About this item
From the acclaimed author of A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates comes the unforgettable life of John Cheever (1912-1982) , a man who spent much of his career impersonating a perfect suburban gentleman, the better to become one of the foremost chroniclers of postwar America. "I was born into no true class," Cheever mused in his journal, "and it was my decision, early in life, to insinuate myself into the middle class, like a spy, so that I would have an advantageous position of attack, but I seem now and then to have forgotten my mission and to have taken my disguises too seriously." Written with unprecedented access to essential sources - including Cheever's massive journal, only a fraction of which has ever been published - Blake Bailey's biography reveals the troubled but strangely lovable man behind the disguises, an artist who delighted in the everyday radiance of the world while yearning, above all, "to be illustrious.
About the Author
Blake Bailey is the author of acclaimed biographies of John Cheever, Richard Yates, and Charles Jackson, and his biography of Philip Roth will be published in 2021. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians, and a finalist for the Pulitzer and James Tait Black Prizes. His most recent book, "The Splendid Things We Planned," was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography. He lives in Virginia with his wife and daughter.
