Subject: Re: Chabon on The Swimmer
From: citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Date: Tue Oct 10 2000 - 12:19:04 GMT
Speaking of Cheever, I have been reading Ben Yagoda's book re The New
Yorker: 'About Town'. Many interesting pages in it regarding John Cheever.
(I confess I've never read him.)
But I was struck by this sentence of Yagoda's:
"For all the acclaim his stories received, and for all the undeniable
virtues of most of them, Salinger was ultimately something of a literary
novelty act, spinning out a series of variably intoxicating fantasies. It
was left to John Cheever to direct his gaze to the lives 'New Yorker'
readers led and transform what he saw into art."
Might as well throw out a couple of other quotes from 'About Town':
" The story [Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters] probably represents the
high point of Salinger's career as a 'New Yorker' writer--it is funny,
touching, resonant, and the last point at which what would become an
obsession with the holy Seymour and the rest of the Glasses is restrained by
an allegiance to literary and narrative values."
"Even after his great success in the magazine, Salinger continued to
experience rejections--three in 1948 and *seven* [emphasis added] in 1949.
After a story Salinger was particularly fond of, 'A Summer Accident', was
turned down, he put the genre aside for a while. He told Lobrano [in letter
dated 10/12/49] that he had rented a small house in Westport and started
work on 'the novel about the prep school boy'."
-Bruce
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