Cheever_ A Life - Blake Bailey [435]
619 “one of the great labors of history”: JJC, 356.
619 “I mean it's about what it's like to fuck”: notes on OWPS, Berg.
620 “Richard, have you ever plagiarized?”: Mahala Yates Stripling, “Emergency at Yaddo,” Praxis Post: In Person (on-line), July 11, 2001.
620 “He began an attack in his little bitchy way”: Peter Josyph, “The John Cheever Story: A Talk with Richard Selzer,” Twentieth Century Literature 37, no. 3 (Fall 1991), 335–43.
620 “we watch a ballgame, screw”: JJC, 362.
620 “I'm working like a streak”: JC to MZ, “The Twelfth” [October 12, 1980].
621 “At first I thought it was a joke”: author int. Joan Silber, May 9, 2005.
622 “I said that my scrotum hadn't retracted”: JC to Bev Chaney, Oct. 21, 1980, Swem.
622 “I'm afraid the seizure jarred”: JC to MZ [c. Oct. 1980].
622 “the utter nothingness”: JJC, 365.
623 “Did you know that I suffer from Grand Mal?”: JC to Valhouli, April 9, 1981, Swem.
623 “It's knocked the shit out of “: JC to Philip Schultz, Dec. 17, 1980, Swem.
624 “The need for chocolet is much finer”: LJC, 360.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT {1980–1981}
625 “I will tell them that our two most conspicuous”: JC to MZ [c. Oct. 1980].
626 “These seem never to have enjoyed”: quoted in George W. Hunt, John Cheever: The Hobgoblin Company of Love (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1983), xiii.
626 “Here they all were—the greatest”: JC, “The Island,” New Yorker, April 27, 1981, 41.
626–627 “in acute distress”: Phelps discharge summary, April 25, 1981, PRM.
627 “I felt like a Calla Liley [sic]”: LJC, 363.
627 “[T]hank you for … plumbing”: JC to Marvin Schulman, July 3, 1981, Swem.
627 “Yet such was his vitality”: OJ, 118.
627 “even if [his] prick fell off “: JU to SD, June 25, 1984, Swem.
628 “transitional cell carcinoma”: both pathology lab reports are in Cheever's medical file, PRM.
628 “I returned from the hospital”: LJC, 364.
628 “I'm sure that Schulman ducked it”: author int. Mutter, Jan. 8, 2005.
629 “I conclude that these are the last weeks”: JJC, 379.
629 “I still feel very frail from the defenestration”: LJC, 365.
629 melancholy but “kind of relieved”: SD int. Donald Van Gordon, June 30, 1984, Swem.
630 “[Cheever] looked thin, ashen”: Dana Gioia, “Meeting Mr. Cheever,” Hudson Review 39, no. 3 (Autumn 1986), 434.
632 “well enough to walk to the dam”: JC to “Tom Smallwood,” Sept. 7, 1981.
633 “The word ‘dear’ is what I use”: JJC, 382.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE {1981–1982}
634 “contracted for a full-length novel”: e-mail from Gottlieb to author, May 9, 2005.
636 Updike had “described erections”: JC to Weaver, Oct. 24, 1981, CFP; this remark was deleted from the letter published in GT, 317–18.
636 Updike wrote that he'd “read at a gulp”: JU to JC, Nov. 15 [1981], Swem.
636 “a viper who was trying to break wind”: LJC, 372.
636 “the most ambitious … single series”: Doug Hill, “Cheever Script Opens ‘American Playhouse,’ “ New York Times, Jan. 10, 1982, sec. 2, p. 23.
636 “Hope is out on the coast”: JC to SC, Feb. 11 [1979], Berg.
637 “very peculiar” set pieces: SD int. Paul Bogart, Feb. 11, 1985, Swem.
638 “as gooey as a box of Mallomars”: Harry F. Waters, “PBS's American Triumph,” Newsweek, Jan. 11, 1982, 67.
638 “bright, funny, accurate”: Jack Thomas, “Cheever Leads Showcase Series,” Boston Globe TV Week, Jan. 10, 1982, 2.
639 “I am not at all infirm”: quoted in Martha Frey, “Achiever (in Memoriam),” Vassar Quarterly, Summer 1982, 7–8.
639 “unusually vigorous” bone cancer: LJC, 373.
640 “Some parents will do anything”: NFB, 147.
641 “those rags that are mandatory hospital dress”: JJC, 385.
641 “While my beloved wife and my good friend”: ibid., 386.
641 “Get out! And don't come back!”: author int. Robert Schneider, June 29, 2005.
642 “My beloved daughter calls”: JJC, 385–86.
642 too frail to “throw backgammon dice”: JC to Clare Thaw, Jan. 23, 1982.
644 “Since we spoke on the phone”: quoted in James Atlas, Saul Bellow: A Biography (New York: Random House, 2000), 504–5.
645 “I have been ill and I wanted to be the one”: LJC, 374.
645 “to break through