John Cheever (1912–1982)

John Cheever’s [The Wapshot Chronicle] recounts the lives of one family in the small Massachusetts town of St. Botolphs. Leander Wapshot’s sons are forced to go out into the world and make their fortune, hoping to prove themselves worthy of their prudish and eccentric aunt, Cousin Honora, the center of the family’s wealth. Coverly travels to Washington, DC, and Moses to New York by train, where they find careers and establish families of their own.

Though the tale might seem pastoral show more or mundane, Cheever peppers it with colorful characters, like Uncle Peepee Marshmallow, the family nudist, and with outlandish turns in the narrative, like Moses’ naked trek across a castle roof to find his fiancé’s bedroom. There are few dull moments in the story, and when you’ve completed the novel, you feel like an honorary citizen of St. Botolphs and an honorary member of the Wapshot clan.

The book bears a strong resemblance to a favorite book of mine, [Winesburg, Ohio] by Sherwood Anderson. Both are rooted in a keen understanding of the subtleties of small town life and the unusual human foibles in such a place. Anderson’s book offers a more sweeping look at the fabric of the community under study, as Cheever tends to focus more on the Wapshots than St. Botolphs.

Cheever’s prose is first-rate, if not as compelling as Anderson’s. Though, Cheever does stand out in one peculiar way. I’ve never read a book quite so descriptive in the areas sound and smell. After reading certain passages, I could smell the mildew and salt in the air and could hear the bronze bell sounding through the town square. It reminded me of Hemingway’s unique and special ability to translate taste into a narrative.

This book was a bit of a surprise to me, and I’d recommend it to anyone.

Four bones!!!! show less

Wow. Just wow. I was beginning to feel a touch jaded about my reading - I've read some good books in the last few months, but nothing that felt like the equivalent of an espresso after a night without sleep. Bullet Park is that shot of espresso. It concerns the lives of Hammer and Nailles - I won't say much more, for fear of spoiling the story - but one lives an exceedingly normal life and the other could easily have come from Bret Easton Ellis.

One reason I love this book is that it is show more relatively short and yet feels like it encapsulates a whole world of people and stories. Side characters appear in a paragraph, something notable happens, and we never hear of them again; main characters experience a traumatic shock to their system, usually about sex and the erotic, but the repercussions are not necessarily felt, or if they are, not all at once. This is life, real life - this is how the world works, and the fact that not everything in this book has its resolution is such a wonderful, wonderful feature. I'll be reading this one again, as well as everything else by Cheever that I can get my hands on. show less

I’m not sure that the plot blurbs describing the novel as being about “redemption” (Ballentine 1977) or the “struggle to remain a man” (see the summary on Goodreads) set the right expectations. I didn’t find the book to be about either of those things. Farragut, our main character, doesn’t really redeem himself in the way the word is typically used. He is not saved from his crimes and sins either by his own efforts or by the efforts of others. And I’m not sure what the show more “struggle to remain a man” means exactly; although, it seems like a bygone reference to a cliched masculine ideal that feels out of place here. And despite all the focus of penises and sex in the book, I don’t think it fits.

What I see is a person gradually losing qualities by which his value or merit was defined: bad and good. In prison, Farragut sheds many qualities, his marital status, his profession, his standing, and even his addiction. Prison is a project of debasement by design, but we see in Farragut’s recollections of his life of qualities, prior to incarceration, that debasement is not a force bounded by prison walls. Daily life, our professions, our entertainments, our consumer habits, all have the possibility to alienate us from each other and ourselves, similarly debasing, but replacing the qualities that are removed with ersatz self-defining qualities like wealth, possessions, titles, etc.

The result of complete debasement for Farragut is “death,” which I will leave ambiguous so as not to spoil the novel. And in the end, the man on the bus, homeless and without ties, but with “plenty of money” and possessions, is the mirror image of our protagonist. Is he reformed and absolved of his transgressions? I don’t know. Probably not in the sense of the redemptive narrative of prison that is typically told.

I doubt I would ever go back to this novel, but the writing is quite good. And the work has clearly given me something to reflect upon. show less

Kaderleri adlarının esrarengiz bağıyla kesişen iki komşu, Eliot Nailles ile Paul Hammer: çiviler ile çekiç. Nailles, banliyö treniyle şehirdeki işine gidip gelen,ailesine sonsuzca bağlı bir adamdır. Hammer ise evlilik dışı doğmuş, kendi deyimiyle “efkâr”dan mustarip bir yarı delidir. Dünyayı gezdikten sonra, içindeki huzursuzluğu dindirebilmenin tek çaresinin banliyöde birini öldürmek olduğuna karar verir ve bunun için Bullet Park’a yerleşir.

20. show more yüzyılın en önemli yazarlarından John Cheever, bu çarpıcı romanında, öykülerinin de ana mekânı olan Amerikan banliyösünü teşrih masasına yatırıyor; birbirinin kopyası beyaz evlerde yaşayanların şaibeli “normallik”lerini hicivli bir dille irdeliyor. Bullet Park, Amerikan rüyasının trajikomikliğini ifşa eden bir kara mizah romanı.

“Sadece Cheever külliyatı değil, bildiğim tüm romanlar içinde başlı başına bir sınıf oluşturan bir eser.”
– Joseph Heller

“John Cheever büyülü bir gerçekçi ve ışıltılı öykülerinde, Bullet Park’la Falconer gibi eşsiz romanlarında karşılaştığımız üslubu, savaş sonrası Amerikan edebiyatının diğer bütün öncü yazarlarının üslubu gibi renkli ve özgün.”
– Philip Roth show less