Short stories

«This outstanding collection of short stories shows the power and scope of one of the greatest 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

The short stories of John Cheever 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 the suburban areas outside big 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 longing for a different life. Cheever masterfully transformed that mirage of success and happiness into the setting for the glories and sorrows of families who, amidst 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. Spanning a career 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 his family's utter indifference.

Cheever, who battled alcohol addiction and repressed bisexuality all his life, 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 managed to find glimpses of light in the dimmest existences, faint rays of light that in his hands ended up illuminating an entire life.

Reviews:
«John Cheever is a magical realist, and his voice, in his luminous stories, is as rich and distinctive as the main voices in post-war American literature.»
Philip Roth

«Cheever is often spoken of as a writer of the suburbs, but many have written about them. Only he was capable of turning them into an archetype.»
John Updike

«I suppose they will want to characterize his stories as Chekhovian, or say that Cheever is less gloomy than Carver, broader, more ironic and cheerful than Hemingway. But in the end, he will always be entirely himself, calculating and balancing each sentence until he says the right thing and, even more often, soaring to place the train of the everyday on the tracks of the political.»
Hanif Kureishi