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”), but rarely the year: I supply the missing information in brackets when I'm fairly sure of it, and add a question mark when I'm not. Unless otherwise noted, letters from Cheever are in the hands of the recipients. Cheever's eccentric spelling and punctuation are often retained in quotation, though here and there I've cleaned things up for the sake of clarity. And finally—since I agree with Gerald Clarke that a lot of ellipses “[slow] down a narrative” (and are unsightly to boot)—I occasionally omit extraneous remarks from quotations, silently without ellipses; when, however, it seems at all important to indicate an omission, I soberly deploy the ellipsis.

The following abbreviations appear in these notes:

Academy American Academy of Arts and Letters

Albany Grenander Department of Special Collections, University of Albany

Bancroft The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

BC Benjamin Cheever (JC's older son)

Berg Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library

BP Bullet Park. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969.

Bryn Mawr Canaday Library, Bryn Mawr College

BU Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University

Canada National Library of Canada

CFP Cheever Family Papers

Chicago University of Chicago Library

CJC Donaldson, Scott, ed. Conversations with John Cheever. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1987.

Colorado Norlin Library, University of Colorado

Columbia Butler Library, Columbia University

Copley Helen K. and James S. Copley Library, University of San Diego

Dartmouth Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College

Delaware Morris Library, University of Delaware

F Falconer. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.

FC Federico Cheever (JC's younger son)

FLC Jr. Frederick Lincoln Cheever, Jr. (JC's brother)

FLC Sr. Frederick Lincoln Cheever, Sr. (JC's father)

GT Weaver, John D., ed. Glad Tidings: A Friendship in Letters. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.

HBD Cheever, Susan. Home Before Dark. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.

Houghton Houghton Library, Harvard University

JC John Cheever

JJC The Journals of John Cheever. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991.

JU John Updike

LC Library of Congress

Lilly The Lilly Library, Indiana University

LJC Cheever, Benjamin, ed. The Letters of John Cheever. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.

MC Mary Cheever (JC's wife)

Morgan The Morgan Library, New York

MZ Max Zimmer

Newberry Newberry Library, Chicago

NFB Cheever, Susan. Note Found in a Bottle: My Life as a Drinker. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999.

NYPL-MSS Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library

OJ Updike, John. Odd Jobs. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991.

OWPS Oh What a Paradise It Seems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.

PJC Papers of Jane Carr (JC's niece)

PRM Papers of Ray Mutter, M.D. (JC's physician)

Ransom Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas

Rochester Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester

SC Susan Cheever (JC's daughter)

SJC The Stories of John Cheever. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978.

SD Scott Donaldson

Swem Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary

TT Cheever, Susan. Treetops: A Family Memoir. New York: Bantam, 1991.

WC The Wapshot Chronicle. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957.

WM William Maxwell

WS The Wapshot Scandal. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.

WSPL The Way Some People Live. New York: Random House, 1943.

Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

PROLOGUE

3 “John had nothing but friends”: Malcolm Cowley, “John Cheever: The Novelist's Life as a Drama,” Sewanee Review 91, no. 1 (1983), 16.

3 “the salvation of the damned”: JJC, 393.

3 “A page of good prose”: OJ, 113.

3 “There were whole areas … I couldn't go into”: CJC, 126.

4 “no more lived-in than a bird perch”: OJ, 118.

4 “My name is John Cheever”: CJC, 126.

4 “Displaying much grandiosity and pride”: “Patient Progress Notes (4/14/75)” from Smithers, Swem.

4 “Cheever's is the triumph of a man in his sixties”: quoted in Michiko Kakutani,