Having learned of their own and their world's limitations, they can, paradoxically, learn to celebrate the wonder and possibility of life.
John Cheever, the second son of Frederick and Mary Liley Cheever, was born in Quincy, Mas- sachusetts, on 27 May 1912 and grew up during what he has called "the Athenian twilight" of New England culture. His father, a self-made man, rose to become owner of a Lynn shoe factory only to lose his business in the 1929 stock market crash. His mother used the loss to assert her own independence, a decision which had a disastrous effect on her husband who, with his pride irreparably damaged, attempted suicide. Cheever was deeply disturbed by the strained family relationship from which he escaped when he was seventeen.
His story-telling gift, which his parents did little to encourage, evidenced itself early. At eight he improvised tales with which to entertain his classmates and two years later began to commit his stories to paper. His formal education ended at seventeen when Cheever, having gotten behind in his studies, was dismissed from Thayer Academy for smoking. The next year his first published work, "Expelled," appeared in New Republic.
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