Cheever_ A Life - Blake Bailey [418]
250 “After having wondered”: ibid., 86.
CHAPTER NINETEEN {1957–1959}
251 “surly soft-ball games”: JC to WM, June 17 [1957], Berg.
251 Melissa modeled after Narcissa: SD int. E. J. Kahn, June 10, 1984, Swem.
251 an “Iagoesque nuisance”: LJC, 158–59.
252 “I was awfully pleased to have The Wapshot Chronicle”: Narcissa Vanderlip to JC, Dec. 3, 1957, CFP.
253 “In an upper-class gathering”: JJC, 87–88.
253 “Some of the nicest people”: author int. Elizabeth Spencer, Jan. 6, 2005.
253 “Root tee toot, ahhh root tee toot”: HBD, 105.
253 “I love my colleagues”: JC to Schwartz, Oct. 28 [1975], Swem.
253 “When I open my handkerchief drawer”: WM to JC, May 9, 1963, NYPL-MSS.
254 “[W]hat is that old man doing?”: LJC, 212–13.
254 “[H]e would make [one] feel”: Stephen Becker to SD, April 30, 1985, Swem.
254 Cheever claimed to have been so appalled: JC to Bracher, June 25, 1963, Bancroft.
254 “Mr. Ross would not have liked”: JC to White, March 15 [1958], Bryn Mawr.
254 “at least three good friends”: GT, 103.
255 “a gathering of nearly 1,000 writers”: New York Times, March 12, 1958, 26.
255 “in a swift mutter that verged”: Becker to SD, April 30, 1985, Swem.
255 “It is very gallant of you to come here”: JC, unpublished manuscript, Berg.
255 “Randall Jarrell, who had just washed his beard”: GT, 104.
256 “rivals but no superiors in the national literature”: Jonathan Yardley, “John Cheever's ‘Housebreaker,’ Welcome as Ever,” Washington Post, July 20, 2004, C01.
256 Reviews of The Housebreaker of Shady Hill: Herbert Mitgang, in New York Times, Sept. 6, 1958, 15; William Peden, in New York Times Book Review, Sept. 7, 1958, 5; Richard Gilman, in Commonweal, Dec. 16, 1958, 320.
257 “to keep a family of five in shoe-leather”: LJC, 214.
258 “[It] doesn't work, everybody feels”: WM to JC, Nov. 5, 1958, NYPL-MSS.
258 “I have not written so feebly”: JC to WM, Nov. 24, 1958, NYPL-MSS.
258 “Drank too much; talked too much”: JC to Blumes, Oct. 30 [1958?], Swem.
259 “dog-shit all over [his] rugs”: GT, 106.
259 With a “kind of urgency in his voice”: author int. William Styron, Nov. 30, 2004.
259 “I am a solitary drunkard”: JJC, 94.
260 “I think tonight this fortress”: ibid., 104.
260 he detected an “unearthly green light”: LJC, 213.
260 “The most useful image”: quoted in Herbert Gold, ed., Fiction of the Fifties (Garden City, N.Y.: Dolphin Books, 1961), 22.
261 “ ‘The Wrysons’ very bad”: JJC, 131.
261 “in the company of a dozen faded roses”: JC to Clark and R. P. Warren, Jan. 1 [1959], Yale.
261 “Mary's love of me does not seem to include”: GT, 107–8.
261 “He seems to me an unusually gifted young man”: JC to Mr. Lemay, Dec. 15 and 31 [1958], Ransom.
262 “the shaven armpits of the poor girls”: JC to WM [c. Dec. 1958], Berg.
262 “I thought … ‘There must be more’ “: JU, More Matter (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 764.
262 “It was nice while you were away”: See F, 28.
263 “I [used to] sit at a table”: FLC Jr. to JC, Dec. 22, 1967, PJC.
263 “corporate freeze”: FLC Jr. to Sarah Cheever, Feb. 22, 1972, PJC.
263 “stupid and impenetrable smile on his face”: JJC, 100.
264 “What are you doing?“: author int. Halasz, Sept. 3, 2004.
265 “He was happy, high-spirited, and adored”: JJC, 107.
265 “I look up … Alcoholics Anonymous”: ibid., 112.
CHAPTER TWENTY {1959–1960}
266 he'd throw an “insane tantrum”: JJC, 126.
267 “some gossip about Philadelphia”: ibid., 96.
267 “she cannot, quite understandably, face this”: ibid., 103.
267 “This is the best“: JC to WM [July 1959], Berg.
268 “I began to wave my arms and yell: ‘Lennieee, Lennieee’ “: GT, 114.
269 “another seedy-looking plane”: JC to Biddle, Sept. 13 [1959], LC.
269 “to everyone's astonishment”: LJC, 220.
270 “When Winter died in 1959”: TT, 61.
270 Cheever described it as a “big blowout”: JC to Biddle [c. Oct. 1959], LC.
270 “Winter is dead”: JC to WM, Oct. 22, 1959, NYPL-MSS.
270 “Susie is in the throes of adolescence”: JC to Warrens, Jan. 1 [1959], Yale.
271 “pushing at the sandwich tables”: JC to