In 1975 John Cheever came close to an alcoholism-induced meltdown. Estranged from his wife and family, Cheever had taken a professorship at Boston University where he began drinking himself into what he describes in his journals as an “abyss.” His behavior at Boston was notorious: sharing vodka-spiked coffees with Anne Sexton at university luncheons; his inability, in an acute state of belligerence, to put on a suit for a symphony performance (John Updike had to help him out). Below, Cheever addresses his old Ossining drinking companions, otherwise known as the Friday Night Club. The group had recently sent him a table mat adorned with sentimental notes.
John Cheever
71 Bay State Road
Boston, Massachusetts 02215
Monday [January 1975]
Gentlemen:
I do appreciate the table-mat correspondence and I hate to bring a touch of gloom into the Friday Club but this place is straight asshole. The pictures in the museums are great and the globe on the State House is brilliant but most of it is asshole. This building has been looted seven times since I’ve been here. I’ve lost my watch and fifty dollars. I now wear my watch and hide my money. The difficulty is I can’t remember where I hid it. The sight of a man, looking for a fifty dollar bill hidden in the toe of a boot is perhaps something that should be brought before the House Committee. This building has been stripped repeatedly of every fur coat, hi fi and fenceable table silver. A new lock is simply a challenge. They go after them with crowbars. My principle anxiety is what shall I say to a burglar when I meet one at work in the fall. The university has just commanded me to install a Police Lock at $75. The difficulty here is that the locks are difficult to operate and in case of fire you don’t have a chance. The charming street on which I live is brick bow-front with a luminous pink sign on every saying: Apt for Rent. On the south side of the street they hang plants; I mean jungles. Also cocoanuts [sic] that look like men, souvenirs of foreign travel, family photographs and religious statuary. The rooms must be quite dark. Asshole.
Walking along the river is nice and I love thumping down Commonwealth Avenue to the Ritz but the administration at the university is disorganized and the classes this semester seem sluggish.
I have only one good-looking girl and she had influenza. This is all very gloomy but you can have another drink and so can I.
Yours,
John
From The Letters of John Cheever. Edited by Benjamin Cheever. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.
FURTHER READING
Cheever’s nick-name, “Membership,” and further notes on the Friday Night Club.
His reputation as the first suburbanite.