Promotional Information

'Invariably thoughtful, honest, beautifully written' Guardian

About the Author

John Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912, and he went to school at Thayer Academy in South Braintree. He is the author of seven collections of stories and five novels. His first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, won the 1958 National Book Award. In 1965 he received the Howells Medal for Fiction from the National Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1978 he won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Shortly before his death in 1982 he was awarded the National Medal for Literature.

Reviews

One of the most compelling and intimate books you'll ever read
*Independent*

Beautifully written, lyrically spiritual, sexually candid memoirs
*Mail on Sunday*

Cheever's journals include the struggle for recognition, the problem-drinking and covert homosexuality of a public figure and, finally, cancer. His intelligence and honesty powerfully communicate the sense of life as an urgent predicament
*Sunday Times*

These diaries are so painfully personal...that they were not published until after his death. But they also concentrate the true essence of what made his short stories great
*Sunday Express*

John Cheever understood fallibility and that made for the greatness in his writing
*The Times*

In superb prose, Cheever records his alcoholism, homosexuality, life of frustration and anxiety, success and chaos. Agonising and unforgettable
*Observer*

Moving and very honest
*Guardian*

Will cause readers to give Cheever 'the respect and admiration' he deserves.
*Contemporary Review*

One of the most compelling and intimate books you'll ever read * Independent *
Beautifully written, lyrically spiritual, sexually candid memoirs * Mail on Sunday *
Cheever's journals include the struggle for recognition, the problem-drinking and covert homosexuality of a public figure and, finally, cancer. His intelligence and honesty powerfully communicate the sense of life as an urgent predicament * Sunday Times *
These diaries are so painfully personal...that they were not published until after his death. But they also concentrate the true essence of what made his short stories great * Sunday Express *
John Cheever understood fallibility and that made for the greatness in his writing * The Times *

As explained in the editor's note, the published volume contains selected portions of Cheever's extensive personal journals. Published with the cooperation and assistance of the author's family, it represents one-twentieth of the actual journals, which span a 35-year period. The journals served Cheever both as writer's notebook and memoir, clarifying much of his method of working. The inner life of a writer is revealed in these highly introspective memoirs. Cheever writes of his alcoholism and his bisexuality; his ``war with the world''; his loneliness, alienation, depression, and carnal fantasies; his love for his family; his religion (Catholicism); his perception of the role of the writer in society; and his enjoyment of the rural life at his home in the Hudson valley, all with remarkable powers of description. A candid, beautiful, often startling portrait of a 20th-century American writer. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/91.-- Lesley Jorbin, Cleveland State Univ. Lib.