Cheever_ A Life - Blake Bailey [342]
This précis is simplistic, but not inaccurate. Having made the point that the protagonist of each novel is “overtly modeled on the author,” Coates invites the reader to consider the “oddity” of the “homosexuality theme,” insofar as it “often surfaces without the benefit of a clear connection to what may otherwise be a fairly coherent creation. … Inevitably, explanations of these problems lead to revelations about the novelist himself.” And that's not all: “This idiosyncrasy [i.e., the homosexuality theme] is closely related to what … appears to be the author's misogyny. … It is likely that this perspective is based on personal experience. Indeed, it accounts for the tenderness and humanity with which Cheever develops the homosexuality theme.” So it goes for a couple hundred pages, more or less. Given what must have been his mounting, ineffable horror, Cheever's reply to Coates was impressively temperate: “My congratulations on having completed such a difficult task. I do find it particularly distressing when censure is involved in an assessment of my work and my life. You copiously quote from a man who obviously gets a stick prick at a blade of grass and you conclude that this has destroyed the women around him. I can't agree.” Coates was mystified by what appeared to be a somewhat hostile reaction (“an open book”?), and promptly gave his favorite writer and good friend a call—but Cheever was “cold,” and soon hung up.*
All this might have been very depressing indeed, had it not coincided with a far happier development in the academic world: namely, the announcement that Cheever would receive an honorary Doctor of Letters degree at Harvard's 327th commencement exercise in June. As Cheever wrote in his journal (possibly drafting remarks for the press), “ To have been expelled from Thayer Academy for smoking and then to have been given an honorary degree from Harvard seems to me a crowning example of the inestimable opportunities of the world in which I live and in which I pray generations will continue to live.” Of the many honors that would presently be lavished on Cheever, this was almost certainly the one he valued most: Harvard was the embodiment of Boston respectability, after all, a thing mocked and contemned and deeply coveted by Cheever, even more since that disastrous interlude at BU three years before.
On the great day, some fifteen thousand people gathered in the rain to hear Solzhenitsyn deliver a somber denunciation of the West (with its “revolting invasion of publicity … television stupor … intolerable music”). Since his name began with “C,” however, Cheever was first in the procession of honorees—”Aleksandr brought up the rear”—including Bart Giamatti, Vernon Jordan, Jr., and Sir Seretse M. Khama, the president of Botswana (“a marvelous-looking man,” said Mary Cheever). Hailed as “a master chronicler of his times,” Cheever would have been almost perfectly happy, at least for the moment, if only there were someone who truly shared his happiness; but as he confessed to the Israeli president's wife (“a loving Russian”), he'd been “cold and hungry and lonely” in his life, and fully expected to be that way again. Mary had hardly spoken to him for weeks—practically the status quo by now—and she didn't say much in Cambridge, either, save the odd pleasantry for the sake of appearances.
Cheever's sense of utter destitution, despite his Harvard degree, was more than idle self-pity. Not only did he lack a sympathetic wife or lover, there really wasn't a soul on earth (except occasional strangers) to whom he could confide his sorrows. Bill Maxwell and he were no longer