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informed his brother that he'd gotten started on a new book about the communications industry (“I would hope that it would make McLuhan appear very much out-dated and superficial”) and wanted to know how to go about applying for a Guggenheim. (John tactfully replied that applicants usually had to publish at least one book first, whereupon Fred wrote back asking for a loan of six hundred dollars “or whatever part of that you might be able to dig up.”) For almost a year Fred bombarded Knowlton with harangues about the marketability of Who Are the Revolutionaries?—as witnessed, say, by the Weltgeist-shaping success of Charles Reich's The Greening of America, which proclaimed the triumph of the hippie lifestyle and thereby “covered the same ground” as Fred's (even more marketable) book. Finally Knowlton wearily returned the manuscript: quoting one of Fred's many pitches, he wrote, “Perhaps, as [one reader] said, ‘it should be published,’ but I'm really not enthusiastic enough about the book to be the man to do the necessary selling job.”

Fred remained undaunted, since he was optimistic by nature and had long ago incorporated failure into his personal philosophy (“there is a kind of destiny … that takes a toll of some sort which we get back in the form of new experience”). For a while he continued to think his book would ultimately be published and become “quite an influence for good,” but in time he let go of his literary ambitions and devoted himself to playing the part of a local eccentric in Plymouth: a plump old man with longish hair who liked to rap with the kids and roar around town on his motorcycle. His brother, John, couldn't help being reminded of their mother (who'd played a not-dissimilar role in Quincy), and tended to report that he and Fred were “estranged.” Dennis Coates was therefore surprised when he interviewed Fred for his dissertation in 1973, learning that the man loved and admired his brother and had always assumed the feeling was absolutely mutual. “I thought, ‘This is important’ “ Coates recalled. “ ‘John needs to appreciate this.’ “

Up to a point, he did. “Poor Fred began to drink again and is in the hospital with heart trouble,” John wrote Coates the following year. “However he is showing uncommon intellectual and physical stamina and will live. What a family.” After decades of chagrin, John was moving toward a sort of amused (if still rather wary) acceptance of Fred—admiration, even. If nothing else, the man had persevered despite killing setbacks, proving his mettle as a Cheever and serving as a kind of bellwether for John's own decline and eventual resurrection. Notably, Fred's alcoholic relapse in 1974 would be his last. A social worker at the hospital had urged him to take a hard look at his past in order to understand why he drank, but Fred (very like his brother) would have none of it: “I don't want to go back,“ he said, “I want to go forward! And if you can't help me with that, you can go now.“ The man went, while Fred henceforth resolved to become a devoted (rather than occasional) member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

In his brother's company, however, Fred never seemed to proselytize. Whether John was drunk or (relatively) sober, Fred loved listening to his stories—”funny and very relevant”—and was simply thrilled to be reunited after so many years. One day John was entertaining a student, Rick Siggelkow, when Fred arrived for lunch in a very odd-looking car with a bulbed horn attached to the driver's side. (“What's this?“ Siggelkow furtively murmured to his teacher, who sighed, “Oh, just something he put on his car.”) Invited to come along, Siggelkow was fascinated by the dynamic between the two. John got things started with a bit of generic patter (“Can you believe it? Here we are, a couple of old men living alone in furnished rooms”), but Fred was determined to draw Siggelkow into their conversation, with the apparent object of building up John: “How's the class going? Isn't John a great teacher? Isn't he a wonderful writer?” Speaking of John's work led to a certain amount of reminiscence