Cheever, John (Vol. 8) - Cheever, John 1912–
Cheever, John 1912–
American short story writer and novelist, Cheever draws successfully from his middle-class suburban experience to produce a fiction that paints a disturbing picture of what is wrong with upwardly-mobile America. His major thesis is the difficulty in establishing and upholding a moral identity in a society where family life and the community are disintegrating. Cheever was awarded the National Book Award in 1958 for The Wapshot Chronicle. (See also CLC, Vols. 3, 7, and Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8, rev. ed.)
Ezekiel Farragut, the hero of … Falconer, inhabits a religious and social topography roughly bounded by the contours of his name. Voices of Old Testament prophets reverberate down the corridors of his psyche, while, outwardly, he displays both the polish and the paranoia we have come to expect from Cheever's heroes….
As the novel opens, the state is in the act of appending something...
[The entire page is 4559 words long]
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