"That Darkness at the Heart of Life": The Collected Stories of John Cheever

Abstract

collection of sixty-one stories* selected from volumes appearing since War as the publishing event of (a season scarcely blessed by outstanding new fiction), as grand occasion English literature. Most of them reminded us once again (after John Leonard had coined phrase) that Cheever is our Chekhov of suburbs, chronicler of small tragedies of those upper-middleclass commuters who work Manhattan, live nice little communities like Hill, with nice houses and nice families, who have everything to live from material point of view, but whose lives, most of time, are really a mess. But another, less familiar aspect of Cheever's work (an aspect, however, of particular interest to readers of an international review like WLT) has received little attention: those stories dealing with Americans Italy, where Cheever lived for some time 1950s. There are only a dozen or so of them, but they represent an attempt to escape from narrowness of suburbia, to explore a more spacious domain. They also represent an effort to handle a theme which has challenged so many American writers, theme of expatriate life. In Cheever's case, as we might expect, eye which observed so unerringly shady side of Shady Hill focuses less sharply on Italian scene. It is always risky for a highly specialized craftsman, adept depicting a well-defined sector of his native turf, to confront an alien situation, one with which he is acquainted only superficially and largely by hearsay. Even though he had an extensive tourist's knowledge of Europe, Henry James's descriptions of Paris high life (as, for example, American) seem work of an outsider, straining to catch a glimpse, from windows on street, of what is going on inside. Cheever, so sure of himself suburbia, seems to share something of bewilderment of his own expatriates when faced with more ancient wickedness of Italy. Like them, he is attracted to great name, to grand but decaying palazzo, to storied castle. But those readers who have a smattering of Italian may well be amused by outlandish names he gives his aristocrats. In Boy Rome we are introduced to Princess Tavola-Calda (Princess Steam-Table) . In another story a wealthy Midwestern lady buys a villa in Tavola Calda. Anglo-Italian noblewoman The Duchess bears name of Carla Malvolio-Pommodori (which sounds rather like wicked tomatoes). In other tales these bluebloods would seem to be ridiculed