john cheever

  • The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #226: Benjamin Nugent

    The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #226: Benjamin Nugent

    “I’m interested in beautiful events that are wrong.”

  • The Rumpus Interview with D. Foy

    The Rumpus Interview with D. Foy

    D. Foy discusses his latest novel, Patricide, the evolution of “gutter opera,” his writing process, free will, and memes.

  • John Cheever Could Never Be a Single Mother

    John Cheever, known as the “Chekov of the suburbs” for his fiction’s signature focus on the domestic, suburban family life in the 40s and 50s, probably couldn’t hack being a single mom today. At McSweeney’s, Jeanne Darst shares the excerpts from Cheever’s fiction…

  • Learning by Listening

    The Millions staff writer Nick Ripatrazone examines literature that “embraces the power of radio” and highlights the sounds of language: Radio is elegiac. Radio is the theater of the mind: our eyes are free to look elsewhere, but the sound bounces in…

  • Summer Swimmer’s Lament

    Over at The Millions, Nick Ripatrazone dives into John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” a story with well-deserved fame in the literary community, exemplary of Cheever’s style and a perfect read with which to mourn summer’s end.

  • Rockin’ the Suburbs

    The big city may be full of stories, but books like Judy Blume’s Wifey and Karolina Waclawiak‘s The Invaders remind us that the suburbs are equally worth writing about. Over at Electric Literature, Jason Diamond makes the case for settling…

  • Cheever House

    John Cheever is the quintessential suburban novelist. The New Yorker has the story behind the writer’s Ossining, New York house that inspired many of the stories of middle-class, suburban woe.

  • For Sale: John Cheever’s Magical Suburban Home

    Alexander Nazaryan’s Newsweek essay about John Cheever’s home (for sale, in Ossining) is more than a real estate ad; it’s a beautiful homage to the suburbanite writer. Upon touring the house with Susan, Cheever’s daughter, Nazaryan writes:  I kept asking the one…

  • Nothing New Under the Billboard

    With its clean, careful shots and enigmatic plot resolutions, Mad Men tends to inhabit a liminal narrative space, as if the same rules of decorum that govern its romanticized 60s society extend their authority to the show’s refined formal characteristics.…

  • Pop Quiz, Hot Shot

    No, really, here’s a fun little quiz from Bookish on trivia about classic short stories. How much do you remember about the tiny details from classic short stories like Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” or John Cheever’s “The Swimmer”?

  • The Rumpus Interview with T.C. Boyle

    The Rumpus Interview with T.C. Boyle

    T.C. Boyle, who has now written over twenty books, talks to The Rumpus about his most recent short story collection, four decades of cooking up high-grade literary tales, the importance of performance during readings, and life at the Iowa Writers’…