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Susan Cheever on the Stories of John Cheever
by Susan Cheever
A sympathetic and illuminating account of the stories of John Cheever, and the intersecting life and work of the legendary writer John Cheever, as told by his eldest daughter.
The Stories of John Cheever, published in 1978, brought together some of the finest short fiction ever written. The collection was honored with the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and it would go on to sell millions of copies and to define the American short story and shape generations of writers. Cheever's chronicles of modern life both emerged from a distinctly American culture and also created it―inspiring everything from Mad Men to a Raymond Carver story, from rock songs to a Seinfeld episode.
Growing up, Susan Cheever, John Cheever's eldest child and only daughter, read what he read, heard what he heard, bantered and gossiped with him and her brothers and mother at the dinner table, and later watched her father type on the cheap yellow paper he favored. A daughter much like Susan appears in many of Cheever's stories and a family much like theirs is at the center of his writing.
"By turns affectionate and admiring but also clear-sighted and unsparing ... An eloquent and fully immersive portrait of a renowned author." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Simultaneously a tribute to her father and an exposé of his failings, Cheever's narrative offers bittersweet grace to a man whose life was a kind of fiction and whose fiction drew mercilessly from his life. It's equal parts wrenching and edifying." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Remarkable... sui generis... This illuminating book fills in many blanks about a troubled and troubling life." ―Library Journal (starred review)
"Lively, provocative memoir. Susan Cheever ... moves fluidly between jaunty literary analyses and charged memories of a father." ―Booklist
This information about When All the Men Wore Hats was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Susan Cheever is the author of many books on American history, the most recent of which is Drinking in America: Our Secret History, published in 2015. She is also the author of numerous novels; My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson―His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous, a biography of the Alcoholics Anonymous cofounder Bill Wilson; and Home Before Dark, a memoir about her father, John Cheever. She teaches at Bennington College and the New School in their MFA programs.
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