The Journals [Paperback]

Let nobody fool you with adjectives about Cheever's fictional voice -- elegant, supple, crisp, resonant. Yeah it's all that, but if you have not encountered him before, you will be thinking in other terms -- unsparing, discomforting, perhaps even unforgiving. But listen to all these discs through, arranged from early stories to later -- through a variety of fine professional voices ending with Cheever's own refined rasp, for the last two stories -- before you make any judgments. It ought to take you several sittings; one story at a time may be all you can take. But by the end, you will likely want to eventually hear them all through, again.

Cheever, along with the somewhat younger John Updike, was thought of as the basic social chronicler in the short story form of his generation in post World War 2 years. That is somewhat misleading; the background for both is Protestant, or post-Protestant, east coast, upper middle class and aspiring higher. The two of them became known for what was called "the New Yorker story," which in itself will tell you a lot.

In Dante's Hell upon entry, a demon named Minos winds his tail the precise number of times to figure exactly how deep to drop you down to your earned level of damnation. A similar process happens very early in a Cheever story. A character, or the narrative voice itself, pitilessly fixes all others, in their sphere of vision, based upon the smallest nuance of voice inflection, diction, style of car or dwelling, choice of school, favorite drink, clothes or shoes. They are thus immediately damned in this world, and in a Hell particularly Calvinist (according to Cheever himself), without appeal except, perhaps, eventually to the reader's sympathy. Which some will gain, some not. In any event, they will still be wearing the same shoes at the end, of which fact Cheever will be certain to remind you.

In the early pieces, Cheever is a little uncertain on paper, a little jokey or cute but always entertaining and fascinating. Then he cools out real fast, and delivers stuff as good as the best of his predecessors in this genre, John O'Hara and F. Scott Fitzgerald. From then on his batting average is about as consistent as Lou Gehrig, too; the human toll of his endeavor is discreetly kept from the reader but apparently sounded in his personal life. State of the art performances by a catlike Merle Streep, the great Ed Hermann, serious Peter Gallagher, jovial George Plimpton, witty Blythe Danner move you soundly and at an even pace through all this material. But for all the pain in his voice, it is tremendously beatutiful when Cheever's own voice finally breaks surface on the last disc, in a clearly angry yet unbelievably controlled fit of passion, reading The Death of Justina -- a full frontal assault on modern corporate nonsense and social pretense. I certainly had never heard anything like it. Finally, a shade or two cooled off, Cheever closes the set with a reading of his mythic standard, The Swimmer.

Not for the feint-hearted, this mature set is as good as audio books get.

This audio-set collects 12 of Cheever's finest stories and recruits wonderful readers, including Meryl Streep, who is fantastic. Cheever has a gift for ripping the cover off of everyday life and getting at the emotional core. Many of the stories pack an emotional punch at the end as the reader gains a sudden and almost blinding insight into the emotional core of the lead character. The first and last stories of the collection ("The Enormous Radio" and "The Swimmer") are especially good at this. Some stories are funny -- like the "Chaste Clarissa" -- but most would have to be classified as "downers." Perhaps it is this dark edge that keeps Cheever from achieving some of the heights that Chekhov scaled.

Still, Cheever is at the top of the hierarchy of great American short story writers, along with writers like Sherwood Anderson and Hemingway. He's a little bit better at the short-story craft that any of his contemporaries.

George Plimpton is probably the only reader in this collection who will grate on you. Everyone else is absolutely great. My hats off to the publisher.