CHEEVER, JOHN

born May 27, 1912, Quincy, Mass., U.S. died June 18, 1982, Ossining, N.Y. American short-story writer and novelist whose work described, often through fantasy and ironic comedy, the life, manners, and morals of middle-class, suburban America. Cheever has been called the Chekhov of the suburbs for his ability to capture the drama and sadness of the lives of his characters by revealing the undercurrents of apparently insignificant events. Known as a moralist, he judged his characters from the standpoint of traditional morality. His expulsion at age 17 from the Thayer Academy in Massachusetts provided the theme for his first published story, which appeared in The New Republic in 1930. Cheever's name was closely associated with the magazine The New Yorker, which published many of his stories, but his works also appeared in The New Republic, Collier's, Story, and The Atlantic. A master of the short story, Cheever worked from the interrupted event, which he considered the prime source of short stories. He was famous for his clear and elegant prose and his careful fashioning of incidents and anecdotes. But this focus on the episode caused him difficulty in constructing extended narratives in his novels. Cheever's first collection of short stories, The Way Some People Live (1943), was followed by many others, including The Enormous Radio and Other Stories (1953) and The Brigadier and the Golf Widow (1964). The Stories of John Cheever (1978) won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Cheever's first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle (1957), earned him the National Book Award. Later novels included The Wapshot Scandal (1964), Falconer (1977), and Oh What a Paradise It Seems (1982). The Letters of John Cheever, edited by his son Benjamin Cheever, was published in 1988.