The imaginative setting of St.

Botolphs is reminiscent of a number of similar creations including Mark Twain's St. Petersburg, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, and William Faulkner's Jefferson. In each case the locale contributes to the quality and value of the theme while producing characters that appear as realistic extensions of the environment. Likewise, the idyllic small-town atmosphere allows for explicit contrast with the forbidden or foreboding attraction of the city, gently calling the romantic innocent in search of experience.

Based primarily on his thematic concern of the individual in relation to society, Cheever is often compared to such classic American authors as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway. This is accentuated in the case of Hawthorne, given Cheever's use in The Wapshot Chronicle of the traditional infrastructure of New England morality. Cheever is most effective when, similar to Hawthorne and Fitzgerald, he demonstrates...