Memorably remembered: American author John Cheever died on 18 June, 1982

 

American writer John Cheever is best known for his keen, often critical, view of the American middle class. His stories are characterized by his attention to detail, his careful writing, and his ability to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Childhood and marriage 

John Cheever was born on May 27, 1912, in Quincy, Massachusetts. His parents, Frederick Lincoln Cheever and Mary Liley Cheever, had two sons. His father owned a shoe factory until he lost it due to the Great Depression of the 1930s (a time of severe economic hardship). His mother owned a gift shop and supported the family with the shop's profits. 

Cheever attended Thayer Academy, a preparatory school in Braintree, Massachusetts. He was expelled from Thayer at age seventeen for smoking and poor grades and that gave birth to his first work “Expelled”. It appeared in The New Republic on October 1, 1930.

After leaving school Cheever toured Europe with his older brother, Frederick. Upon their return, the brothers settled in Boston, Massachusetts. Frederick helped to support John as he wrote stories. In the mid-1930s Cheever moved to New York City. He lived in a bleak, $3-a-week boarding house on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village. During this period Cheever helped support himself by writing book summaries for potential MGM (Metro Goldwyn Mayer) movies. Malcolm Cowley, editor of The New Republic, also arranged for Cheever to spend time at Yaddo, a writers' colony in Saratoga, New York. It was also during this time that Cheever began his long association with The New Yorker magazine. In 1934 the magazine published the first of 119 Cheever stories. 

 Married Mary Winternitz on 22 March 1941. They had three children. He spent four years in the army during World War II (1939–1945) and later spent two years writing television scripts for, among other programs, "Life with Father." 

Writing about "Cheever Country"

In 1943 Cheever's first book of short stories, The Way Some People Live, was published. War and the Great Depression serve as a backdrop for these stories. This book reveals a lifelong theme for Cheever: the way some people live. His next collection of short stories earned him the serious praise of critics. The Enormous Radio, and Other Stories, written in Cheever's Scarborough, New York, home, was published in 1953. 

In 1951 Cheever was made a Guggenheim Fellow, a fellowship grant established in 1925 for writers. This grant gave him the money and the freedom to write. In 1955 his short story, "The Five-Forty-Eight," was awarded the Benjamin Franklin magazine award, and the following year he took his wife and three children to Italy. Upon their return the family settled in Ossining, New York. He was elected to the National Institute Of Arts and Letters in 1957 and won the National Book Award for the first of his novels, The Wapshot Chronicle. From 1958 through 1977 Cheever continued to write seven more books. 

John Cheever died of cancer on June 18, 1982. His final work, Oh What A Paradise It Seems, was published after his death.

Source: Notablebiographies.com