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to the delicate mischief he'd practiced on Dr. Hays. “But I'm concerned about you,“ he'd say when Silverberg tried directing him back to the matter at hand. At one point the doctor mentioned he was planning a trip to Rome, whereupon Cheever seized on the subject again and again—hotels, restaurants, monuments the man simply must see in order to have a satisfactory experience. As with Hays, Cheever presented Silverberg with an autographed copy of The Wapshot Chronicle, and even invited the man to have dinner with his family. And sometimes, still, he'd drop all the tourist talk and resume his role as a proper analysand: for all his success—he announced one day—he felt like “a wreck of [him]self,” though he did try to be “good tempered” about things (citing his recent leg injury). When the doctor pursued such remarks with questions about (say) Cheever's “need for a passive-dependent role,” the latter would dodge away and insist they keep chatting as if they were guests at a cocktail party. And so it went until “a rather diffuse rambling final session” in mid-July when Cheever wondered aloud what he was gaining from all this. Silverberg wondered, too: despite the odd soulful revelation, Cheever had never asked him for a bit of advice, seeming instead to be “much concerned with how people [were] reacting to him and giving him enough applause for his charm, wit, and success.” In any event, Cheever phoned later that summer and officially terminated therapy (politely, of course), and meanwhile Silverberg arrived at much the same conclusion as his predecessor: “[Cheever's] major personality trait is his narcissism, and underneath it all is tremendous self-doubt.”

IN THE MIDST of all this, Mary decided (“a little like Zelda,” said her suffering husband) to give a lavish black-tie dinner gala in honor of Susan and Rob Cowley who were leaving that July for a long sojourn in Majorca. Outside the house on Cedar Lane were a tent and dance floor and four-piece band, while the illustrious local literati—the Ellisons, Maxwells, Warrens, et al.—came to pay tribute to the promising young couple. The whole glamorous bash might have been an almost perfect success were it not for a memorably long line to the only available bathroom, not to mention a host who seemed far too drunk even by the standards of the present gathering (though, as ever, he tried to be ingratiating: “You'll notice there isn't anybody from Knopfhere!” he whispered to his old friend and Harper editor, Frances Lindley).

A month later, the Cheevers followed their daughter and son-in-law to the coastal town of Deya, demesne of the poet Robert Graves. Along for the trip was Cheever's niece Ann, the idea being that she'd look after the twelve-year-old Federico while the adults enjoyed themselves. “Uncle John was a terrible traveler,” she recalled. “He didn't like to fly, and before every takeoff he'd lean across the aisle and cross himself on the chest.” Also, he was disastrously unorganized, and had to be shooed from one place to the next lest they miss a plane or lose luggage. (Ann's luggage, for one, was lost; she borrowed clothes for most of the trip.) Susan had arranged for them to stay in a quaint little pensione owned by one of Graves's sons, but Mary found the place dreary and raffish. When she complained about the towels, Cheever advised her to get along then to the Madrid Ritz, where the towels were better—a magisterial dismissal that delighted him, in part because he could actually afford the Ritz (for now). Meanwhile, in Deya—where Cheever remained with niece and son—the pensione was less than three dollars a day, wine was nine cents a bottle, and Cheever seemed moderately content to limp among the olive and lemon trees each morning down to the sea, where he'd swim and read and then limp back to a little café for gin and tonic. One night he had dinner with Graves and entourage, which consisted mostly of the genial Cheever feeding the great man questions about the White Goddess and so forth (“he is a kind of prince, scourge, God and war-memorial,” Cheever wrote a friend,