lusts, griefs exaltations and shabby worries of a marriage never seemed to have marred the efficiency of their organization. One felt that they probably had branch offices and a staff of salesmen on the road.”

Of course, this seems like broad caricature, and it is, but it's a set piece in the novel which serves as a springboard to deeper mysteries and profound observations on the ephemeral and fragile nature of what we assume to be our well maintained lives. Cheever links his characters to the cycles of nature, but only to show how far they have diverged from what really matters. They long for meaning, but don't find it. Nowadays we labor under the “accountability” paradigm: No Child Left Behind, Work Harder, Work Longer, Compete Globally. We've take it for normal. We need to read Cheever and see how we got into this mess. The heart has its reasons of which the bean counters know nothing.
.... from a review on downstreamer.... ( )

I love Cheever, and this is one of his great novels. Please don't be misled that Cheever was just writing about the "horrors" of suburbia. His portrait is more complex than that, but unfortunately that image has been so overdone by Hollywood that it's become standardized. ( )

Brilliant, disturbing, enjoyable novel about the small horrors of suburban life ( )