Cheever_ A Life - Blake Bailey [219]
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
{1966}
THE EXCITEMENT OF CHICAGO faded, winter deepened, and Cheever went back to being depressed. He felt like a “prisoner” in his own unhappy home, and longed to escape more often, but his cafard was such that the local train had become “a kind of gethsemane.” Somewhat confined, then, to the pleasures of Ossining, he lunched with Art Spear and the like, until Spear dubbed their weekly gatherings the Friday Club. The other members were also gentlemen who didn't keep regular hours. Spear was “Founder,” Cheever was “Membership,” the folksinger Tom Glazer was “Treasurer” (good at figuring tips), and the witty alcoholic Alwyn Lee was “Entertainment;” later, when Lee moved to Italy (and presently died), he was replaced by John Dirks, a cartoonist and sculptor. Various others came and went over the years. “What all the Friday Club gang had in common,” said Federico, “was the belief that they were artists exiled to Ossining. Spear was the only exception: he was solid in ways the rest of them were not.” Cheever wasn't even the most famous of the group, arguably, as Glazer had become something of a national phenomenon with his 1963 novelty hit, “On Top of Spaghetti,” sung (with a chorus of endearing children) to the tune of “On Top of Old Smoky.” As for John Dirks, he was the son of Rudolph, creator of The Katzenjammer Kids, which later became The Captain and the Kids and was taken over—grudgingly—by John, who was foremost a sculptor of metal fountains. Around noon, the group met for drinks at one of their houses, where wives were allowed to serve hors d'oeuvres as long as they vanished afterward. The men ate at various restaurants in the area, though perhaps their favorite was a raffish Italian place called Gino's (“The Oldest Seafood House in Croton”), where a bantering waitress named Pam became the “Ladies Auxiliary.” In a Times piece about the Friday Club published a few days after Cheever's death, Mary Dirks was quoted as saying that the men were “electrifying conversationalists, full of jokes and wild laughter.” Cheever would not have agreed. He liked to hear Alwyn Lee hold forth, but if others assayed witticisms or would-be aperçus, Cheever was liable to snort or mumble some rejoinder which, if audible, tended to sting. As he wrote about Glazer in his journal (which served as a veritable ledger of esprit de l'escalier insults vis-à-vis the Friday Club), “I am the one who tells the jokes. He is meant to listen.” Indeed, it was Glazer who rankled the most. In his freewheeling, folksinging youth, he'd drifted (like Cheever) from one flophouse to the next, and Cheever thought he remained redolent of such dwellings. That Glazer seemed to fancy himself an intellectual was perhaps the most galling part, especially after his “On Top of Spaghetti” success; Glazer himself was inclined to belittle the tune, and liked to focus instead on his more serious efforts in the tradition of Leadbelly and Burl Ives, as well as his work as an archivist (“but we all know,” Cheever noted, “that his principle [sic] source of income is singing commercials”).
John Dirks also came in for a certain amount of subtle abuse. With Lee's departure, Cheever insisted on referring to his replacement as the new “Entertainment,” even though Dirks rarely said a word, funny or otherwise. “[H]is comic strip and his fountains bore me,” wrote Cheever, who thought Dirks's “provincialism” was matched only by that of his spouse. Mary Dirks was a Radcliffe alumna who taught English and theater at Briarcliff, which she satirized in a novel titled (in homage, perhaps, to her friend Cheever) The Bagleigh Chronicle. As a playwright and an actress, she also participated in a number of productions given by the Beechwood Players, a community-theater group based in Scarborough.* Cheever regarded her as the sort of shrill, pitiful dilettante who assuages her frustration, in part, by “french kiss[ing] in pantries,” though at other times he