Cheever_ A Life - Blake Bailey [410]
93 “A literary career”: “Not for Publication,” Patriot Ledger, March 17, 1938, 9.
CHAPTER SEVEN {1938–1939}
94 with “clarity, ease and meaning”: Monty Noam Penkower, The Federal Writers’ Project (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 159.
94 “Every time I saw a beggar in the streets”: LJC, 48.
94 “a stigma of the lowest order”: Jerre Mangione, The Dream and the Deal (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), 119.
95 “Have the Bill Fold and the X [$10] enclosed”: FLC Sr. to JC, Dec. 19, 1943, CFP
95 “an old lady who sits at the head of the table”: LJC, 45. 95 “under the influence of Fitzgerald”: GT, 155.
95 “What about John Cheever?”: WM to Geraldine Mavor, Sept. 1, 1938, NYPL-MSS.
96 “like pulling a tooth”: JC to Ames [c. Oct. 1938], Yaddo Records, NYPL-MSS.
96 “seemed neither interesting nor useful”: Penkower, Federal Writers’ Project,161.
96 “twisting into order the sentences”: LJC, 47.
96 “Cheever thinks that the [introduction]”: Henry G. Alsberg to Harold Strauss, Jan. 28, 1939, LC.
97 “Hey Johnny … it's a long time”: Jim McGraw to SD, June 6, 1984, Swem.
97 “dreaming out a book”: JC to Denney, July 8, 1939, Dartmouth.
98 “a howling wind that shakes the island”: LJC, 48.
98 “We got on one another's nerves”: JC to Denney [c. Jan. 1940], Dartmouth.
99 “three wonderful writers all named John”: Paris Review 85 (Fall 1982), 130.
99 “concerning writers and their difficulties”: WM to Mavor, Oct. 20, 1939, NYPL-MSS.
99 thought only “half done”: WM to JC, Sept. 29, 1939, NYPL-MSS.
99 “This finds me stranded on an island”: JC to WM, Oct. 1, 1939, NYPL-MSS.
99 “I appreciate your personal interest”: Mavor to WM, Nov. 21, 1939, NYPL-MSS.
100 struck by Cheever's “immense charm”: BBC int. WM, April 20, 1993, CFP.
CHAPTER EIGHT {1939–1941}
101 “the grey light of New York apartments”: JC to Denney [c. Dec. 1939], Dartmouth.
102 “[H]e was kind of slumped over”: LJC, 53.
102 “That's more or less what I would like”: CJC, 239.
103 “I was the child she didn't want”: TT, 31. 103 “Even now, in a family of doctors”: ibid., 36.
103 “My own work is extremely confining”: MC's Sarah Lawrence application, April 17, 1935, CFP.
103 “very little-girlish speech and behavior”: author int. J. William Silverberg, Sept. 23, 2004.
104 “medical head crashes society”: quoted in TT, 42.
104 “Each breath you draw”: LJC, 51.
104 “I think he avoided France”: TT, 61.
105 “The folly of a fool”: SD int. Sara Spencer, Nov. 10, 1983, Swem.
106 “he would tell a pointless obscene story”: quoted in TT, 87.
107 “He would like to reduce personality”: LJC, 66.
107 “Your sweater is on backwards”: “Mary—the Other Cheever,” Suburbia Today, April 19, 1981, 6.
107 “Oh, the Sarah Lawrence girl!”: author int. MC, Dec. 13, 2003.
108 “John boy—Quincy your hometown”: FLC Sr. to JC, Oct. 2, 1940, CFP.
108 “Dad's just been in telling me about Newburyport”: JC to MC [c. summer 1940], Morgan.
108 “Quincy Youth Is Achieving New York Literary Career”: CJC, 3.
108 “great moodiness and discontent”: JC to MC [c. Aug. 1940], Morgan.
109 “a deliberately digressive, episodic … work”: quoted in Dennis Edward Coates, “The Novels of John Cheever,” unpublished dissertation, Duke University, 1977, 35.
110 “Porter is wonderful”: LJC, 59.
110 “very kind” but “impossible” offer: JC to MC [c. Aug. 1940], Morgan.
110 “If there is anything in my memory”: LJC, 106.
111 “taken off to the booby-hatch”: ibid., 56.
dialogue was “beside the point”: quoted in Paris Review 85 (Fall 1982), 134.
112 “ ‘I'm going to be a war profiteer’ “: JC, “The Happiest Days,” New Yorker, Nov. 4, 1939, 15-16.
112 lacking “direction or focus”: Gustave Lobrano to Lieber, June 20, 1940, NYPL-MSS.
112 “You just sit around here”: JC, “I'm Going to Asia,” Harper's Bazaar, Sept. 1940, 61.
114 “We will have a good life darling”: LJC, 61
114 “We just decided not to wait much longer”: MC to Milton Winternitz, n.d., CFP.
114 I'm the old one!”: author int. Bill Winternitz, June 10, 2004.
114 “My maternal great-grandmother”: