In Oh What a Paradise It Seems, [Cheever's] dualistic world of facts and truths, matter and spirit, is suddenly more starkly lit than ever before—the search for spiritual salvation more insistent, material corruption more pervasive. The renowned pungency, diversity, and color of Cheever's writing seem to have faded somewhat; and the nostalgia, ever-present in his narratives about his wandering race, has lost some of its humane, lyric tone and echoes more remotely now.
The narrator of this eerie novella is looking back, as Cheever's narrators usually do, but this time he's not our contemporary taking us back with him to our common recent past—the last several decades of the century. Instead, the narrative voice emanates from the future, observing the close of this second millennium from a distant, and apparently idyllic, vantage point beyond us. The figure in the foreground of the scene is Lemuel Sears as he skates up and down the black ice of Beasley's Pond late one January afternoon…. Sears is uneasily beginning to face the facts of approaching old age. But, fleet and graceful on the smooth pond surface, he feels his spirit suddenly braced by "a sense of homecoming…." (p. 43)
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Read the rest of this Criticism with our Cheever, John 1912–1982: Critical Essay by Ann Hulbert Access Pass.
