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Article: John Cheever's "Hollywood problem".(Biography)
- Article from:
- Harvard Review
- Article date:
- June 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Harvard Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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As a public figure, John Cheever cultivated the image of a genial country squire--a family man in Brooks Brothers clothes who lived in an eighteenth-century Dutch Colonial farmhouse near the Hudson, where he bred Labrador retrievers. His manners were impeccable, though he had a tendency to fidget and leave his sentences unfinished, trailing off into a quick elliptical laugh and sigh ("as jazz singers used to end a chorus with 'Oh yeass,'" said John Updike). Certainly Time magazine accepted the facade: for a cover story on Cheever in 1964, artist Henry Koerner painted the writer with his two pet Roman doves, "because they seemed to symbolize the peaceful world with which ...