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Article: John Cheever: A Biography.
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- January 27, 1989
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1989 National Review, Inc. 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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John Cheever A Biography, by Scott Donaldson (Random House, 359 pp., $22.50)
SCOTT DONALDSON'S biography of John Cheever is a competent, if overly cautious, account of a writer who careened both in life and in fiction between light and dark, grace and sin, elegance and pathos. Cheever never set out to prove that "a writer could have a family, a job, and even live in a suburb." But somewhere along the way, things just got too complicated. There were the paralyzing lows in self-esteem, the affairs with both men and women, and, of course, the drinking. Cheever was always "the brightest person in the room," one acquaintance observes, "until ten o'clock when he ...