John Cheever (1912-1982) was an American writer known for his keen, often critical, view of the American middle class. Known primarily for his short stories, his attention to detail and careful writing found the extraordinary in the ordinary. I have been...

Few American writers have been so clear in mapping their recurrent subject matter and themes as John Cheever. From his first published story, "Expelled," he has been concerned with the Fall from a condition of Edenic childlike innocence into the painful...

To outward appearances John Cheever was very much a child of the American twentieth century. Born just before World War I, he lived through the halcyon Jazz Age, suffered through the Depression, and served as a noncombatant in the army during World War I...

John Cheever, the great American master of the short story, also wrote five novels. The longer form brought out Cheever's tendency to meander, but in his two best novels -- The Wapshot Chronicle and Falconer -- he kept his febrile inventiveness under control. He...

Finding and losing a voice CHRONICLES by Bob Dylan Simon & Schuster, £16.99, pp. 256, ISBN 0743230760 £14.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 What does it take to turn artistic talent into its full creative expression? Then, once you've found your authentic...

Though Cheever can still turn a phrase with the best of them, Oh What … is by any and every standard a bad book, worthy of notice only because he put his name to it. Clumsily lurching back and forth between postmodern and realistic techniques, it botches both. The plot resolves itself by a devil ex machina; the language is flabby ("nether" does not mean "nondescript"), the snobbishness painful. Better you should read the collected stories. Or, best, The Wapshot Chronicle, ...