There are occasional touches of self-importance in [The Stories of John Cheever], but the author has always been very much on his guard against their recurrence and so—being tremendously gifted—he has reaped the true, substantial rewards of lightness. Not disabled by high-mindedness about content or form, his stories have made a brilliant and serious contribution to the genre….

The particular brand of self-importance Cheever had to resist in the early stories was moralistic. Crudely speaking, he was liable to sudden outbursts of severity about booze in the metropolitan stories (see "The Sorrows of Gin") and about sex in the suburban ones (see "Just Tell Me Who it Was", or "Brimmer"—which moves on to the Italian setting)….

Cheever is also occasionally betrayed into a note of self-importance about technique. This is natural, since he has something highly original and thoughtful to offer here, especially in certain...