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John Cheever (1912-1982)


A selective list of online literary criticism for American novelist and short story writer John Cheever, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars and articles published in peer-reviewed sources


introduction & biography

"The First Suburbanite." New York Times Magazine, by Charles McGrath, 27 Feb. 2009.

"'Think About Characters Like a Sphere': How John Cheever Wrote Inner Turmoil." Novelist Paul Harding explains what Cheever's short story 'The Jewels of the Cabots' taught him about portraying humans' contradictory impulses. The Atlantic, by Joe Fassler, 11 Sept. 2013.

"Basically Decent." Novelist John Updike reviews Blake Bailey's biography of John Cheever, Cheever: A Life (Knopf 2009). The New Yorker, 9 March 2009.

"John Cheever, the Art of Fiction." An interview, by Annette Grant, in the Paris Review 62 (1976).

National Book Award Classics: John Cheever: The Wapshot Chronicle. On Cheever as a classic American author. Article by Neil Baldwin, from the National Book Foundation.

Gamble, Giles Y. "John Cheever's 'Expelled'": The Genesis of a Beginning." American Literary History 7, 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 611-632 [preview or purchase, for $42!, at jstor].

Cowley, Malcolm. "The Novelist's Life as a Drama." The Sewanee Review 91, 1 (Winter, 1983), pp. 1-16 [free at jstor].

Gioia, Dana. "Meeting Mr. Cheever." The Hudson Review 39, 3 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 419-434 [free at jstor].

Bailey, Blake. "John Cheever's 'Hollywood Problem.'" Harvard Review 30 (2006), pp. 94-103 [free at jstor].


literary criticism

Bowers, Terence. "John Cheever's Mock-Epic: 'The Swimmer,' the 'Odyssey,' and America's Pursuit of Happiness." CEA Critic 70, 1 (Fall 2007), pp. 17-34 [free at jstor].

Collins, Robert G. "From Subject to Object and Back Again: Individual Identity in John Cheever's Fiction." Twentieth Century Literature 28, 1 (Spring, 1982), pp. 1-13 [free at jstor].

Dessner, Lawrence Jay. "Gender and Structure in John Cheever's 'The Country Husband.'" Studies in Short Fiction 31 (1994) [Questia subscription service].

Kane, Richard C. "Earth, Water, and Fire: Elemental Representations of Feminist Force In Stories by John Cheever, T. Coraghessan Boyle, and Tobias Wolff." Journal of the Short Story in English 42 (Spring 2004) [open access publication].

Kozikowski, Stanley J. "Damned in a fair life: Cheever's 'The Swimmer.'" Studies in Short Fiction (Summer 1993) [Questia subscription service].

Mathews, Peter. "A Farewell to Goodbyes: Reconciling the Past in Cheever's 'Goodbye, My Brother.'" Journal of the Short Story in English 43 (Autumn 2004) [open access publication.

Piwinski, David J. "Lisbon and Hackensack in Cheever's 'The Swimmer.'" Studies in Short Fiction 33, 2 (Spring 1996) [Questia subscription service] .

Raney, David. "What We Keep: Time and Balance in the Brother Stories of John Cheever." Journal of the Short Story in English 37 (Autumn 2001) [open access publication.

Solan, Yair. "Housebreakers and Peeping Toms: Voyeurism in John Cheever's Early Suburban Stories." Journal of the Short Story in English 66 (Spring 2016) [open access publication].

Stengel, Wayne. "John Cheever's Surreal Vision and the Bridge of Language." Twentieth Century Literature 33, 2 (Summer, 1987), pp. 223-233 [free at jstor].


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