• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 4190 0

to sleep every night, but at least they were back in school: Susan at Marymount International (“a convent where they work the nose off her”) and Ben at the Overseas School (“where he gets along mostly with Burmese”). The family's lack of Italian and basic cluelessness continued to make everyday life a strain. On Thanksgiving, Mary went shopping for the feast, but at five different shops (there were no supermarkets) the best she could manage was some bread, salami, and cheese. While Ben ate raw fish and rice at the home of his new Burmese friend, Ronald Aung Din, the rest of the Cheevers sat at a warped kitchen table and ate salami. Susan wept: “I don't like Rome,” she said. “It's just like any other big city. It's noisy and dirty and expensive and the crowds are always running and what does it matter if you see a ruin now and then?” Cheever recorded the remark in his journal and wrote, “I think she is so right.”

A week or so later—after a day “like a witches [sic] tooth”—Cheever came home from his Italian lesson and found a letter from a stranger in Philadelphia informing him that Time magazine had “panned the collection.” The collection was titled Stories and included work by Cheever and three other notable New Yorker writers: Jean Stafford, Maxwell, and Daniel Fuchs. (The early Time review—”News from the Defeated”—wasn't really that bad: it called Stafford “the biggest name and most accomplished craftsman of the group” and didn't mention Cheever at all, though the four were collectively praised for their “competence.”) The idea for the book had originated a few years back, when Cheever had met Stafford at a party given by their mutual friend Margot Morrow. Someone had asked the two why they hadn't published more story collections. As Cheever wrote in his “Authors’ Note”:

The writers explained that—aside from the indifference of publishers—to collect short stories is something like marrying many times and collecting all your wives under one roof on a rainy day. Furthermore, collections of short stories are usually reviewed in tandem or four-in-hand and in an atmosphere of combativeness (X is more sensitive than Y) that overlooks the fact, known to most writers, that to make sense out of life is an exertion of uncommon cooperativeness.

Thinking no doubt of the invidious comparisons he'd suffered because of Nine Stories, Cheever had proposed that Stafford and he collaborate with Salinger on a collection of their most recent fiction; such a show of solidarity would perhaps appeal to the reviewers’ better natures. Salinger, however, politely declined (“What a very nice idea!”), and Cheever recruited Maxwell along with their old friend Fuchs, wryly suggesting they title the book (in homage to Hawthorne) Mosses from Four Old Manses. The more generic Stories included five by Stafford, four by Cheever (“The Day the Pig Fell into the Well,” “The National Pastime,” “The Bus to St. James's,” and “The Country Husband”), and three apiece by Maxwell and Fuchs. Reviews were sparse but admiring. In the Times Book Review, Richard Sullivan described the stories as “expert, worthy and honorable pieces of prose,” while at least two other major reviewers singled out “The Day the Pig Fell into the Well,” both as the best (William Peden) and the gloomiest (Orville Prescott) story in the collection.

Back in Italy, meanwhile, things were looking up at last. One day Cheever got in touch with a fellow expatriate, the novelist Elizabeth Spencer. His wife was pregnant and becoming rather frantic, Cheever explained, what with one thing and another; he wondered if they might borrow Spencer's maid for an afternoon. Presently a short, energetic woman wearing a cat-fur stole appeared, and promptly began “raising great Biblical clouds of dust in the middle of the sala,” as Cheever wrote. “I Cheevers hanno bisogno di me,” the woman told Spencer (“The Cheevers have need of me”), to whom she sent her sister as a replacement. The new maid was named Iole Felici, and she would remain in Cheever's life until the end. For thirty-five cents an hour, she did