Cheever_ A Life - Blake Bailey [408]
64 “When you have a suggestion to make”: Ames to Blitzstein, n.d., Yaddo Records, NYPL-MSS.
65 “If Elizabeth Ames was fond of you”: SD int. Nellie Shannon, July 17, 1985, Swem.
65 “to a Newport ‘cottage’ “: quoted in A Century at Yaddo (Saratoga Springs, N.Y: Corporation of Yaddo, 2000), 13. a not-so-subtle “climate of repression”: JC to George Biddle [c. Dec. 1954?], LC.
66 “the Yaddo effect”: Nathan, “Yaddo,” sec. 9, p. 1.
66 “Hooves of fire!”: “Hostess of Yaddo,” 35.
66 “[M]oving with great Hermian grace”: unpublished memoir, courtesy of Allan Gurganus.
66 “I am told that he is twenty-two years old”: Ames to William Soskin, Feb. 18, 1930, Yaddo Records, NYPL-MSS.
67 “unwise attachments”: JC to Josephine Herbst [c. fall 1938], Yale.
67 “‘I'm glad you did, John’ “: JC to Denney Dec. 15, 1934, Dartmouth.
67 “I realized for the first time”: JC to Coates, July 9, 1974.
67 “Only dogs, servants, and children”: SD int. Gurganus, Sept. 16, 1984, Swem.
67 “Do you want me to talk to him?”: Nellie Shannon to Philippa Walker, May 21, 1993, Yaddo Records, NYPL-MSS.
67 “only place I've ever felt at home”: SD int. John Leonard, Oct. 23, 1984, Swem.
68 “a footnote to scholarship history”: New York Times, May 12, 1995, D17.
68 “I was one of the first to recognize”: Tony Quagliano, ed., Feast of Strangers: Selected Prose and Poetry of Reuel Denney (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999),46.
68 “Sympathy and patience”: JC to Denney [c. July 1, 1934?], Dartmouth.
69 “[S]eeing the importance you give”: JC to Denney [c. Oct. 1934], Dartmouth.
69 “Being likened to a decadent intellectual”: JC to Denney [c. Aug. 1934], Dartmouth.
69 “sane conservative” phase: JC to Denney [c. July 1, 1934?], Dartmouth.
69 “There is something immense”: JC to Denney, Sept. 20, 1934, Dartmouth.
70 “He's a liberal, a gentleman and a romantic”: JC to Denney [c. April 1936], Dartmouth.
70 “I think of Europe as a rat-toothed bitch”: JC, “Letter from the Mountains,” unpublished manuscript, Newberry Cowley's halfhearted endorsement of the piece is handwritten on the manuscript itself, as is the reply (“defeatist”) of a fellow editor initialed “G.S.”
71 “[A]cross the street from me”: JC to Denney [c. Aug. 1934], Dartmouth.
71 “I almost destroyed my teeth”: CJC, 190.
71 “His only capital was a typewriter”: Malcolm Cowley “John Cheever: The Novelist's Life as a Drama,” Sewanee Review 91, no. 1 (1983), 2.
71 “It was the torpor we objected to”: Joseph Barbato int. JC, Oct. 27, 1978, Swem.
72 “Hudson Street is a far cry from … Boston”: LJC, 34.
72 “one of the finest tongues”: JC to Denney [c. Nov. 1934], Dartmouth.
72 “On Saturday night Muriel gave a reading”: JC to Denney [c. Aug. 1934], Dartmouth.
72 “Nice people to drink beer”: JC to Denney [c. Nov. 1934], Dartmouth.
73 “Malcolm produced … silver spoons”: SD int. Frances Lindley Sept. 17, 1984, Swem.
73 “I know more about the history of literature”: JC to Denney [c. Oct. 1934], Dartmouth.
73 “I've done one lousey detective story”: JC to Denney [c. Aug. 1934], Dartmouth.
73 “Silas Crockett, the first in line”: JC, “Way Down East,” New Republic, Dec. 11, 1935, 146.
74 asked to make a “small contribution”: Ames to JC, Aug. 23, 1934, Yaddo Records, NYPL-MSS.
74 “It now seems best to set your departure”: Ames to JC, Sept. 24, 1934, Yaddo Records, NYPL-MSS.
74 “the lowest of the low”: JC to Denney [c. Oct. 1934], Dartmouth.
74 “I have a lot of things to thank you for”: JC to Ames [c. Dec. 1934], Yaddo Records, NYPL-MSS.
75 “I am certain of my own voice”: JC to Denney [c. Nov. 1934], Dartmouth.
75 “for all of their contempt … preciocity”: JC to Denney, Aug. 29, 1934, Dartmouth.
75 “I feel confident”: LJC, 51.
75 “Walker Evans invited me to spend the night”: ibid., 304.
76 “We all knew John was sort of gay”: author int. Michael Janeway March 28, 2005.
76 Cowley would later deny having seen “any sign”: SD int. Cowley June 12, 1984, Swem.
76 Cheever's version of Crane's death: author int. SC, Sept. 7, 2004.
76 “Poor Peggy … She died”: Cowley to JC, Nov. 29, 1979, Newberry