The John Cheever Audio Collection
Written by John Cheever
Narrated by Meryl Streep, Ben Cheever and Peter Gallagher
4/5
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About this audiobook
Here are twelve magnificent stories in which John Cheever celebrates—with unequaled grace and tenderness—the deepest feelings we have.
As Cheever writes in his preface, "These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat."
John Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912. He is the author of seven collections of stories and five novels. His first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, won the 1958 National Book Award. In 1965 he received the Howells Medal for Fiction from the National Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1978 The Stories of John Cheever won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Shortly before his death, in 1982, he was awarded the National Medal for Literature from the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
The preface is read by Benjamin Cheever, author of The Plagiarist, The Parisian and Famous after Death. The stories include:
- The Enormous Radio read by Meryl Streep
- The Five-Forty-Eight read by Edward Herrmann
- O City of Broken Dreams read by Blythe Danner
- Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor read by George Plimpton
- The Season of Divorce read by Edward Herrmann
- The Brigadier and the Golf Widow read by Peter Gallagher
- The Sorrows of Gin read by Meryl Streep
- O Youth and Beauty! read by Peter Gallagher
- The Chaste Clarissa read by Blythe Danner
- The Jewels of the Cabots read by George Plimpton
- The Death of Justina read by John Cheever
- The Swimmer read by John Cheever
John Cheever
John Cheever, best known for his short stories dealing with upper-middle-class suburban life, was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912. Cheever published his first short story at the age of seventeen. He was the recipient of a 1951 Guggenheim Fellowship and winner of a National Book Award for The Wapshot Chronicle in 1958, the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Stories of John Cheever, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and an American Book Award. He died in 1982, at the age of seventy.
More audiobooks from John Cheever
The Five-Forty-Eight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Swimmer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Essential Cheever Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Chaste Clarissa Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sorrows of Gin Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Preface Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Brigadier and the Golf Widow Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Season of Divorce Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Enormous Radio Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5O Youth and Beauty! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Jewels of the Cabots Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Death of Justina Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5O City of Broken Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for The John Cheever Audio Collection
24 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One of my favorite short story writers, read by such lumanarians as Meryl Streep! Each story is unique, with each word carefully chosen as to add to the tale. I eagerly look for more by Mr. Cheever, with hopes for Ms. Streep to read it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I had read only a couple of John Cheever's short stories before, and listening to these offerings as read by well-known actors (with two read by Cheever himself) made me realize what a sad gap in my reading life that was. I will have to read more, and soon.
Without going into a protracted and possibly irritating analysis of all the things that make these stories so effective, so well-written, so evocative, and so knowing, I simply can't give a good account of all their fine qualities. What struck me was not how "dated" the stories sounded but how rich with detail, observation, and perspective they were. I haven't done a proper study of the evolution of the American literary tradition in the short form, but many of the offerings of more recent vintage that I've come across seem to have jettisoned these traits in favor of a more immediate and more cartoonish approach. It's as if writers have conceded that readers can't be counted on to show up and pick their way through ALL THOSE WORDS just to find out that ordinary people are more complicated and more flawed than we usually believe them to be. So, kapow, they instead pare things down to the hastily drawn, the fantastic, the outlandish, and, it seems, the relatively pointless.
Or, no, not the pointless. I've read a lot of contemporary stories that are bristling with points. But somehow the points don't come leavened with a necessary helping of recognizable humanity. They don't linger. They don't, for lack of a better word, instruct.
See, this is just what I was talking about. I can't give a proper critique of Cheever's stories, because there's a context here that's important to my enjoying them as I much as I have. Let's just leave it at that: I really liked them.