I spend 3.5+ hours per day indexing at work these days, which means that I’m not transcribing. I’ve resumed my practice of "reading" audiobooks when I’m indexing, and yesterday I finished Cheever: A Biography by Blake Bailey. When I was one or two disks into it, I knew I was liking it, so I went to ABE Books’ Website and ordered a print copy. It’s en route to me now from a bookstore in Florida, and I hope it arrives today. His lifelong battle with alcoholism, coming to accept his bisexuality, and his emotionally abusive marriage kept me hooked from the get-go.
Oddly enough, I’ve never been a huge fan of John Cheever’s. I read "The Fourth Alarm" as part of an American Lit class at Ohio U., and my reaction was pretty lukewarm. I bought a secondhand copy of The Journals of John Cheever last year, and I have enjoyed what I’ve read in them, although I doubt it’s the type of book I’ll sit and read from beginning to end.
In junior high, I occasionally earned a little pocket money by running movie projectors at Marietta College for "Cinema 75," the Friday night movies in the auditorium of Thomas Hall (so named because the admission price was $.75). One night, the movie that I showed was The Swimmer, starring Burt Lancaster and Janet Landgard, a 1968 movie based on what is considered to be Cheever’s best work ever. I’ve seen it once or twice since then, and I can’t really say I like it, but the final scene where Ned, the protagonist, comes home to his abandoned house and its untended grounds, and then curls up in the fetal position and cries during the thunderstorm, is one that stays with you.
An aside: The projectionist job was one of those jobs I "fell into." I had been the first to arrive for the Saturday night Cinema 75 showing and saw the dean of students at the rear of the auditorium with the two 16-mm projectors, looking very flustered. I asked him what was the matter. He said that the guy who usually ran the projector was out of town, and he had just learned this news. The dean of students was supposed to be meeting his wife for dinner in less than half an hour. "Do you know how to run a movie projector?" he asked me. I told him I did not. "Here’s how," he said. He gave me the quick and dirty instruction on how to do it, how to thread the film, how to rewind it once it had run out, how to switch the sound from one projector to the next so it came through the ceiling speakers okay. "Think you got it?" he said. I told him I thought I could. He glanced at his watch and said, "Good. If I run, I can still meet my wife in time for dinner." And I was left on my own to show the film (I even remember that it was The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance).
I remembered browsing through The Stories of John Cheever on the "Browsing" shelf at Dawes Memorial Library at Marietta College when it first came out, but never owned a copy until I lived in Cincinnati.
Having said all this, what’s odd is that I know where I was when I found out Cheever had died. He died of renal cancer at his home in Ossining, N.Y. on June 18, 1982, a month after he turned 70. I was at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine at the time–I arrived in Maine on the 18th, riding by Greyhound from Marietta.
Exactly two weeks later, I was still on the Bowdoin campus, after the Unitarian Universalist youth convocation Common Ground II had just concluded. Some of us were staying in Brunswick overnight to see the Independence Day fireworks in nearby Bath. About four of us were sitting in the foyer of one of the buildings, and there was some kind of private party in one of the big rooms. A woman in her mid-20s, dressed in a semiformal gown, came out with a mixed drink in her hand. She saw me, and said that she had to leave the party, and did I want her drink? I said sure–Common Ground II had ended, so the prohibition against alcohol was no longer in effect. As I was sipping the drink, I saw that week’s issue of Time on one of the corner tables, so I idly began glancing through it. In the "Milestones" section was a two-sentence notice that Cheever had died, followed by "see BOOKS."
I don’t know if I’ll ever be a huge fan of his works. The angst of the post-World War II suburban set doesn’t exactly whet my interest, but I did enjoy Falconer, which was as far away from the tennis courts, golf courses, and cocktail hours as you can get, spiritually and geographically.
The FedEx Ground truck arrived this morning and delivered Steph’s new laptop. Maybe that’s a good omen.
Melville at the Customs-House 