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By Root 3891 0

not only in referring to literary classics (Le Rouge et le noir) but also, to the greatest extent possible, in everyday speech, as when he'd mention an art opening (“I'm going to Peter's vernissage”). “I've never been any great shakes as a thinker,” he'd frankly admitted to an admirer in 1967, and for most of his life he combined a distaste for intellectual cant with only a slight, wistful insistence that he be taken seriously as an intellectual in his own right. True, he'd never finished high school, but nonetheless he'd become one of the world's great writers, and naturally he wanted people to appreciate the fact that he'd attained a kind of eclectic erudition. But fame blurred discretion, and more and more Cheever's reach exceeded his grasp. “I've been reading Wordsworth's preludes,” he remarked to Lehmann-Haupt (who could have sworn there was only one Prelude), and while riding home from Liz Updike's wedding with an acclaimed Whitman scholar, Cheever grandly held forth on the subject of poetry—or pohtra, as he pronounced it. “John,” his wife sighed at last, “knock it off about that poetry stuff.”

Cheever's self-importance was rather in evidence during a visit from the young James Kaplan, who'd published a run of stories in The New Yorker and was eager to cultivate an acquaintance with one of the magazine's most fabled writers. Kaplan had heard that Cheever answered his mail, so he'd written a few diffident notes to which Cheever had replied with the usual lapidary epigrams.* Finally, Kaplan called to say he was coming north for Christmas and wondered if he could pay a visit to the great man. But of course, said Cheever, who obligingly gave directions to Cedar Lane.

“One learns to separate the writer from the writing,” Kaplan reflected many years later, “and my meeting with Cheever was sort of my final lesson.” The first thing Kaplan noticed was how “tiny” Cheever was—a long head shorter than Kaplan himself, who also noticed that the low-ceilinged house seemed built on its master's scale (“It reminded me of Diane Arbus's photo of the Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx”). Cheever beckoned Kaplan to an easy chair in front of the fire, gave him a tumbler of his “best Bulgarian vodka,” then sat opposite and waited. “I was nervous, and he was not helping me,” said Kaplan, who wondered if Cheever even remembered who he was. Gulping vodka, he began to recite his entire publishing record, with particular regard to a long story he'd published in The New Yorker, “Love and Painting.” “Mary!” Cheever shouted to his wife in the kitchen. “This is the young man who wrote the painting story!” Somewhat relieved, Kaplan proceeded to mention that he'd been helped along the way by his “revered mentor,” William Maxwell—information that seemed to put Cheever on guard (just as Maxwell had seemed oddly reticent on the subject of Cheever). Then the phone rang: Herbert Mitgang of the Times, calling to interview Cheever about the Stories collection. While answering questions in a level voice, Cheever mocked his interlocutor with elaborate facial mugging for Kaplan's benefit; the young man smiled weakly and drank more vodka. After twenty minutes or so, Cheever hung up, and Kaplan—casting about for something to say—asked, “Do you drive?” As he later explained:

I'd asked for a complimentary reason: I was thinking of Nabokov, who didn't drive. I was desperate. There was nothing to talk about. I was having an audience with John Cheever. On the one hand I wanted it to last, and on the other I wanted to get the hell out of there. So I ask: “Do you drive?” And instantly—he's not drinking—he flies into high dudgeon, to my horror: “I drive, I ski, I mountain climb … !”—a whole catalogue of accomplishments. My mouth was falling open.

Cheever abruptly concluded the interview and showed Kaplan to his car. Rising to his feet, Kaplan realized how drunk he was, and wondered whether he'd be able to drive all the way home in the snow. “It was a miracle I survived.”

With old friends in the Friday Club, Cheever tried to be magnanimous. Art Spear