Short stories

«This outstanding collection of short stories shows the power and reach of one of the best writers of the last century. Stories of love and misery, including masterpieces such as "The Swimmer" or "Goodbye, My Brother," dating from his departure from the army at the end of World War II.»
The Guardian

John Cheever's short stories are the great literary testimony to the American middle class of the 1950s and 1960s. Known as "the American Chekhov," he was the great chronicler of that almost mythological territory of residential areas on the outskirts of large cities, with their cocktail and pool parties, their newspaper awakenings at the door, hat, briefcase, and kiss to the children, afternoons with Benny Goodman quartets on the radio, and entire nights yearning for a different life. Cheever masterfully transformed that mirage of success and happiness into the setting for the glories and sorrows of families who, between frustration, desire, and boredom, form an incomparable portrait of the human soul that transcends any era or country.

This edition includes an epilogue by Rodrigo Fresán and maintains Cheever's own selection, which, after its publication in 1978, won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Covering a trajectory of almost three decades, it contains emblematic stories such as "The Swimmer," a dreamlike portrait of a man adrift, or "The Country Husband," a miniature novel according to Nabokov, whose protagonist survives a plane crash and returns home to the complete indifference of his family.

Cheever, who fought a lifelong battle against alcohol addiction and repressed bisexuality, demonstrated a perfect understanding of the havoc wrought by the most hidden passions when they explode with hardly a sound. In the midst of darkness, he was able to find glimmers in the most faded existences, weak rays of light that, in his hands, ended up illuminating an entire life.

Reviews:
«John Cheever is a realist with magic, and his voice, in his luminous stories, is as rich and distinctive as the major voices in postwar American literature.»
Philip Roth

«Cheever is often spoken of as a writer of the suburbs, but many have written about that. Only he was able to make them an archetype.»
John Updike

«I suppose you'll want to characterize his stories as Chekhovian, or say that Cheever is less somber than Carver, broader, ironic and cheerier than Hemingway. But in the end he will always be entirely himself, calculating and balancing every sentence until he says the right thing and, even more often, elevating the train of the everyday onto the tracks of the political.»
Hanif Kureishi