Cheever_ A Life - Blake Bailey [222]
In 1965, Cheever received a letter from Frederick Exley of Water-town, New York, who'd been moved to get in touch with him after hearing Bellow say on Montreal TV that Cheever was his favorite writer. Exley was a fan of both men. “A man named Exley wrote to say that he liked the stories,” Cheever subsequently related to Weaver. “I thanked him briefly. He then called collect from Miami and asked me to post five hundred dollars bail. He had just smashed up a saloon and knew I would understand.” Exley did, in fact, have a long history of alcoholism and mental illness, though his assumption that Cheever would meet his bail wasn't nearly as bizarre as Cheever implied. First of all, the bail was only two hundred (duly noted in Cheever's journal), and moreover Cheever had not replied “briefly” to Exley's letter(s), but rather at lavish and witty length, since Exley was one of his few interesting correspondents at the time. It was Exley to whom he wrote those scurrilous Updike indictments, as well as some of his most inspired set pieces: “Coming in late last night I opened the ice-box and grabbed a piece of cold meat, swallowing a false tooth which included a plastic backside and two sharp hooks.” The tale went on, serial fashion, in Cheever's next letter, wherein he described a visit to the dentist, who informed him with great dismay that the tooth couldn't be passed “without medical assistance.” And so the punch line: “It is true that when I fart these days it sounds like a police whistle but I suffer little pain and it's very easy for me to get cabs.”* After several letters, Cheever figured that Exley was ready for a visit to Cedar Lane, and was disappointed when the disturbed young man stood him up; concluding that Exley had been offended by the “cursory” nature of his most recent letter, Cheever hastened to explain: “If my note to you seemed cursory it was meant to be since your last letter contained so many provocations and snappers that if I'd risen to them all it would have taken me a day to reply. I meant to be cursory but not unfriendly.” Three years later Exley would stun almost every soul in Watertown by producing his quasi-fictional masterpiece, A Fan's Notes, but meanwhile he was just another drunken lunatic with delusions of grandeur, and Cheever happily kept writing him all the same.
Cheever particularly enjoyed hearing from students: it meant his standing in the academy might go up a tick or two in the near future, and also such people were a little less likely to be certifiable. In 1966, an undergraduate at Georgetown, George McLoone (hoping “to obtain a direct quote” for a paper he was writing), queried Cheever about the importance of environment in his work—and lo, the famous author replied: “Environment plays, I hope, a very superficial part in my stories. … When I exploit an environment—Rome or St. Botolphs—it is for the purpose of illuminating people.” Thus began a correspondence that spanned almost eight years and several personal meetings. When McLoone followed up with a phone call, Cheever urged him to catch a train to Ossining and bring a friend if he liked. McLoone did so, and when Cheever noticed that the friend—one Tommy Sullivan from the Bronx, who was at Georgetown on a baseball scholarship—wasn't keen on discussing literature, he invited the boys to go for a swim at Sara Spencer's house (she waved at them from inside). “The water was icy cold,” McLoone remembered, “but it didn't seem to faze [Cheever]. Tommy was an athlete, and even he had trouble with the temperature.” McLoone's four or five subsequent visits were made alone: Cheever always picked him up at the train station and drove him back roughly two hours later, and was never less than convivial—”a witty, impish guy with a twinkle in his eye”—and once he seemed downright ecstatic: “Mary!” he called down from the library. “George is doing his master's thesis on me!”
By far his most reliable attachment (and in many ways his most